Barcelona - Sevilla: La Pulga's favorite prey

(Baonghean.vn) - The home team Camp Nou has many opportunities to increase the gap with the chasing group behind when in this round, the opponent of coach Valverde and his team is the team currently ranked 5th on the rankings, Sevilla.

The 0-0 draw at Olympiacos in the 4th round of the Champions League group stage in the middle of the week still could not help Barcelona get an early ticket to the knockout round. This is quite a pity for Messi and his teammates. Because in the match against the Greek team, Barcelona was the better team with many opportunities created, it is just a pity that strikers like Messi and Suarez could not successfully take advantage of delicious situations in front of the opponent's goal.

Returning to the La Liga arena, Barcelona's attack will be completely different. After 10 rounds, the Camp Nou team has not once let any opponent keep a clean sheet. 28 goals is quite an impressive number that the "Catalan giant" has achieved up to this point.

Superstar Messi alone has contributed 12 goals (leading the list of top scorers) and shows no signs of stopping. Another noteworthy detail is that Barcelona scored 18/28 goals at Camp Nou (nearly double the number of goals they scored away from home).

The match at Camp Nou in the 2016 season between the two teams, the 3-0 victory was in favor of Barcelona. Photo: Internet

Meeting Sevilla right at their "holy land", Barcelona will find it difficult to miss the opportunity to take all 3 points. Even though the team from Andalusia is not an easy name to bully and is experiencing a series of not-so-bad performances (winning all 3 recent matches in all competitions), victory is almost certain in the hands of coach Valverde and his team. In terms of strength, performance from the beginning of the season until now and head-to-head record in the past, Barcelona is clearly superior to Sevilla.

Ignore the comparison of the squad quality of the two teams, because Sevilla has never been able to compare with the best players in the Catalan team, throughout history. Just look at what Barcelona is showing, put next to the achievements of coach Berizzo and his team, and you can see the huge difference. At the moment, the home team Camp Nou has won 28/30 maximum points (9 wins, 1 draw) and is in the number 1 position on the rankings, while Sevilla only has 19 points (6 wins, 1 draw, 3 losses) and is temporarily holding the 5th position.

While Barcelona have won all 5 matches at Camp Nou, Sevilla have lost 3/5 away matches against their opponents. As a result, Camp Nou has become a dead end for the Andalusian team every time they visit. According to statistics, since October 22, 2011, Sevilla have lost all of their away matches against Barcelona in La Liga (5 matches). Therefore, their return to Camp Nou this time around will be no exception.

Superstar Messi celebrates his goal against Sevilla. Photo: Internet

Another disadvantage against coach Berizzo and his team is Messi. Before this match, La Pulga (Messi's nickname) had scored 29 goals against Sevilla in just 30 matches. In history, no player has been able to do as well as the Argentine striker. In the last 3 meetings in La Liga, Messi has torn the net of the Andalusian team 4 times. Indeed, Sevilla is a delicious bait for La Pulga. With his current form, people are only surprised because Messi's name did not appear on the electronic board at Camp Nou, not because of a double or hat-trick... against Sevilla.

Therefore, entering the battle with Sevilla, the information about the absence of Iniesta, Roberto, Gomes... did not make the Cules worry. Simply, the task of defeating the Andalusian team was taken care of by Messi./.

Thanh Hung