The bad decision that led to Barcelona's unbelievable collapse
After not losing a single match in six months, Barcelona tasted defeat for the fourth time in five games with Sunday's 2-1 defeat against relegation-contending Valencia. Not yet three weeks into April, Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Neymar and company have lost their edge at the most inopportune time.
So, why did Barcelona fall flat in April?
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The easy answer is fatigue from playing in extra competitions like the Club World Cup, the UEFA Super Cup, the Spanish Super Cup, along with traveling to the United States for a preseason tour. Add in that the club played with a thin squad under the FIFA transfer ban for the first half of the season, and Barcelona has a reasonable, built-in excuse to explain why the team ran out of gas in the penultimate month of the season.
In truth, manager Luis Enrique needs to shoulder a great deal of the blame for this unbelievable and utterly unacceptable collapse. With a nine-point lead over Atletico Madrid and a 10-point lead over Real Madrid, Messi, Neymar and Suarez all returned from the international break facing a crowded fixture list. For the first time in ages, El Clasico looked like a dead tie with little to nothing on the line, so resting Suarez and Messi, both of whom had played the full 90 minutes in notoriously punishing World Cup qualifying matches in South America only four days earlier, made a great deal of sense.
Before taking on Real Madrid, Barcelona faced a run of five games in 16 days, including two grueling quarterfinal ties against Atletico Madrid. Enrique missed the opportunity to rest his trio of South American stars and keep them fresh for the ties that truly mattered. Had Messi, Neymar and Suarez taken the night off, a defeat in El Clasico would have meant little to the team and likely worked wonders to rejuvenate the squad.
Instead, Enrique lined up Messi, Neymar and Suarez, and by the time the second half came around, 10-man Real Madrid exposed Barcelona as a tired team walking on the wobbliest of legs.
The decision to play the trio in El Clasico doomed Barcelona’s European campaign and has severely jeopardized its domestic season. With 10 men, Real Madrid came back at the Camp Nou and cracked Barcelona’s 39-match unbeaten streak. Barcelona holding a man advantage and losing to any side should have set off alarm bells immediately.
Three days later, the record-pacing Barcelona attack again looked like it was running in quicksand as Atletico Madrid took a 1-0 lead at the Camp Nou. Fernando Torres’ red card and a second-half double from Luis Suarez concealed the fact that Barcelona had been outplayed on its home pitch for 90 straight minutes – the second half against 10-man Real Madrid and the first half against 11-man Atletico Madrid.
Four days later, Real Sociedad claimed a 1-0 victory that set off the sprinklers, but the fire could not be contained. There wasn’t enough time.
Three days after that defeat, Messi, Neymar and Suarez slogged through a second leg at the Vicente Calderon, where the most potent attack seemingly ever assembled could not find even one goal. Just as Atletico Madrid had sabotaged Barcelona’s season in 2014, the Spanish capital’s second-most-famous side knocked the Blaugana out of the Champions League in the quarterfinals.
Four days after getting knocked out of Europe in a physically and emotionally draining match, Barcelona returned home and faced a Valencia side on its third manager of the season. A first-half own goal, which truly should have been credited to Guilherme Siqueira, followed by an incredibly well-worked, extended passing sequence from Valencia that resulted in the second removed all doubt. The house was on fire.
Since the start of April, Barcelona entered Sunday’s halftime having allowed one goal against 10 men and scoring twice against 10 men. Eleven on 11, Barca had been outscored 7-1 with the only goal coming in the first half of the meaningless El Clasico at the Camp Nou.
In the second half on Sunday, Messi would eventually tally his 500th goal—450 for Barcelona and 50 for Argentina—to give Barcelona a sliver of hope, but the match ended 2-1. Barcelona had suffered its fourth loss in five matches and lost three straight La Liga matches. Instead of celebrating the Argentine’s incredible accomplishment, the focus turned to the fact that Messi’s 500th goal ended a drought that covered Barcelona’s epic April collapse.
Messi and Neymar played all 450 minutes in April, and Messi’s 500th goal counted as the only goal or assist the duo provided. Suarez missed the defeat at Real Sociedad through suspension, but he had only managed two goals, both against the 10 men of Ateltico Madrid.
Barcelona’s shocking tumble has left it level with Atletico Madrid on points, with Real Madrid only one point off the pace. Based on form and fatigue, Barca finishing third doesn’t even appear to be a bad bet at this stage.
The collapse is not complete, though. The Catalans are still top of the league, even if the attack currently looks duller than a plastic butter knife. There's no rest for the weary, though, as Barcelona plays away to Deportivo La Coruna three days after the defeat to Valencia and hosts Sporting Gijon at Camp Nou another three days after that.
Five matches ago, Barcelona almost led La Liga by double digits and entered the quarterfinals as the favorite to win the Champions League. Now, with five matches remaining in Spain's top flight, the reality for Luis Enrique's Barca is that winning La Liga would be an accomplishment.
Shahan Ahmed is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow Shahan on Twitter: @ShahanLA and @perfectpass
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