Firing blanks: Barcelona drop first La Liga points at Malaga

Sevilla draw level with the Blaugrana on points at the top.

MADRID: After winning his first four league games in charge, Barcelona boss Luis Enrique saw his team drop their first points of the season as they were unable to breakdown a resilient Malaga side on Wednesday.

The Catalonians have now kept clean sheets in six consecutive matches but failed to find a way past Carlos Kameni in the Malaga goal.

Despite earning a point from the tough fixture, Malaga may well be rueing their luck as Claudio Bravo tipped a Luis Alberto free kick onto the post with a smart save.

Enrique, however, felt that his side were never in danger of losing, but did concede that there is room for improvement in the final third after the drab draw. “We weren’t precise in the last few metres of the pitch, but at no point did we suffer,” he said. “It was the most difficult game for us so far. We didn’t play as well as we can and we just have to continue improving and correcting things.”



The visitors looked devoid of ideas throughout the match as they failed to carve out any clear-cut opportunities and had no shot on target in the entire match. Lionel Messi, who was forced to drop deeper and deeper as the game progressed, came closest for Barcelona when he was unable to stretch far enough to apply a tap-in before the break.

The visitors were similarly bereft of ideas in the second period and Malaga enjoyed a good spell when Roberto Rosales fired wide from the edge of the box, before Bravo saved Liverpool loanee Alberto’s free kick onto the post.

Kameni then nearly gifted Barca the opener as he spilled Gerard Pique’s header towards goal, but managed to recover in time and smothered the ball before it crossed the line.

Catching up

Sevilla moved level with the Catalans on 13 points at the top of the table with a 1-0 win over Real Sociedad thanks to on-loan Barca winger Gerard Deulofeu’s winner, whilst champions Atletico Madrid are now just two points behind as they too registered a 1-0 away win at Almeria.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 26^th, 2014.

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