Barcelona returned from the “San Paolo” stadium
with a valuable tie with its Italian host Napoli 1-1,
Tuesday, in the first leg of the Champions League
final.
Barcelona will move to its stadium on March 18,
and it is in an ideal position to reach the quarter-
finals of the thirteenth season in a row, especially
since it did not taste the defeat in its “Camp Nou”
stadium within the continental competition in its last
35 games (a record).
Barcelona owes this positive result, achieved by its
new coach, Kiki Citin, in his first test in the
competition after he succeeded Ernesto Valverde
early this year to Frenchman Antoine Griezmann,
who equalized in the 57th minute after Napoli ended
the first half ahead of the Belgian goal. Dries
Martin’s (30), who came out injured early in the
second half.
And it is certain that Napoli’s mission to try to reach
the quarter-finals for the first time in its history has
become more difficult after being content with a
draw at home in its first-ever confrontation with the
Catalan club, which won the title 5 times, the last of
which was in 2015 at the expense of Juventus.
Naples began the meeting with a rush, but without
any effectiveness or threat to German goalkeeper
Mark Andre Ter Stegen, before Barcelona gradually
entered the atmosphere without danger also on the
goal of its Italian host.
When Barcelona seemed to be in control of the
match, Napoli set off with a counterattack, in which
the ball reached the Polish player, Piotr Zelinski,
who reversed it for Mertens. The Belgian launched
a wonderful spiral from the outskirts of the region to
the upper left corner of the Ter Stegen goal (30).
And the 32-year-old raised his score to 121 goals in
the Napoli shirt in all competitions, to be at the
same distance from the record holder, Marek
Marajek, who defended the team’s colors for 11 and
a half years before leaving him early last year to
move to China.
Despite his backwardness, Barcelona seemed
unable to threaten the Colombian goalkeeper David
Ospina under the tight defense applied by Gattuso,
and even the latter’s team was close to a second
goal, but the Greek attempt by Costas Manolas
passed near the left post (42).
The situation remained the same in the second half,
which saw Martens hit early and left him on the field
in favor of the Polish Arkadyush Milik (54).
One of his very rare attempts at the goal, Barcelona
launched the match from scratch with a ball fired by
Griezmann in the roof of the net after a cross pass
from the Portuguese Nelson Simedo (57).
Napoli got a golden opportunity to advance, but
Callejon collided with the brilliance of Ter Stegen
(63), then Barcelona managed to contain his host
and kept the equalizer, but he suffered a blow in the
last seconds by expelling Vidal as a result of
receiving a second warning (89) before he then lost
the efforts of Gerard Pique Because of the injury.
