FC Barcelona 0-2 Villarreal: Final day defeat

FC Barcelona have not ended the 2021/22 league season on the high note that Xavi wanted. Villarreal ended a series of 27 failures to beat the Catalans across all competitions to claim a 2-0 win at Camp Nou.

The visitors took the lead on 41 minutes when Alfonso Pedraza was played into space down the left and stroked the ball past Ter Stegen.

And Barça got stung again just after the restart when Adama Traoré’s erred clearance was delivered straight at the feet of Moi Gómez, who made no mistake with the finish.

Rough justice

But in a peculiar match, the goals came utterly against the run of play.

There was certainly a sense of going through the motions in this one, but while Barça had nothing but honour to play for, which did seem to take the spark of urgency out of their game, Villarreal were chasing European football. And yet from start to finish it was the men in blaugrana shirts who were taking all the initiative.

Before Pedraza’s goal, Barça had been mastering the possession and all of the meaningful football had been played in the yellow half of the pitch, but all it produced was a long series of half-chances, with Ferran Torres particularly in on the action.

None of those were taken and as Barça pushed forward more and more there was always the niggling danger that Villarreal might catch them on the counter… And that’s exactly what happened in the build-up to goal number one.

For the remainder of the game, there was only one other moment when Unai Emery’s side looked even closing to scoring, and that was the one that put them 2-0 on top.

No avail

With Ousmane Dembélé on for his 150^th appearance for the club, and Ansu Fati and Riqui Puig also added to the mix, the monologue of Barça pressure continued to fail to bear fruit, and even when Frenkie de Jong did have the ball in the net, he was denied by an offside call from the VAR room.

The visitors were clearly more than happy with things the way they were and for the remainder of the match were content just to set out camp around the area and do all they could to keep Barça at bay.

They achieved that with frustrating efficiency and the game petered out to a disappointing end to the league season.

But it doesn’t end there. Immediately after the final whistle, the players were headed straight to the airport. There’s a long journey ahead. Next stop, Sydney, Australia!