Barcelona don’t just get back to winning, they get back to winning their way

[BYLINE1]SID LOWE
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And so in the dying seconds, Barcelona threw a defender into the attack. But this was not Gerard Pique and this was not desperation. Lionel Messi brought the ball out and found Alexis Sanchez on the right. On the other wing, Jordi Alba was hurtling up the pitch, legs whirring like Roadrunner: stoppage time, 3-0 up, nerves frayed, and the left back was racing into the opposition penalty area. Some might have taken the ball into the corner but Sanchez curled it into Alba’s path instead and he finished the night off at last: 4-0, relief and redemption.

Barcelona had gone back to what they know, not just in winning but how they won. They did it their way. Until that stoppage time goal, the threat always hung over them: a Milan goal would have put them out of the Champions League and, for all the dominance, that was not impossible: M’Baye Niang hit the post - “At this club, you can’t do that,” Javier Mascherano said of his mistake – and as the final seconds ticked away, Alba made a vital interception, stopping Robinho barely six yards out. But they had got it right.

[CROSSHEAD]‘Proud of the team’
[/CROSSHEAD]“Even if we had lost, I would have said the same thing: I am proud of the team,” Jordi Roura, the assistant coach, said. Mascherano added: “The fans have gone home happy, because of the performance as well as the result.”

Above all, because of the result. But the two things are not mutually exclusive and it is baffling they have so often been treated as if they are.

“Would you rather win or play well?” is a question asked often in Spain. Quite apart from the fact “play well” is the most loaded of phrases, the response should be obvious: the best way to win is to play well. Ultimately, this was a brilliant performance, a very Barcelona one. And that was what made the victory possible. It does not feel like there is too much wrong with Barcelona’s philosophy this morning.

In November, Andres Iniesta analysed the style employed by Spain and Barcelona. He told the Guardian : “It’s not that now we are saying football is a science and playing this way you will always win. We play the way we do because it suits us.

“We don’t have the players to pull it off playing a different way. People talk about ‘pragmatic’ football, well, for us, this is pragmatic. It’s the way we like to play and it’s the way we believe we have the best chance of winning.”

Here was another example. “We returned to our origins, playing the kind of football that has characterised this team for the past five years,” Mascherano said. “It is true that we had not played like this for a while.”