The Spanish press, while agreeing that Barcelona had thrown it away, were much more complimentary about the Arsenal performance and questioned whether everyone had not got a little carried away with the "best team in the world" tag that has attached itself to Barça.
El País was enthusiastic about the progress made by the Arsenal team since the last meeting between the sides. "Wenger's kids have got better and better as footballers, they have definitively lost their respect for Barcelona, who yesterday were more administrative, less ambitious or, at the least, more vulnerable and less punishing." It went on: "Arsenal have stopped being the best losers, the ideal opposition for Barcelona. Last night they fought like champions, forcing the azulgrana to an extreme physical and tactical effort.They didn't give up even when the night looked at its bleakest."
While praising the Gunners as "excellent", As's compliments had a slightly backhanded air to them. "The set-up was that there were two teams who needed the ball to play their game, but there was only one ball on the pitch and the question boiled down to how this dilemma would play out. And, in broad terms, it played out like this: Barça kept the ball, but not with the fighting spirit nor the unbreakable faith which characterises wounded teams. And a wounded Englishman is very dangerous. And if he knows how to play on the counter, even more so. And it turned out that power, in the end, overcame technique."
Barça, As added, were "too enchanted by their own football".
Marca picked out three keys to the result: Barcelona's failure to take their chances; Víctor Valdés's error for the first Arsenal goal; and the home side's effectiveness on the counterattack.
In a video editorial, Marca's editor said: "From this match which makes one love football even more I would pick out Wilshere, Nasri, Walcott and above all the Russian boy Arshavin who blew the game wide open. Wenger was extremely clever to hold him in reserve in this game. He changed the rhythm of his team, probed the Barcelona defence and finished off a masterly move from the no less masterly Nasri.
"But let no one be fooled, this Barcelona is as strong as in years gone by. The proof was in their overpowering first half. For those who doubt this theory, I would refer them to last year's quarter-finals" in which after a draw at the Emirates "a divine Leo Messi, a superlative Messi" had scored four at the Camp Nou. A February blip for Barcelona, he noted, had been the story of the last three years.
José Sámano in El Mundo felt Barça had crucially failed to adapt. "Barcelona didn't change track and stuck to their conventional script. But what's clear is that they didn't know how to close out the game when they should have and ended up conceding to a breakaway by Arsenal, who made them pay for their weaknesses in the same way that Guardiola's kids failed to do with Wenger's. Barça couldn't strike another key. Being the Barcelona of today is normally enough; in London, it wasn't."
El País noted that Barcelona had outpassed Arsenal by 773 to 423 and that seven Barcelona players made more passes than the best Gunner, Cesc Fábregas. Marca highlighted Barcelona's dependency on Carles Puyol, noting that all four of the team's defeats this season had been in the absence of their captain. Puyol is an injury doubt for the second leg and the Barcelona defence will definitely be without Gerard Piqué, who picked up a yellow card in London.
Writing in El Mundo, Paco Cabezas, praised Arsenal as worthy winners and criticised Pep Guardiola for his decision making.
"If Arsenal won, in my view, deservedly, it was thanks to their noble resistence, the drive of Wilshere (at times, a double for Scholes), to the tremendous class of their attackers and to the unbreakable faith of a coach who kept bringing on forwards while Guardiola turned to Keita and took off Villa, the best azulgrana. The Barcelona coach, at the moment when he should have been taking steps forward, opted to fall back. A fatal decision. Pep got it wrong."
El Mundo felt that Guardiola's overreliance on his first XI had left his team a little jaded but recognised that Arsenal had exploited their weaknesses. "Exemplary Arsenal showed that the best Barça team in history is human. Watch out for the second leg."
In the same paper, Julián Ruiz observed that "In the first match in the entire season in which the 'best team in the world', according to Barcelona fans, played against European opposition of a certain quality, but not very aggressive, Pep Guardiola's team was ruffled and showed their weakness, their vulnerable inconsistency.
The idea that La Liga is the best league in the world, he added "fell apart in a single trip to London".
Source: Chris Taylor, The Guardian on 17 Feb 11
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