Barcelona was saved with a late winner by Ronald Araujo as they were close to suffering a defeat against Granada. This was the first outing for the Catalans after a 3-0 defeat against Bayern Munich in the Champions League opener. And Barcelona and Koeman hoped for a better result than 1-1 draw against Granada at Camp Nou.
Starting of the game, Granada opened the scoring in just two minutes as Domingos Duarte scored a goal with a header. From then on Granada looked a bit aggressive as they played with more possession and counter-attacks. However, despite all that, they couldn’t get a second goal. But Barcelona started to gear up to have an impact on the match.
The Catalan manager Ronald Koeman seemed to use long ball tactics removing Barcelona’s traditional passing game. Which seemed not to work well among the team members. Going into half-time Granada were still leading with one goal they scored within two minutes.
Starting off the second half, Barcelona used the same tactic of the long ball despite not getting a result in the first half. While Koeman charged the two center-backs Gerard Pique and Ronald Araujo to get into the Granada box for scoring headers. And after a staggering 54 crosses, Barcelona finally equalized the score. Scoring a header in the 90th minute Ronald Araujo somehow saved Barcelona day. While saved Koeman’s job for the time being.
While Barcelona was clearly seen missing Lionel Messi who was a true leader at the upfront. The Catalans have still two matches to play this week, first against Cadiz on Friday and second against Levante on Sunday. Following these two matches, Ronald Koeman has two chances left to save his Barcelona job.
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