Athletic Bilbao vs Barcelona, La Liga: Final Score 0-0, Barça drop two points as ugly game ends goalless at San Mamés

Barcelona will finish the weekend in third place in the La Liga table and remain eight points behind the leaders thanks to a goalless draw away to Athletic Bilbao at San Mamés on Sunday night. An ugly game in the Basque Country had a lot of physical play and very little quality as both teams struggled to create good offense and mostly denied each other, and Barça will feel disappointed to not take all three points on a weekend where the two teams above them dropped points and the Catalans could have reignited the title race.

FIRST HALF

The first 45 minutes plus stoppage time were, in a word, ugly. Both teams pressed each other high and both teams decided to bypass the press with long balls forward, and this continued throughout the period. The game was played in the air for a considerable amount of time, with both sets of center-backs and defensive midfielders just heading the ball back and forth to each other without any quality from either side.

The best chance of the entire half from either team came on a broken play that almost resulted in Barça’s goal of the season: a wonderful through ball from Ilkay Gündogan to Fermín López was blocked by Athletic goalkeeper Unai Simón at the edge of the box, and João Cancelo decided to take the rebound first time and try to lob the keeper from just beyond the halfway line, but Simón made a good initial recovery and Yeray Álvarez cleaned up the mess before the ball crossed the goal-line.

Athletic on the other hand did virtually nothing to trouble the Barça defense, with Ernesto Valverde’s side seemingly content to go into the break without conceding even if it meant not creating any meaningful offense, with their best moments coming with speculative crosses and shots from distance that never forced Marc-André ter Stegen into making a real save.

But the real big news of the first half came on the Barça side: in a span of 20 minutes towards the end of the half the Blaugrana lost their two best midfielders, first Frenkie de Jong after an ugly turn of his right ankle and then Pedri, who suffered yet another non-contact muscle injury and was seen in tears on the bench after having to come off just before halftime.

At the break the game was goalless and not fun to watch, and to make things worse Barça had suffered two key injuries. Would there be any good news at all in the second half for the away side?

SECOND HALF

The second half followed pretty much the same script as the first: neither team was very successful in playing through the lines and continued to bypass the press with long balls, and while both sides had some interesting moments in attack they never came close to creating a real chance as we reached the 75-minute mark.

Xavi Hernández used his three remaining substitutions with 15 minutes to go, with João Félix headlining a triple change as the coach looked for a spark to finally create a meaningful chance and steal the win late. But that chance never came, and the final whistle ended the game all square and gave each team a point that neither side deserved.

Barça not only failed to capitalize on Real Madrid and Girona dropping points but played a very bad game that inspires zero confidence ahead of the Champions League game against Napoli, where they might have to play without both Frenkie de Jong and Pedri. A very frustrating Sunday in every way.

Athletic: Simón; Prados (De Marcos 80’), Yeray, Paredes, Imanol; García, Vesga (Galarreta 64’); Williams (Ares 76’), Gómez (Sancet 64’), Berenguer; Guruzeta (Villalibre 76’)

Goals: None

Barcelona: Ter Stegen; Kounde, Cubarsí (Iñigo 76’), Araujo, Cancelo; Christensen (Romeu 76’), De Jong (Fermín 26’); Raphinha (Félix 76’), Gündogan, Pedri (Yamal 45’); Lewandowski

Goals: None