Barcelona 3-1 Benfica: Match review | OneFootball

FC Barcelona triumph over SL Benfica in scintillating fashion at the Montjuic Stadium. At home, La Blaugrana end up securing a massive victory in this season’s UEFA Champions League. Now, Barcelona have guaranteed themselves a place among the competition’s final eight teams.

Ahead of this game, there was a lot of anticipation about this fixture and whether or not Barcelona would be able to capitalize over their 1-0 advantage from the first leg. Ultimately, it turns out that they could do more than get a win.

If the first half of this second leg was anything to go by, it was clear by then that Barcelona would be winning this game. Constantly in control and never in doing, La Blaugrana simply passes and weaved their way through the Benfica structure and did whatever they wanted.

At first, it was Raphinha who opened the scoring following a beautifully carved out assist by Lamine Yamal. The young winger would soon get to have his own big moment, but for now he settled with dishing out one of the best assists by any player this season.

Soon after, Benfica managed to equal the score with a goal from Argentinian defender Nicolas Otamendi. However, that would be the only goal that Benfica would be able to score on the night, as Barcelona were simply too good for the Portuguese side.

Yamal would soon after score a goal out of nothing as he would whip a ball from the edge of the box into the back of the net. From there onwards, it was all Barcelona and Hansi Flick’s team never managed to drop control of the game mainly thanks to the amazing work done by Pedri and Frenkie de Jong.

The last goal of the game also came in the first half, as Alejandro Balde went surging forward and laid a pass off to Raphinha so that the Brazilian forward could get his second goal. With that ball in the back of the net, the game was done and dusted right there.

In terms of possession, Barcelona managed to bring those numbers up even more in the second half. Now in cruise control, Hansi Flick’s side did not even seem too interested in scoring themselves despite creating a few decent chances. Instead, by playing the ball around, they just tried to see things through.

With 65% of possession by the end of the game, it was clear to see which team was more in control. Moreover, Barcelona had a total of 20 attempts at the Benfica goal and 6 of them were on target. Benfica, on the other hand, made a total of 8 shots and only two were on target.