JAKARTA - Valencia managed to overthrow Barcelona with a convincing score of 2-0 in the 21st week of La Liga 2019/20, Saturday, January 25 local time. A relief for the fans at the Mestalla Stadium, as the last time his team won against Barca at home, was in the 2006/07 season.
Quique Setien - who on his debut was able to bring Barca to win - actually broke the Blaugrana's record of never losing at the Mestalla. Two of Valencia's winning goals were scored by Maxi Gomez in the 48th and 77th minutes.
Prior to this historic victory, Valencia was unable to beat Barcelona in their last 12 home games against Barcelona in La Liga. Valencia was only able to hold Barca's draw seven times, and were beaten five times.
Coach Albert Celades managed to bring Valencia to break this bad trend. Prior to this, the last time Valencia won a home win over Barcelona in La Liga was 2-1 in the 2006/07 season. At that time, Valencia did it with coach Quique Sanchez Flores.
In a match that was held at the Mestalla on February 18, 2007, Valencia beat Frank Rijkard's Barcelona 2-1. Valencia took the lead first through Miguel Angel Angulo's goal from an assist from David Villa in 52 minutes.
Three minutes later, David Silva finished assisting Angulo to double Valencia's lead. Barcelona can only thin the difference in score through Ronaldinho's free kick in the 90 + 2 minute.
Since the 2-1 victory achieved 13 years ago, Valencia has changed coaches several times. However, nothing was able to lead Valencia to a home victory over Barcelona in La Liga.
Ronald Koeman, Unai Emery, Ernesto Valverde, Juan Antonio Pizzi, Nuno Espirito Santo, Voro, Cesare Prandelli, Gary Neville and Marcelino tried, but failed.
Still Hunting Lautaro
In the Barcelona defeat last night, Messi and his friends regained control of the field with 74 percent of the ball. Indeed, the figure of coach Quique Setien is predicted to return the glory days of Barcelona who are fond of passing fun in front of opponents.
But in fact, just entering his second match at Barcelona, he had to defeat Valencia.
From 74 percent of ball possession, Barcelona was only able to create five shots on target. Meanwhile, Valencia was able to create six shots on target, both of which resulted in goals.
Barcelona fans are certainly wondering, what is the Barcelona front line which is inhabited by Lionel Messi and Antoine Griezmann? Perhaps most Barcelona fans consider the absence of Luis Suarez - who was injured until the end of the season - to be a factor in Barcelona's weak finishing overnight.
The news of the "replacement" for Suarez's figure on the front lines of Barcelona is also increasingly circulating. The name most often seen in the media is Lautaro Martinez.
Reporting from TNT Sports, Barcelona wants to accelerate their hunt for Lautaro because of their situation which is currently experiencing a striker crisis. Lautaro is considered to be a solution to problems on Barcelona's front lines.
In order to realize Lautaro's transfer in January, it is reported that Barcelona are ready to spend large sums on this transfer. They were reported to have contacted Inter Milan's management. They are reported to be ready to pay Lautaro a transfer fee of 100 million euros.
Barcelona are quite optimistic that they can secure Lautaro's services, because their offer is in the range of numbers desired by Inter Milan.
So far, Lautaro has shown a very impressive performance in attacking Inter Milan. He is recorded as having scored 15 goals in a total of 25 matches for La Beneamata in all competitions.
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