With a thrilling 2-1 victory over Osasuna on Tuesday night, Barcelona won their final game before the World Cup break and moved five points clear of Real Madrid leading the La Liga standings.
Robert Lewandowski was sent-off from the game and Barça had a terrible first half in which they gave up an early goal. However, they showed incredible resiliency in the second half to score the game-winning goals and earn three enormous points away from home against a very strong Osasuna team that gave Barça everything they could handle.
The first 45 minutes were about as bad as it could have been for Barça. They started badly, unable to get out of the Osasuna high press and losing easy balls in dangerous positions. The home team scored early, with David García heading home a corner from Rubén García to give them the lead.
Barça took awhile to get into the game, but once they did, they started to play better and had a few opportunities to score, but their poor judgment in the final third prevented them from doing so. With over an hour left in the game, Barça was down to 10 men after Robert Lewandowski was dismissed for collecting a second yellow card after receiving a fairly light booking early on in the game.
Barça started the second half with a crucial equalizer: just three minutes in, Jordi Alba tried a cross from the left looking for Ferran and after a poor attempted clearance by Unai García it was Pedri who pounced on the rebound and made it 1-1.
Osasuna kept their attacking edge, while their numerical advantage made Barca’s forward pushes riskier. But the Catalans eventually managed to snatch the match-winner through Raphinha.
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Following a perfect through-ball from Frenkie de Jong, the Brazil international sent a cheap header past Osasuna’s keeper to make it 2-1 in the 85th minute.
Osasuna made a few more attempts to escape the defeat, but Barca managed to end their pre-World Cup campaign with a crucial win.