Unlikely hero Sandro scores winner on Barca debut

Andy West 07:04 01/09/2014
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  • Join the club: Lionel Messi was one of the first to congratulate Sandro after his goal.

    Never mind their multi-million euro strike force of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez – Barce­lona were rescued by teenage debu­tant Sandro in an action-packed win at Villarreal last night.

    After the heroics of another debutant last week against Elche in Munir El Haddadi, 19-year-old substitute Sandro struck the only goal inside the final 10 minutes as Luis Enrique’s team rode their luck in an entertaining battle which could have easily contained five or six goals rather than just the one.

    Barca started in a confident man­ner and created a decent opening after just three minutes but Messi saw his low snapshot from the edge of the box saved by Sergio Asenjo.

    And the Villarreal keeper did even better a few minutes later when Pedro found space on the edge of the box and drilled goal­wards a fierce left-footed drive to force Asenjo into an agile diving parry.

    For all Barca’s dominance, they nearly became unstuck through their old fallibility at defending set-pieces. A corner was cleared back to Giovani Dos Santos, whose drilled cross travelled across the face of goal to Victor Ruiz, who scooped the ball over the top when he should have scored.

    Messi was delivering another bright performance and Villarreal needed the woodwork to maintain the deadlock when a drilled free-kick from the Argentine deflected off Manu Trigueros and Asenjo showed great reflexes to tip the ball onto the post.

     Barca lost their way in the final minutes of the opening half and that trend continued early in the second period as Villarreal started to look dangerous, with the visitors this time indebted to the wood­work when a whipped cross from Trigueros was deflected onto his own post by Jeremy Mathieu.

    Enrique attempted to provide a spark by introducing Neymar, and the move nearly paid immediate dividends as the Brazilian com­bined with Messi to release Ivan Rakitic, whose drilled cross-shot was cleared from close to the goal­line.

    As Barca continued to up their game, another free-kick from Messi forced Asenjo into a diving stop, and from the resulting corner the Argentine should have scored as he was left unmarked to meet Rakitic’s delivery but sent his free header well wide.

    Villarreal then had another let-off when Messi burst down the right and delivered a low cross which dropped towards Neymar inside the six-yard box but the Brazilian had no room to lift the ball over the prostrate Ruiz.

    Neymar then latched onto a cross from Dani Alves but fired waste­fully over the bar, before the wood­work again denied the hosts when Tomas Pina controlled a lost ball on the edge of the box and saw his low shot rebound off the right upright with Claudio Bravo well beaten.

    The chances continued to flow as Messi saw a right-footed strike deflected against the outside of the post before the deadlock was finally broken when Neymar found Messi whose low cross gave Sandro a sim­ple tap-in from close range.

    Villarreal still had opportuni­ties to level but Dos Santos shot against the outside of the post and Luciano Vietto blazed wide when well placed.

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