Barcelona will attempt to advance into the Champions League quarter-finals with tonight’s second leg at home to Lyon.
The tie is perfectly poised after a goalless draw in the first leg, and although Barca are favourites to progress they will have to do something they could not manage in Lyon: score.
And in attempting to do that, there is a significant selection dilemma for home team coach Ernesto Valverde – which is the first of our big talking points for the game.
WILL VALVERDE TAKE A RISK WITH DEMBELE?
Ousmane Dembele
Barca’s team more or less picks itself with one major exception: the unknown fitness status of Ousmane Dembele, who suffered a hamstring strain after coming on as a substitute during Saturday night’s victory over Rayo Vallecano and is now a serious doubt for the game.
Even if Dembele is passed fit, Barca boss Valverde would have to take a fairly sizeable risk to select a player who would surely be in danger of re-injuring himself, and Valverde – as we have seen many times in the past – is not the type of coach to take risks unless he has to.
The probability, then, is that Dembele will be restricted to the bench at best. The most obvious option to replace him is Philippe Coutinho, but the Brazilian’s poor run of form has become so deeply ingrained it’s hard to see how he can escape it – especially as quickly as this must-win encounter.
Perhaps, then, Valverde will give another chance to Malcom, who has bizarrely barely featured since delivering a strong goal-scoring display in the first leg of the Copa del Rey semi-final against Real Madrid more than a month ago. Or he may opt to strengthen the midfield with the inclusion of Arturo Vidal, Sergi Roberto or Carles Alena. We will find out an hour before kick-off.
IS SUAREZ EXHAUSTED?
Luis Suarez
The first leg saw Barca dominate long periods and create several decent chances to score but eventually settle for a stalemate, with their inability to finish off their approach play explained to a significant extent by a wayward performance from Luis Suarez.
Throughout his Barca career the Uruguayan striker has always been a player of extremes, oscillating rather wildly between games when he looks incapable of controlling or making the simplest of passes and many others when he is virtually unstoppable.
With no other genuine centre forwards in the squad, the concern is that Suarez – now 32 years old – is being forced to play more games than he should and therefore risks tiring himself out, making those dips in performance appear more regularly.
Suarez himself admitted he should have taken more rest towards the tail end of last season, but so far lessons do not appear to have been learned: he again played the full 90 minutes against Rayo on Saturday, and has completed more playing time in La Liga than any other outfield player except Gerard Pique and Jordi Alba.
Clearly, a fit and firing Luis Suarez would give Barca a major boost in their quest for progression tonight, but the question is simple: which version of the striker will turn up?
HOW WILL LYON PLAY IT?
Bruno Genesio
It will be fascinating to see how Lyon coach Bruno Genesio sets up his team for the game, and how he instructs them to play.
One way for the French team to approach the tie is an attack-minded attitude, based on the premise that they are unlikely to keep a clean sheet against Barca at the Camp Nou, and will therefore almost certainly need to score at least once – and perhaps twice – to progress.
Lyon are the second-highest scoring team in Ligue 1, behind only Paris Saint-Germain, with an average of nearly two goals per game. And their success in the Champions League group stage was also very much based on scoring: results included a 2-1 win at Manchester City, a 2-2 home draw with the English champions and a 3-3 draw at Hoffenheim.
So this is a team very much built for attacking football, and Genesio’s men would be going against their natural instincts if they attempted to sit back and play on the break. But this is Barcelona, at the Camp Nou, in the knockout stages of the Champions League…will they really dare to take them on and risk leaving space for Lionel Messi and co to exploit?
