It's always a bit reductive and difficult to reduce a game to a single opportunity or a single moment. There are 90 minutes, after all, and you'd like to believe that each team will create more chances and those can come as well. But football being what it is, there are only one or two or three goals a game, which changes the flows and the momentum enormously and alters what comes next. And just as important, the goals you don't get don't force those shifts and changes.
You want to give Dest the benefit of the doubt.
It's only his second game as a striker/winger for Barcelona instead of a full-back. The opportunities and endings look different from there than when you join the attack late from the wing or the back, where Dest has played his entire career. But you can go no further, and it has to come in. At least he has to hit the target.
Especially for a team as restricted as Barcelona, who ate Real Madrid 2-1 in the Clásico. They spent the rest of the game creating very little, slowed down by a Madrid defense that really only had to fill the midfield with Barcelona's strength. They needed that goal for Madrid to come out, have more space, be behind. Miss de Dest has prepared Barca for this right to the jaw:
Tips:- check my blog least Americans are in position to blow El Clásico.
Those two moments make it a very different game than it had been. With Dest missing by a goal and Madrid getting the opening goal, they could entrench themselves even more defensively, challenge that Barcelona side to the balls to cross them and hope for another counter-attacking opportunity, which they had at the end, to make it 2-0. Barça took both shots on goal throughout the game. Unfortunately for them, Dest's effort wasn't even one of them.
And Dest was pretty good for the rest of the game.
He got an assist from Sergio Aguero in added time, a goal he couldn't care less about. When he returned to right-back in the second half, he chained Vini Jr. much better than Óscar Mingueza, who was substituted at half-time with tire marks on his chest. Dest also created two other chances. But that's probably not what everyone will remember.
The loss leaves Barcelona in ninth place and clearly makes it look exactly where they belong. What Madrid are is harder to assess, but it's their fourth straight win over their biggest rival, something they haven't done in decades. At least there is a plan with Madrid. Barcelona right now is just where things are going all over the place.
If you need a silver lining as a Yankee, this is the first time an American player has held that position in perhaps the biggest game in the world. So it's something.
