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A Scout’s Eye: Breaking Down Barcelona’s First Goal Against Mallorca
I don’t think I’m the only one in the world that appreciates the way Barcelona pass and move both on and off the ball these days. The Catalan giants possess a certain degree of patience that is rare in the game. Just as they are patient, however, they are also able to recognize when their opponents are at their weakest – perhaps a lapse in concentration here or the failure to get back into shape there.
I enjoyed watching the Barcelona-Mallorca game this past weekend for several reasons, but the fact that my former teammate and friend Cesc Fabregas registered his first professional hat-trick just days before the birth of his daughter made the match that much more enjoyable. Cesc was fantastic throughout – it only took him 46 minutes to score three times, and he even had enough time to create another during that spell.
The absence of Lionel Messi was heavily discussed before the match, but as great teams do, Barcelona adapted comfortably, and Cesc’s performance had people asking, “who needs Messi?” Okay, lets not go that far, but the point is, Barcelona had a job to do without their star man and they executed that job with style.
So enough about how good Cesc and Barca were this weekend and on to Cesc’s first goal of the match – my favorite of his three. I hadn’t actually realized that Barcelona had completed 27 passes in the buildup to Cesc’s strike until I heard Ian Joy point it out on television several hours later. 27 passes. I remember when I was growing up and completing ten passes in a 5 v 2 was something to write home about. Barcelona were in possession of the ball for nearly a minute and fifteen seconds before scoring, which is the equivalent of an eternity if you are on the opposite side of the ball trying to win it back.

Space Explorer
One of the many things that Cesc is good at is his ability to find space in tight areas on the pitch. You can watch the actual sequence of 27 passes from the start, but for the sake of this article, I’ll start just before Andres Iniesta gets the ball and turns on the left side of the pitch. Cesc has made his way across the pitch from the right hand side where the ball has just come from. Mallorca’s defensive plan is somewhat clear in the picture below: get numbers behind the ball. They’re making sure the wide channels are congested with their very withdrawn wingers, but with such numbers committed deep and wide, they’ve left quite a bit of space for the home side to take advantage of in the middle.
Against a team like Barcleona, opposition teams essentially must pick their poison – Mallorca clearly don’t want to have to deal with the speed and width that Barcelona bring to the table, but by shutting down the wide threat, they’ve forced the likes of Cesc, Iniesta, and Alex Song to play down the middle. The Barcelona midfield are happy to do so, and when Iniesta looks up after receiving the ball, he finds Cesc sat in the middle of Mallorca’s midfield triangle.


Iniesta rolls his pass into Cesc, taking care to play the ball in front of him so that Cesc can use the ball’s momentum to take him forward. He does just that, but not without doing his homework first. Before Cesc receives the ball with his right foot, he checks his shoulder twice in two seconds. Once before he occupies the space where he eventually receives the ball, and once right before the ball arrives. Eddie Niedzwiecki used to always yell, “do your homework before you get the ball!” in training at Arsenal. Cesc has always been good at doing his homework.

Once Cesc receives the ball on the half (his body positioning here allows him to go in various directions – back to Iniesta, to the right towards the Mallorca goal, or back towards his own goal if pressure is too heavy) and is on his way towards the goal, things start to get very interesting for Mallorca’s defense. Though the flanks are well covered, they’ve now got a two time European Champion and World Cup Winner running right at them with the ball at his feet. Still, however, Barcelona have a bit of work to do. It is still essentially a 2 v 5 with regard to the most dangerous part of the pitch. Alexis Sanchez is the highest most central man for Barcelona, and as Cesc begins to dribble towards the goal, Sanchez’s movement is fantastic.
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