Messi free kick puts Barcelona in Copa del Rey quarter-finals

Lionel
Lionel Messi celebrating after scoring against Athletic Bilbao on Wednesday. Image Source: twitter

Internet Desk: Lionel Messi’s third goal in three matches in 2017 was decisive for qualifying Barcelona in the quarterfinals of the King’s Cup with a 3-1 win over Athletic Bilbao at the Camp Nou on Wednesday . In the first leg, in San Mames, Athletic had won by 2 to 1.

Neymar and Luis Suarez were also the special way networks, the Brazilian broke a long fast for Barca , while Uruguay reached 100 goals in 120 games for the club.

Saborit struck for Athletic Bilbao, who tried to hold on to the advantage of the opening match but could not resist Barcelona’s attack. The Catalan team’s opponents in the quarterfinals will still be drawn in a draw.

After making the crucial away away goal in the first leg against Athletic himself and saving Barcelona from a defeat to Villarreal in the Spanish Championship with two misses certain failures, Messi repeated the trick on Wednesday. Barca’s third goal came from yet another hit from the left foot of the 10 shirt, which also featured in the first goal.

Barcelona’s two goals in 2017 had been scored by Messi until Suarez, at 36 in the first half, struck a beautiful volley after a neat cross from Neymar to open the scoring and score his 100th goal for the club. Already the Brazilian ended a fast of almost three months without goals in official games for Barca when suffering and convert a penalty at the beginning of the second stage.

For the third consecutive match, Barcelona players were nervous, complained a lot about the referee’s decisions and surrounded the referee on several occasions. In one of them, at least, they were right: the team had an incorrectly called goal after the assistant signaled a non-existent impediment of Neymar when the score was still 0-0.

Just like in the first leg, Athletic Bilbao managed to disrupt the exit of ball of Barça several times with marking advanced and aggressive – sometimes, even abusing the force in the faults. Already in the attack, the strategy of fast attacks and the bet on crosses were also maintained: thus the Basque team arrived at its goal, with a strong header of Saborit in the contrape of Cillessen.