It was the third game in a row that the two players had started in the heart of the backline, with Ronald Araujo left on the bench for the match.<\/p>\n
Former Real Madrid midfielder Toni Kroos has shared his thoughts on the game and feels Hansi Flick erred by not starting the Uruguayan up against Kylian Mbappe and Vinicius Jr.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the centre of defence I don\u2019t understand why Eric Garcia played, who, football-wise, is a little better than Ara\u00fajo. But Ara\u00fajo has the physical power to chase the opponent more, especially when you defend so high. He would have been the ideal player for that style of play and that opponent. The truth is that I can\u2019t understand it,\u201d he said on the \u2018Einfach mal Luppen\u2019 podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201dWhen you have Mbapp\u00e9 and Vin\u00edcius in front of you, you need someone who can match that pace. Ara\u00fajo can do that. I was very surprised by his absence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI already commented at the time: \u00cd\u00f1igo Mart\u00ednez was very important. Last year he was the Bar\u00e7a centre-back with the best ball output. He wasn\u2019t the fastest, but he was an excellent defender and had a great building game. Against Madrid, his absence was noticeable when the team suffered high pressure. They did not replace him and that is taking its toll on them.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Madrid took all three points, Kroos did highlight how they were facing a Barcelona team without a host of key stars due to injury.<\/p>\n
\u201dIt\u2019s fair to say that Bar\u00e7a arrived very weakened: from the goalkeeper to the coach because Flick couldn\u2019t be on the bench,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were also missing key players such as Raphinha, Dani Olmo or Lewandowski and that is very noticeable in a match of these characteristics. I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll go further.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was the third game in a row that the two players had started in the heart of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[1480,1481,403,99],"class_list":["post-258797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-barcelona-la-liga","tag-barcelona-team-news","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}