How Barcelona came back to beat Bayer Leverkusen without Lionel Messi

For most of their Champions League match on Tuesday, Barcelona were losing to Bayer Leverkusen, trailing 1-0 at home. They struggled badly to break their German opposition down without the talismanic presence of Lionel Messi, who is out for the next two months with a knee injury. For a while, it looked as though Barca would fall victim to a second straight disappointing Champions League result.

Instead, Barcelona overcame their woes and came back to score twice in the last ten minutes to beat Leverkusen 2-1. Before we look at how they did it, it’s important to understand what was going wrong in the first place.

And about that famous Barcelona possession -- they really struggled to turn it into effective attacks for much of the match. Bayer’s pressure forced Barcelona into a lot more sideways and backwards passing than we’re used to seeing. That’s always been an element of their possession, but Leverkusen forced so much more of it than usual that it dramatically slowed Barcelona’s progression up the field. By the time Barcelona would get into the final third, Bayer would have a bank of four defenders in the box and four midfielders parked right in front of it, all of whom would quickly react and collapse onto any penetration into the penalty area.

That made attacking very difficult for Barcelona, who created plenty of chances, but most were from areas that they were less likely to score from. When they did get a chance in a better area, it was under so much pressure that it was never likely to result in a goal. How on were Barcelona supposed to score under those circumstances?

As mentioned before, a major problem for Barcelona in this match was being forced into more lateral passing instead of getting up the pitch, which dramatically slowed their buildup play and allowed Leverkusen to keep their midfield and defense in shape and react to anything Barcelona threw at them. A big part of that lateral passing was Rakitic, who was forced to stay deep by Leverkusen’s pressure instead of driving play as he normally does. Just look at his passing chart from the second half before he was subbed out:

There’s very little moving forward, and that one very positive forward pass is from early in the game. Almost everything afterwards was sideways or backwards, which is unusual for Rakitic and didn’t help Barcelona much. Though looking at the passing chart for Barcelona as a whole in the ten minutes before Roberto replaced Rakitic, he was far from the only one struggling with getting the ball forward.

That’s really not pretty to look at. What passes are going forward are almost always ending in lost possession, and so much of Barcelona’s possession is in their half of the pitch.

But then, Sergi Roberto stepped onto the pitch, and everything changed.

The young Spaniard immediately started pushing higher up the pitch, helping bring urgency and, finally, a vertical presence to Barcelona’s buildup play. Look at what happened between Roberto’s substitution and Barcelona’s first goal:

OK, still lots of flat stuff in midfield, but there’s a lot more action moving forward. And you see that cluster of passes high up the pitch on Barcelona’s left? That’s Roberto. Obviously it’s hard to reflect off-ball movement in a passing chart, but he was pushing up much more aggressively and putting pressure on Leverkusen’s defense. One of his passes was key to creating the chance that Luis Suarez took in the 80th minute, and Roberto followed that pass up with a run into the box of his own in case there was a rebound -- and there was. Roberto hammered home to level up the match for Barcelona.

Roberto’s play and his goal seemed to wake Barcelona up in a big way, as evidenced by the chart of their passes for the next few minutes after that goal:

Just look at how much more vertical that is. Even though a lot of their passes up the field went to Leverkusen, that increased aggression helped knock the Germans off-balance and indirectly helped create that second goal. There’s a sequence of passes you can see in the bottom-right of that image: from midfield up the pitch a bit, then kicked out to the fullback on the right touchline, then up to the edge of the box.

That ball up the pitch went to Munir El Haddadi, Barcelona’s other substitute in this match, who collected the ball and darted into the box, sucking three Leverkusen players onto him with no one shifting over to cover for them -- a direct result of Bayer getting unsettled by Barcelona’s more aggressive play, and to a lesser extent from Roberto making a supporting run to the far post from the other side of the box. Luis Suarez, ever the opportunist, moved into that abandoned space and took one last pass from Munir to fire home the winning goal.

Compared to the version of Sergi Roberto who struggled in Barca’s loss to Celta Vigo, this was a much different player. In Rakitic’s linking role, he played afraid, always picking the safest pass. But as an Iniesta replacement, with his team trailing, Roberto shined.

That’s been a good bailout when teams try to pressure Barcelona for a long time, because Messi has a knack for finding a way through any pressure scheme. On Tuesday, Barcelona had to figure out how to do that without their best player -- and while it took them a long time to figure out how to do it, they got the job done. Now Barca has a blueprint for a fallback when their main plan just doesn’t work, and it’s up to the rest of Europe how to keep them at bay now that they have a new Plan B.