On a night of infinite lights, Wojciech Szczesny was the great shadow of FC Barcelona. The Polish player was facing a golden opportunity to step up and definitively take the starting position from Iñaki Peña in the Blaugrana goal, as the context was perfect for him to shine. However, he was far from taking advantage of it.
The goalkeeper already raised doubts on the first goal of Real Madridas Kylian Mbappé‘s shot was not very angled and it felt like, if he had waited a second longer, he could have stopped it. However, this was not the worst mistake of the ’25’ Blaugrana.
Szczesny saw red in his third match as a culé
It was the 55th minute when, with the match completely in favor of a Barça that was winning 1-5, Szczesny brought down the ‘9’ Frenchman at the edge of the area, and although Jesús Gil Manzano did not initially signal the foul, the VAR intervention and the subsequent correction by the referee led to the goalkeeper’s expulsion. This direct free kick for Madrid ended in a goal by Rodrygoby the way, so the ‘blunder’ was total for the Polish player.
For his part, and despite conceding a goal in his first action of the match, Iñaki Peña made a brutal save from a shot by Mbappé in the final minutes of the match and proved that he is the true owner of the Catalan goal in the absence of Marc-André Ter Stegen. The debate in the Catalan goal is settled.
Morocco
