Barça's set-piece wizardry makes up for Neymar's slump

The match in Vigo confirmed the feelings that have existed in recent match-days. Neymar is not well. The Brazilian star was erratic in the majority of Barça’s attacking moves and he lost the ball 18 times (once every five minutes). However, Luis Enrique’s team showed that they have more resources than the quality of their three forwards. Barça resolved the match with another set-piece move. The blackboard was at work once again.

Coincidence or not, since Neymar travelled to Brazil to celebrate his sister’s birthday, with the permission of the club, he has not been himself. The former Santos man has not scored in La Liga since February 15, when he opened the floodgates in the 5-0 win against Levante. Against Celta, the forward produced another below-par performance and seemed to focus more on provoking his opponents than carrying out good attacking actions.

To compensate for that, Jérémy Mathieu appeared once again at Balaídos. Barça have already scored 11 times from dead ball situations this season. The blackboard of Luis Enrique’s assistant Juan Carlos Unzué, who is responsible for rehearsing such moves, is bearing fruit.

In Gerard Piqué, Unzué has found one of the deadliest weapons in this type of move. The centre-back has already struck four times from dead balls, the same number of times as Lionel Messi (who has scored twice with direct free-kicks). The improvement from last year, in this respect, is significant. Tata Martino’s Barça managed only five goals from set-pieces and, in addition, three of them were from direct free-kicks. The Argentine coach’s side managed only two goals from corner-kicks.

Barcelona have handed prominence to these strategic moves and thanks to them they have added nine points and unclogged difficult matches. Mathieu’s two most recent headers and Sergio Busquets’ last-gasp goal at Mestalla signified three wins of vital importance in the La Liga title race.

Height. With the arrival of Mathieu, Luis Suárez and Ivan Rakitic, the Barça squad has gained centimetres and this has resulted in more headed goals (10). Barça are already fourth in the league in this aspect – only Atlético Madrid, the undisputed leaders with 23 headed goals, Real Madrid (17 headed goals) and Sevilla (12 headed goals) have managed more.

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