First Division - Day 15

Barcelona 2 - Deportivo 2

Barcelona: Claudio Bravo; Dani Alves, Piqué, Mascherano, Jordi Alba (Mathieu 76’); Rakitic (Sergi Roberto 72’), Busquets, Iniesta; Messi, Luis Suárez, Sandro (Munir 68‘). 4-3-3.
Deportivo: Lux; Laure, Arribas, Sidnei, Fernando Navarro; Juanfran (Cardoso 70‘), Alex Bergantiños, Fayçal Fajr, Luisinho (Juan Domínguez 46‘); Lucas Pérez, Jonathan Rodríguez (Luis Alberto 58‘). 4-4-2.

Goals:
1-0. 39. Messi. Curled free kick over defensive wall inside near top corner of net.
2-0. 62. Rakitic. Picked up ball outside of area and fired long shot wide of Lux.
2-1. 77. Lucas Pérez. Ran on to shoot past keeper after Cardoso put him through.
2-2. 86. Alex Bergantiños. Collected Lucas Pérez pass and struck shot past Bravo.

Yellow cards: Luisinho 41’, Laure 72’.

A surprise in the Nou Camp on Saturday afternoon, Barcelona throwing away a two goal lead against fifth placed Deportivo, who came back late on to draw 2-2. Lux had to save from Messi and Luis Suárez before Messi opened the scoring with a well struck free kick shortly before the break. Jonathan Rodríguez went close a couple of times after the restart, but Luis Suárez had a strike ruled out for a non-existent offside, and soon afterwards Rakitic made it two with a shot from outside of the area. That appeared to have wrapped things up, and Luis Enrique started to make changes thinking of the long journey to play in the Club World Cup in Japan in the following days, in particular bringing on Mathieu for Jordi Alba. However with a quarter of an hour to go Lucas Pérez (who had hit the bar minutes earlier) ran on past Mathieu to pick up a pass from Cardoso and beat Claudio Bravo, and with five minutes to go Pérez slipped the ball through for Alex Bergantiños to fire home the equalizer. Barça’s league game at Sporting next weekend has been postponed to make room for the trip to Japan, but when they come back they may well be off the top of the table as both Atlético and Real Madrid are closing in.