Barça dominate Celta Vigo (3-1) with two assists from Ousmane Dembélé, Ronald Araujo taken to hospital

At Camp Nou, FC Barcelona has remained master of its garden. On behalf of the thirty-sixth day of La Liga 2021-2022, the Catalan collective logically defeated Celta de Vigo at home (3-1) on Tuesday. Thanks to two goals from Memphis Depay and Pierre-Eymeric Aubameyang, the Barcelonans took shelter from a Galician comeback and were able to play their football in the second half thanks to their numerical superiority acquired shortly before the hour mark. Thanks to this twenty-first success this season in the league, Xavi Hernandez’s men consolidate their place as runners-up to Real Madrid and take a provisional eight-point lead over Sevilla FC, third.

At the start of the match, the reception of Celta de Vigo could look like a trap match for Barça. Assured of being qualified for the next Champions League since this weekend, the Blaugrana collective could have eased off and been surprised by a Galician team who came to Catalonia to shake up the pre-established hierarchy. This was not the case, despite a good start from the starting lineup concocted by Eduardo Coudet.

Barça realistic as possible

Author of a gross error, Ronald Araujo saved Barça for the first time in front of Iago Aspas (14th), then the captain of Celta forced Marc-André Ter Stegen to a ground stop (36th). Meanwhile, Depay took advantage of the excellent work of Ousmane Dembélé to open the scoring (30th, 1-0). More realistic, Barça scored on its two shots on target in the first period and Aubameyang doubled the bet on a service from Depay (41st, 2-0).

In the second period, Barça continued on their own: Dembélé offered himself a second assist and Aubameyang a second goal (48th, 3-0), bringing his total to eleven goals in fifteen La Liga games this season.

But Barça’s show came to an abrupt halt for two reasons. The first is the reduction of the gap by Iago Aspas following an error in Barcelona’s defensive recovery (50th, 3-1), allowing the Galician to score his eighteenth goal of the season in La Liga. The second is the loss of consciousness of Araujo, transported on a stretcher following a head shock with Gavi and replaced by Clément Lenglet (68th).

Later in the evening, FC Barcelona announced on their Twitter account that the Uruguayan international defender had suffered a concussion. In this leaden atmosphere, Barça did not benefit more than that from the exclusion of Jeison Murillo for a foul on Depay as the last defender (58th). Riqui Puig (77th), Luuk De Jong (85th) and Ansu Fati (95th) will not have found the net after leaving the bench. But Barça has consolidated its place as dolphin. And above all awaits the confirmation of the reassuring news concerning the state of health of Ronald Araujo.