Hansi Flick had been warned, and not just by his staff. “They told me this was normal in Getafe games,” the Barcelona coach said when Wednesday night’s match was over, which was probably the best thing about it. Midweek fixtures that mostly just felt like something to get through, match day seven already and with another to go before September ends, had finally finished, at least for Barça, and they were still standing. Still standing at the top of the table and still standing: the 100% record was intact, a four-point lead with it, and so were the players. The ones left, anyway. And that was about as good as it was going to get, something else to celebrate.
Some 102km north, it had just finished 0-0 between Girona and Rayo Vallecano, but at least there was a dog on the pitch pre-game. The night before, 345km south in Valencia, there were no goals either, Osasuna’s manager, Vicente Moreno, admitting “both teams accepted a point”. Now the team that had scored five, four and seven in their previous three league games got just one. Ultimately though, Robert Lewandowski’s seventh this season, gifted early by the Getafe goalkeeper David Soria’s failed catch, was enough. Because Borja Mayoral, given a glorious chance to get Getafe’s first La Liga goal from open play and snatch a draw on 93min 54sec, almost missed the ball entirely, Barça’s midfielder Eric García putting it best postgame when he said: “Pfff.”
