With Mourinho’s paradox… Barcelona is taking revenge on Europe after 28 years

In the historical paradox championed by Jose Mourinho, “Barcelona” took revenge after 28 years of waiting and won a 4-1 victory over the Catalan neighbor CE Europa in a friendly match that united the two teams.

The last encounter between the two teams dates back to the 1998 Copa Catalunya final, when the Escapolats of Europe pulled off a huge upset to win the title on penalties at the expense of Barcelona. In that final, the one who led the Catalan team from the bench was Jose Mourinho, who at that time was working as an assistant to coach Louis van Gaal.

28 years on from that defeat, Barcelona responded as best they could as they controlled the game and settled it with a back-to-back four from Ibrahim Diarra, Hector Forte, Ebrima Tunkara and Alex Gonzalez, with Flavio scoring Europe’s only goal.

Coach Flick’s team, which included a large number of academy players, outplayed the opposition and won 4-1, but in reality the result did not matter much, as the aim was to start gaining experience, giving the players a chance to play and assessing their physical progress.

In fact, Flick fielded a team that bore little resemblance to the team that will play the official season, with a large number of players from the reserve team and even the youth teams.

La Masia academy player Hamza Abdel Karim caught the eye after breaking into the first team for the first time and produced a standout performance, establishing his strong presence among the young faces.

Barcelona controlled the game from the start and were able to open the scoring through Brian Fariñas in the 30th minute, before Hamza Abdel Karim scored the second goal in the 32nd minute… and Europe responded in the 42nd minute to reduce the deficit to end the first half with Barcelona 2-1.

In the second half, the Catalan team showed more attacking efficiency, scoring two more goals to level the scores 4-1.

The match witnessed a remarkable performance by Gil Fernandez who performed brilliantly in the midfield while Ebrima Tunkara also shone strongly.

Ter Stegen came on for the entire second half despite his loan at Ajax almost coming to an end. On the other hand, Adeyemi was left out of the list.

The win is an encouraging start for coach Hansi Flick, who has relied mostly on young players in the absence of most of the international stars.