The objective was achieved, winning away at Xacobeo Lobelle, in Fontes do Sar, a key milestone to take the tie back to Barcelona and take the historic step towards the League Final. Barca Alusport didn’t start the game well. In fact, they found themselves 3 goals down in the opening minutes of the game. They were all aware that they couldn’t daydream, but they did. Fortunately, however, they reacted in time and finally won the game 7-4. Next Friday the return leg will be played in the Palau and this is the first opportunity for Carmona’s team to become finalists in the League.

What shouldn’t happen did

In a blink of an eye, Xacobeo Lobelle threw caution to the wind. Diego and Raul Campos had the Barça defence in trouble and Paco Sedano couldn’t do much to avoid the 2-0 start. Marc Carmona called a time-out to re-shape his team, but his instructions fell on stony ground and Rafael scored to make it 3-0, 5 minutes later. Fortunately, this goal helped Barça to start over again. Barça were playing more calmly now and towards the end of the first half, Ari Santos reduced the differences by scoring a penalty to make it 3-1.

The best Barça Alusport

The team dynamic at the end of the first half carried on after the restart. Applying more defensive pressure, Fernandao found the way to beat Alex, the Xacobeo goalkeeper, and scored Barça’s 2nd goal, a goal that fired up the team, and Lin scored again to make it 3-3.

Playing well and moving the ball better, Barça were well on top. At the back, Sedano also grew in confidence and thwarted the home teams efforts. However, although Xacobeo had lost some of the intensity they started with, the game wasn’t over, and that was proved to be the case when. Aicardi got the crowd going by making it 4-3.

The panorama had changed though, and Lin picked up the ball from a Jordi Torras free-kick to score the equaliser. 'Spider Lin’ was on fire, and Torras was not far behind, and raced down the wing to score with a cross shot to make it 5-4. With less than 5 minutes to go Barça had taken the game by the scruff of the neck and didn’t let go.

Xacobeo exhausted all their options and sent on Rafael as rush goalkeeper with 3 minutes to go. The risk didn’t pay off and Saad made it 6-4, and the 7th goal came from a quick attack led by Saad, who crossed for Torras to score.