Barcelona finish Champions League group stage unbeaten with Tottenham draw

Tottenham were able to secure a draw at Camp Nou, but the match mattered little for Barcelona due to first place already being secured.

Ernesto Valverde selected a weakened lineup for this match in order to give some of the periphery players an opportunity in a highly competitive match at the top level as well as resting key players. Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Gerard Pique, Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets, Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez all started on the bench or weren’t included in the squad, however, Valverde did opt to bring on Busquets and Messi even though the result wasn’t important in the long run.

Ousmane Dembele was in the headlines at the weekend for his excellent display against Espanyol as well as being late for training the day afterwards. His performance in the Catalan derby allowed him to keep his place as Valverde decided to ignore his poor timekeeping and he showed his talent once again.

Early on in the match, he took advantage of a mistake from Kyle-Walker Peters to regain possession at the halfway line on a counter, he then proceeded to drive at the opposition — beating Walker-Peters on the way — before cutting inside with a fake shot to trick Harry Winks into a slide tackle and then firing past Hugo Lloris. The 21-year-old was the top performer for Barcelona along with Jasper Cillessen who made a string of important saves. He may need to work on his professionalism, but Dembele is a real talent.

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Philippe Coutinho had the best of the rest of the chances for Barcelona as he hit the post twice with curled efforts; Ivan Rakitic also forced a smart save from Lloris. However, Tottenham had the better of the chances. Heung-Min Son and Harry Kane both had clear-cut chances to score, but it ended up being Lucas Moura who equalised with a close-range effort and earned Spurs a vital point which saw them go through to the knockout stages.

Spurs were arguably the better team, but not much should be read into this display because they needed the result a lot more than Barca did while they also had a stronger team out. It ended up being a good result for both sides as Barcelona matched Bayern’s record of 29 games unbeaten at home in the competition.

Carles Alena and Juan Miranda both made their Champions League debuts in this match with varying success. Miranda struggled at times and made a couple of mistakes, but he improved as the match went on while Alena looked at home at this level, which is hugely promising. Barcelona need La Masia youngsters to start graduating through to the first team and these two certainly have the ability to achieve that.