Barcelona got bad news on Wednesday as it lost star Lionel Messi, who limped off with a groin injury during its game against Atletico Madrid and will be sidelined for three weeks.
Messi went down with a knee injury almost a year ago to the day. He missed five games, but Barcelona survived without him, winning four of five games and going on to win La Liga title for the eighthtime with Messi in the team.
On Wednesday, it had to settle for a 1-1 tie with Atletico and got lucky when Real Madrid drew, 1-1, at home to Villarreal, halting its run of 16 successiveleague wins. It was Barcelona’s good fortune that Real Madrid struggled for the first part of last season, replacing Rafa Benitez with Zinedine Zidane in January, and it had enough of alead that it could hold off Real’s late charge.
Barca can’t count on Real Madrid stumbling again. After Wednesday’s results, Barca finds itself in third place, three points behind RealMadrid and one behind Sevilla.
Barca got great seasons from Luis Suarez (40 goals) and Neymar (24) in 2015-16. What it can’t afford in Messi’s absence is some slackdefending like that which cost it the Atletico goal scored by young Argentina Angel Correa — and definitely not Suarez getting sidetracked.
After the game, the Uruguayan had harshwords for Atletico defender Filipe Luis, who uploaded a picture on his Instagram page of his bloodied foot bearing stud marks from a clash with Suarez.
“Soccer is for men and whathappened on the field stays on the field,” Suarez said. “If every time someone got hit it was uploaded to Instagram, this would turn into a circus. I’m not going to be sending photos out after everygame.”
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