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Fabregas gamble made for a great occasion
“It was a gamble worth taking, it was an amazing experience, an amazing game and I will remember it all my life. This was the best team I have faced in my life.”
In a couple of short sentences, Cesc Fabregas summed up Wednesday night’s humdinger of a Champions League game pretty well perfectly, and made a persuasive case for a selection gamble that could make or break the Arsenal season.
Fabregas didn’t look fully fit in a first half that saw Barcelona’s technically impeccable team run rings around the Arsenal players. Messi, Xavi, Sergio, Pedro and the rest seemed to be playing a game of their own for the first 25 minutes or so, with Arsenal left scratching their heads at the intricate patterns being passed around them.
Perhaps it was the booking that would have ruled him out of the second leg anyway, but Fabregas seemed to redouble his efforts in the second half, in a heroic final effort that ended with him suffering a nasty injury, one that could end his season, in the very act of scoring the equalising penalty.
