Bryan Zaragoza finds his feet again and ties Barcelona’s second series in knots | La Liga

“TThese things are in me,” said Bryan Zaragoza. “You don’t learn this, you have it. And I have it.” La Liga’s second smallest player, at 6ft 1in, had his biggest smile, and there was more than a hint of mischief in it. He’d just gone and done it again. The cheeky boy with a twinkle in his eye and also a twinkle in his toes, who grew up idolizing Lionel Messi, watching Ronaldinho videos, following Neymar and playing football in the streets of 4 de Diciembre, Málaga, had left Barcelona on the ground once more. This was naughty.

By early October 2023, Bryan had taken apart unbeaten Barcelona by scoring twice for Granada on the way to a 2-2 draw, his life turned upside down. A year later he dismantled unbeaten Barcelona again, scoring one and setting up another for Osasuna on the way to a 4-2 victory, life returned to its feet. Two meetings, one assist, three goals, Can I play against you every week? Only goal doesn’t do justice to the night Los Carmenes had then and El Sadar had now. “Magical,” Bryan called it, Osasuna’s first win over Barcelona in 12 years and one of their most memorable ever, a feat achieved four decades earlier when Diego Maradona scored twice. It absolutely doesn’t do justice to what he did.

And what Bryan had done was, well, Bryan. Not an academy product, he was always a little different. He played futbolsala at Cruz de Humilladero, run by Brahim Díaz’s father, Sufiel, but mostly he played in the streets of a neighborhood that was among the most modest in Málaga, doing things that no one else could do and that neither was expected of him. A place that Pepe Zamora, his coach at Tiro de Pichon, admitted could be ‘conflictive’ and where kids could be ‘difficult to coach’, Bryan is a better player for that. “There are no more street football players; what there are are robots,” Zamora told Marca, “not Bryan.” Fran Alcoy, another youth coach, described him as a Garrincha. And his manager at Poli Ejido, Tito García, said he was something from another time and place, like a footballer from the favela.

Bryan had been to Poli Ejido in 2020, in the fourth tier, on loan from Granada B. Rejected many times, including by Málaga, he had come to Granada at the age of 18, but they were not sure he would make it . other world. When he faced Barcelona, ​​he was just starting his first season firsta place where some wondered if he belonged. He had been crucial in raising them secondbut this was something else, or at least that’s how it goes. Instead, he scored three and assisted one in eight weeks, and then the Catalans arrived. Bryan scored after 17 seconds and again after half an hour. Jules Koundé had not dribbled past all season; Bryan did it twice in the same move and tied him in a cartoon knot.

This time, twelve months later, it was Iñaki Pena who was fooled, wondering where he had gone and how the ball had ended up back in his net. Bryan had already delivered a beautiful cross for Ante Budimir to give Osasuna the lead on Saturday, when he suddenly zoomed away again. As he approached the Barcelona goalkeeper, he rolled the ball under his studs, rolled past the man he had been looking the other way and tucked it into an open net, the whole thing so easily he might as well have winked along the way . “That’s inside and it just comes out,” he said, securing the 4-2 victory and finally beating Barcelona.

Barcelona had won seven of seven before arriving in Pamplona; one more and they would equal their best ever start to the season, eight from eight under Tata Martino. However, Hansi Flick decided to rotate his team. With eight injuries and the Champions League scheduled for Tuesday – their sixth match in seventeen days – he rested five starters: Alex Balde, Marc Casadó, Raphinha, Lamine Yamal and Iñigo Martinez all started on the bench. Their centre-backs were 17 and 19, a full-back 22. Their average age, even with Robert Lewandowski on the pitch, was just over 23. And he was withdrawn with the score 2-1, even though there was still a comeback. chase. “Iñi is the only defender with experience, but he has a lot of minutes,” Flick said before the match. Afterwards he said: “I think it was necessary; I had no other choice.”

That wasn’t entirely true, no matter how rational his reasoning was. It was a bit of a surprise that Young Boys were given priority over Osasuna, although they cannot afford to make any mistakes after losing their opening Champions League match on Tuesday. It was also the case that Getafe was given priority at home over Osasuna. After a tough midweek win, the kind of game you just want to get through, he revealed that the staff had “told me this is normal against Getafe”; there might have been a similar warning here. Something special is going on El Sadaralready the classic difficult place to go and recently redeveloped, one of only two sites with rail seating. Osasuna had not won away, but were undefeated with three wins from four at home. It was also there that Barcelona’s final run came to an end.

And they had Bryan. He had needed this, needed them, awakened something inside him, brought it out. The last time he played against Barcelona he received an international call-up, just nine games into his top-flight career and a €15 million move to Bayern Munich. And that was about it. There was something almost inevitable about it not working out, something incongruous about Bryan in Bavaria. Thomas Tuchel looked unconvinced and didn’t exactly help. Few did, few could: this was not a locker room for Spanish speakers. “When I got there it was hard to believe where I was,” he admitted. “I saw Harry Kane, Thomas Müller, Jamal Musiala: top players I had been watching.” He only played 171 minutes. And so, after initially saying he was reluctant to go out on loan, he accepted a return this summer. Osasuna paid a loan fee of €200,000 for the season.

In Spain he already played more than three times as many minutes. There had been electric moments, flashes of who he is, but something was missing. This weekend Barcelona scored its first goal again. “I wasn’t that bad before and now I’m not that good,” he insisted. ‘The truth is I didn’t have a good time with it. I knew there were high expectations and I didn’t start out the way I wanted to. I haven’t played bad games, but I haven’t played good ones either, and the fans have always supported me. Today I wanted to pay them back.” When he scored the second, he waved his fingers as if he had locked them in a drawer. Wowbefore putting them to his ears. Just listen to the sound, El Sadar go wild. Then he stood there and shrugged, just like Brahim. What’s that like? That, my friend, is fucking brilliant.

It was all of them, not just him. El Sadarspecial. This was Osasuna’s fourth win in five this season; no one in Europe has collected more points at home. Barcelona’s rotations have not taken away from this: “We are a modest club and it is not every day that you beat Barcelona,” Bryan insisted. “This was the kind of night that you will always remember,” said coach Vicente Moreno, a night where “you had to be perfect and everything went well.” Leading 2-0 after Bryan’s goal as he burst into Barcelona, ​​Osasuna had gifted them a way back early in the second half, but then Abel Bretones – who learned everything he knows at Real Oviedo – added a third and scored Budimir’s fourth from the penalty spot. A brilliant late goal from Lamine made the score 4-2. “The effort from the players was huge,” Moreno said.

“Osasuna devours children,” read the AS headline. ‘Legendary’, Diario de Navarra called it. Striker Rubén García didn’t know what to call it, so he asked. “Complete the sentence,” he wrote on social media the next morning. “Yesterday was…” Jesus Areso did the same: “Heads, please,” he requested. “Let’s make some noise!” Budimir wrote. Pablo Ibáñez stood at the locker room door grinning, a big night ahead. “We will celebrate this; It’s been a while since we had a day off and tomorrow we have a day off so we’ll do what we can.” As for Moreno, he had gone home. “I go back, sit on the bench, watch the highlights of the other games, have a few hours of rest and then I think about Getafe,” he said. “And maybe now I’ll be a little nicer to my family to live with.”

As for Bryan Zaragoza, who had another great night against Barcelona in the press room, there was a twinkle in his eye. “Have a nice weekend,” he said, getting up to go. “I will.”