Athletic Club - FC Barcelona
- Gavi 17'
- Lamine Yamal 52'
LocationKing Abdullah Sport City Stadium , Yeda
Athletic fall in the Supercopa semi-finals in Saudi Arabia
Although Athletic had decent chances, including two disallowed goals, two Barça strikes early in each half left the Lions with too much to do
Athletic Club were beaten 0-2 by FC Barcelona in their Supercopa semi-final in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
A sluggish start made life difficult for the Lions, who had a handful of good chances to get back into the game, including two disallowed by Oscar de Marcos and Iñaki Williams.
The travelling party will head back to Bilbao from Saudi Arabia on Thursday. With a Copa match against CA Osasuna at San Mames next week, it's now time to rest and prepare for what's to come.
Our trip to the Middle East, which featured a number of non-sporting matters outside of Athletic's control, thus comes to an end.
Barça took the early initiative, with Raphinha forcing a great save from Unai Simon. Then, in the 16th minute, Flick's side took the lead with an attack down the left wing that Gavi finished from close range.
Besides a mistake that led to Simon thwarting Raphinha again, Athletic rallied late in the first half and had chances to equalise before the break.
Constantly marauding down his left wing, Yuri was a menacing threat that caused Barça a lot of issues. One of his dangerous low crosses almost led to Iñaki making it 1-1 in the 45th minute.
Iñaki had missed another chance when sending a half-volley over the bar after a decent pass from Alex Berenguer.
Athletic were in the game. However, things got much harder when Lamine Yamal capitalised on a series of errors to put Barça 0-2 up.
It was time to struggle though choppy waters, but the Lions, as always, never gave up. Mikel Vesga forced Wojciech Szczesny into a save and Nico Williams drew another from the Polish stopper. Iñaki missed the target after another great cross from Yuri and Nico Serrano also tried his luck.
In the dying minutes, Oscar De Marcos had a goal disallowed for offside and Iñaki Williams had one ruled out in the 85th minute for offside too after a VAR check showed that Alvaró Djaló had touched the ball while pressing Frankie De Jong in the build-up.
We'll pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off, there are still some massive challenges ahead.
