News: Barça are a team again...

It's unlikely the Malaga win will go down in history, but that doesn't mean it wasn't important. Barça finally beat a rival that last season were one of the main reasons they didn't win the league. Malaga did not, at any moment, look like the team at the bottom of the table and were, as ever, a difficult opponent. Evidence of that is that Barça's first goal came from a referring error -- the ball had gone out of play in the build up -- and the second, after good play by Messi and Iniesta, was aided by a deflection. 

That Barça couldn't score a clean goal or that Messi couldn't score are indicators of the difficulty of another game that began slowly, the same as against Las Palmas and Olympiakos. Maybe because football is the victim of an atmosphere of concern due to the problems in society at the moment, which are present in the stands, with chants like 'Freedom'. At the same time, that Valverde's team are proving capable of overcoming these tests is another sign of the solidness of this project. Beacause as grey as the game was, Barça showed they are solid again. 

The team has achieved an impressive stability. And it seems nothing can destabilise them: they've lost their directness, but at the same time the ball is theirs again. The old debates about possession have disappeared. There is no debate. No one doubts that Valverde wants complete control of the game and applies Cruyff's principles. Barça are back to their origins. The coach has implemented that in record time, reconstructing the team with one basic pillar: Barça are a team again. 

What before was a trident and little else is now a well-made up team, which is not affected by changing pieces. It doesn't matter, like on Saturday, that the defence is new, with Mascherano and Digne in the team. It doesn't matter if Busquets is taken off for Paulinho... The triumph is a collective one. The triumph is Valverde's.