Barça won 38-31 against Porto, the Portuguese champion, with fewer problems than expected in tonight’s match at the Palau Blaugrana, with a great performance from the winger Áleix Gómez (12 goals) and that keeps him in the fight for second place in group B. KIelce’s defeat on the Paris Saint Germain court (32-27) means that Barça is now three points behind the Polish team, still leading, and one against Veszprém, second, so everything is still open.
The Catalans, with their gala team – the only thing missing is Luis Frade, who was injured for a long time and both Melvin Richardson and Ángel Fernandez were on the bench without playing – They came out strong in defense and with an incisive Aleix Gómez they already quickly went up on the scoreboard (4-0, m.6), forcing the visiting coach, the Swede Magnus Andersson, to stop the game.
Andersson, who had started the clash with seven outfield players without a goalkeeper in attack, maintained this system and Barça, with the aforementioned Aleix, Luka Cindric, who did not play in Porto and Thimotey N’Guessan erased the Portuguese from the court ( 14-6, m.17). New away time, change of goalkeeper with the entry of the Danish Sebastián Frandsen by the Macedonian Nikola Mitrevski and return to the normal system of six attacking players and this led his team to a slight reaction (14-9, m.23).
A minute earlier, Gonzalo Pérez de Vargas left the half court to cut a ball and touched a rival attacker, which represented a direct red and disqualification, entering Leo Maciel. Barça continued to set the pace and reach the break with a reassuring 20-13 and at the beginning of the second half Barça came out at a good pace, but Porto, through international right winger Fabio Magalhaes (9 goals) did not allow that the difference is widened in excess (23-15, m.35).
Andersson returned to seven in attack when Luka Cindric scored 28-18 (m.41). Everything was at stake with one card and, despite a successful Maciel (10 stops) in the Barcelona goal, Porto cut again (30-24, m.47) and Ortega stopped the game. Cindric, who today has added 8 goals, returned to the direction of the Barça attack and the visitor reaction was cut off (34-26, m.54) after the tenth goal by Aleix Gómez, the best player of the match and that would end (38- 31) as top scorer of the match.