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| Barça celebrate Denis Suárez goal vs Real Sociedad |
FC Barcelona booked their place in the semifinal of the 2016/2017 Copa del Rey tournament in style after comfortably beating Real Sociedad 5-2 at the Camp Nou in the second leg of their quarter final tie to go through 6-2 on aggregate.
Barcelona started fine, beating their opponents 1-0 away from home in the first leg and they only needed to apply the finishing touches in the second, exactly what they did as a brace from Denis Suárez along with goals from Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez and Arda Turan ensured that strikes by Willian Jose and Juanmi didn’t have much meaning as Barcelona booked their place in the cup semifinal for the 7th consecutive season.
Luis Enrique started a weird lineup, starting Javier Mascherano in midfield in place of the injured Sergio Busquets whilst keeping Ivan Rakitic on the bench.
Denis Suárez opened the scoring for Barça on the 17th minute after Samuel Umtiti did well to win the ball from Xabi Prieto who thought he’d been fouled, Neymar got the ball and passed to Messi who found Suarez who then played Denis through for the young star to fire a low drive past Rulli to get his second goal in as many games.
The visitors searched for the equaliser and had chances by Carlos Vela and Willian José, Suarez then scored for Barça but his goal was ruled out for offside, denying Messi a sublime assist.
A flurry of yellow cards ended the first half, then in the second, Sociedad came so close to getting the equaliser but Jasper Cillessen did well to prevent a strike by Willian José, Barcelona immediately capitalised on that with Neymar breaking with a burst of pace and the Brazilian was fouled in the box by Inigo Martinez, Messi scored from the penalty to give Barça the 2-0 lead after 55 minutes.
Real Sociedad got the equaliser 7 minutes later after Juanmi lobbed over Jasper Cillessen to make it 2-1, but Barça made a response immediately after Messi assisted Suarez to make it 3-1 in less than 80 seconds later.
La Real didn’t stop fighting and got their second later on after Willian José fired in a powerful header past Jasper Cillessen to make it 3-2. But Barça were not done yet as substitute Arda Turan made it 4-2 thanks to an assist from another substitute in Aleix Vidal. Two minutes later, it was 5-2 as Messi did beautifully to set up Denis Suarez who rounded Rulli to score his second of the night with 8 minutes left on the clock. It ended that way and Barça are in the semis.