Wojciech Szczesny nightmare: six minutes of madness during Benfica-Barcelona

Negative evening for Wojciech Szczesny, but Barça makes up for it

Wojciech Szczesny will remember his first game between the posts for Barcelona in the Champions League, but he will do so, at least on one side, for the wrong reason: two glaring mistakes by the Polish goalkeeper in fact threatened to jeopardize Tuesday evening’s challenge at the 'Da Luz' in Lisbon, against hosts Benfica, in the seventh day of the Group Stage of Europe’s top competition.

On 22', on the score of 1-1 as a result of Pavlidis’ goal after 2' and Lewandowski’s momentary equalizer on a penalty kick on 13', Szczesny came out well beyond his own penalty area on a long throw by the opponents, colliding with teammate Alejandro Balde and leaving an incredulous Pavlidis the way to the goal completely cleared for the 2-1 win for the Eagles.

Six minutes later, on 28', another topicality by the former Roma and Juventus man: this time 'Tek' felled Akturkoglu in his own penalty area, forcing referee Makkelie to award the penalty: to kick the maximum free kick è again Pavlidis, whose night è instead to be framed since a hat-trick against Barcelona definitely does not happen every day. Barcelona then made up for it in the second half, with a resounding comeback ended in 96' by Raphinha, author of the final 5-4 that gave the blaugrana the three points.

Szczesny è arrived at Barcelona in the current season after announcing his retirement, convinced by the blaugrana in search of a goalkeeper after the injury that will keep Marc-Andrè ter Stegen off the field for a long time. This is not è the first mistake made by the Pole between the Barça posts: in the (nevertheless victorious) Super Cup final against Real Madrid, Szczesny è was in fact sent off early in the second half for a foul on Mbappé outside the box with which he had denied the Blancos a clear goal opportunity.