Newcastle United robbed of famous Champions League at the death as cavalier attitude comes back to bite Toon
Stop me if you've heard this one ... Newcastle United let a lead slip in an important game to come away with a draw.
Harvey Barnes almost got the win that Newcastle United thoroughly deserved against Barcelona tonight in the first leg of the Round of 16 Champions League tie.
The Magpies were on the front foot from the off tonight and while Barcelona had their moments, there only ever looked like there'd be one winner if Newcastle could just find the finishing touch.
Anthony Elanga and Will Osula's pace caused the Barcelona defence massive problems, and if either had a better end product, we'd have been out of sight going into the second leg at the Camp Nou next week.
Newcastle should have had plenty of goals before Harvey Barnes broke the deadlock
Some poor crosses, poor finishing or poor decisions in the final third were ultimately Newcastle's undoing over the course of 90 minutes.
That was until Jacob Murphy came off the bench and floated in an inch-perfect cross for Harvey Barnes to bundle over the line on 86 minutes. It looked like Newcastle were taking a 1-0 lead with them to Spain next week.
Unfortunately, there were four minutes of stoppage time and on 3 minutes and 59 seconds of that time, Malick Thiaw left a leg out for Dani Olmo to trip over inside the box, and the ref wasted no time pointing to the spot. It was about the first decision the ref had got right all night as he bought everything Barcelona was selling for much of the game. But we can have no complaints with the penalty decision.
Newcastle go into the second leg on an even footing with Barcelona
Lamine Yamal stepped up and slotted the spot kick home, which proved to be the final kick of the game. It was about as big a sucker punch as we've felt all season, but Newcastle needlessly pushing for a second goal led to the error, so we only have ourselves to blame, really.
Yamal really should be suspended for next week's second leg game, but the referee seemed to know exactly which Barcelona players were a booking away from suspension and he made sure that he didn't show them a card, even though they were warranted. He wasted no time showing Sandro Tonali a yellow for a very similar foul that Lamal got away with.
We can make excuses and rue the result, but at the end of the day, we go into next week's second leg on equal terms. We're still in this.
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