FC Barcelona reached the next round of the Copa del Rey with pain and difficulty on Thursday evening. Xavi's team came to visit third division team Unionistas trailing 1-0, but turned this around in the second half: 1-3. Frenkie de Jong played his 200th game in the shirt of the Catalans.

Barcelona knew in advance what to do against Unionistas. The club from Salamanca is active in the third level in Spain and is thirteenth in the league. For comparison: Barcelona B occupies seventh place in the same competition.

Xavi refused to play with a complete B-team and had made starting places for Sergi Roberto, Andreas Christensen, Alejandro Baldé and De Jong, among others. However, none of them reached their usual level. The grumpiness was visible on Xavi's face.

After a good opportunity from Marc Guiu was neutralized halfway through the first half on a pass from João Félix, the home team brutally took the lead after half an hour of play. On a pass from Juan Serrano, Alvaro Gomez hit the ball hard with a volley: 1-0.

For a moment, Jorge Rastrojo seemed to give Unionistas a margin of two just before half-time, but his shot in the short corner was saved by Iñaki Peña. A minute later he was in it on the other side. From a corner from the home team, Ferran Torres enjoyed a free passage towards the enemy goal: 1-1.

Barcelona was also unable to impress in the second half, and Xavi intervened after an hour of play. The Spaniard brought in Robert Lewandowski and Ilkay Gündogan and then saw his team take control of the game.

Twenty minutes before the end it was Jules Koundé who decided out of nowhere to take a shot from about 25 meters. The result was impressive: the ball ended up beautifully in the bottom right corner: 1-2. Four minutes later the game finally came to an end, when Baldé scored a hard shot via the underside of the crossbar after an individual action.

Milestone Frenkie
For De Jong it was his 200th official match in the Barcelona shirt. He thus joined an illustrious list behind compatriots Ronald Koeman (264 games), Patrick Kluivert (257), Michael Reiziger (255) and Frank de Boer (214).

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