Offshore drilling, Copa del Rey final: Barcelona 3, Athletic Bilbao 0

May 25, 2012, 6:42 PM EDT

Man of the Match: It’s nice to see Pedro Rodríguez healthy. Hampered by injuries through most of 2012, Pedro returned and scored twice for Barcelona, undoubtedly opening the eyes of Spain national team bas Vicente del Bosque. Despite making Spain’s team for South Africa, the Barça attacker is on the borderline for Euro 2012: Will he make it or not? Today’s performance won’t hurt.

Packaged for takeaway:

As I type, it occurs to me this may be the shortest offshore drilling in this segment’s history. This match taught us nothing new and unfolded in a very predictable way.
Barcelona came out quick, scored in the third minute (through Pedro) and looked like a team refreshed. Within half an hour, they were up three and seemed to let up, as if the were told by pre-match by Pep Guardiola that if they worked hard for 30 minutes, they’d undoubtedly have control of the match.
As a result, the last hour was worthless.
Not a bad way to go out for Guardiola. His team was clearly well prepared.
Athletic didn’t look as tired as they did earlier this spring, when they were juggling Europa League with fading league prospects. Their energy almost played into Barcelona’s hands, though. At the beginning, they were willing to run with Barça, allowing them to be picked apart.
The second goal was a thing of beauty. A knifing ball from Andres Iniesta put Lionel Messi behind the defense, but a little heavy, the pass was speeding out fora goal kick. Messi burst, got to it just in time, and although Gorka Iraizoz gave him little to shoot at, Messi found the upper right hand corner from six yards out.
Five minutes later, Pedro completed his double, after which the match was basically over. Athletic played like a team scared of making things worse. Barcelona played like a team that’d spent their season’s last piece of motivation.
For Barça, the win is the team’s first major trophy of the season, something the history books will look upon kindly. It would have been strange to look back at 2011-12 and think “wow, Barcelona didn’t win anything.” Copa del Rey and close calls in league and Europe? That sounds about right.
Athletic, for the second time in three years, finishes second to Barça in Copa. They also lost in the final of Europa League. Are they the Spanish Bayern Munich, 2012′s bridesmaids that should have been brides? Not quite.
Marcelo Bielsa’s team finished the season as they started it: Unimpressively. After getting used to their new boss, Athletic was one of the top 10-or-so teams in Europe. But that was the middle of the year. At the end, they alternated between spent and underwhelming. Today, they were the latter.