The Barça of now and yesterday
Barça host Betis on Sunday
Barça were present during my entire college career. When I look back at those days, I’ll always remember those hours I devoted to los blaugranas. I had morning classes, but once 2 p.m came around, I was looking for a good place to get WiFi. I had to get ready for Champions League action. I made sure that my schedule didn’t have a single class during those golden Champions League hours. Villanova basketball wasn’t what it’s now. Unfortunately, those four years in the Main Line left few good basketball memories. My sophomore year was the most troubling of them all because I had chemistry lab around the time Barça stepped onto the pitch. When the weekend came along, I didn’t miss a single Barça game.
Those years I preserve dearly because I was witnessing one of the greatest teams to ever play the game. It was wondrous, and it wasn’t because they had Lionel Messi. Or because they had Pep Guardiola as their manager. It was because they elaborated a stye of play that made you forget to blink. I stared into my laptop and ignored everyone and everything around me. It’s true to suggest that they didn’t invent anything; Guardiola has made sure to clarify that he’s a manager that likes to pick out bright ideas from other successful managers.
One of the aspects of that great Barça is pretty simple. Their best actors were brought up at La Masia. Andrés Iniesta, Pedro Rodríguez, Messi, Xavi Hernández, Sergio Busquets, Carles Puyol, Gerard Piqué and Víctor Valdés. In this magical story, I feel it’s equally as important to include Dani Alves, David Villa, Thierry Henry, Samuel Eto’o, Yaya Toure, Seydou Keita, and many others I’m forgetting. But the essence came from home, and that’s something that will be hard to forget. It’s the part of the story that makes it ten times better.
So as I observe the Barça of today, I feel a bit concerned. What really is the direction they want to take? Why did the club, all of a sudden, take the desperate road? Was it smart to spend all that money after Neymar’s departure? Was it really that bad at La Masia to spend mind-boggling money on Coutinho and Ousmane Dembélé’s transfers?
These past days I’ve read a lot of articles in regards to what’s going on with Barça. Two writers that I’ve looked up to since my college days are Ramon Besa and Graham Hunter.
In Besa’s article titled, “El último señalado es Busquets,” he writes this interesting conclusion, which isn’t the first time he’s made sure to include in his closing paragraph:
Obsesionado con los tridentes, la entidad vuelve a activar el plan Neymar después del mal partido de Dembélé y Griezmann. Más que de futbolistas, es un problema de juego, de asociaciones y de conexión, de elección de medios, a la espera de Messi. El equipo se ha acostumbrado a organizarse alrededor del 10, el hilo conductor de las ocho ligas ganadas por el Barça sobre las últimas 11.
Obsessed by the attacking tridents, the club has reactivated the Neymar plan after Dembélé and Griezmann’s poor performances. More than being a problem about footballers, it’s a style problem, of association and connection, of midfielder selection, all waiting for Messi’s appearance. The team has gotten used to organizing around the number 10, the common denominator in Barça’s last eight leagues won of 11 disputed.
Hunter closed out his article, “Barcelona are losing the ideology that makes them unique,” with these lines:
But I'd suggest that Barcelona aren't just losing concentration on the pitch. They're insidiously losing their respect for possession of the ball and the ideology behind it.
These are both hard conclusions, and ones that describe what has gone wrong for the club in recent years, especially in Champions League play. Barça no longer have that ideology, that belief in an idea that strongly supported them during those great Guardiola years. Messi was the end part of a whole process that involved every single player on the pitch, including the goalkeeper.
I don’t think the return of Neymar is the solution for Barça. I think a great starter is figuring out how Frenkie de Jong will make his presence felt, and how his arrival will help out Messi. Barça need to understand that we’re arriving to a point in time where Messi won’t be able to offer all the solutions and win games on a weekly basis.