Barça has not already said goodbye to the League because mathematics forces it to cling to the few possibilities that remain, but neither the sad faces of the players nor the atmosphere that exists in the Barça dressing room around the figure of Quique Setién They invite you to think that someone really believes in the title. The culé team should win the five remaining games and expect two punctures from Real Madrid in the six days that they have left to play. And at this point, the first premise may be more unfeasible than the second.
It would not be so rare, for example, that Zinedine Zidane’s team tied against Getafe, always a fighter and that they lost in San Mamés against Athletic. After all, he has not shown great superiority over his rivals in this eleven-day post-pandemic ‘mini-League’ of the coronavirus and has won some of his matches with controversy. But that Barça returns on Sunday with a victory from the Villarreal field, the fittest squad, it does seem science fiction.
The Cantabrian technician accumulates the work in the last days, although it is not very clear whether as an arsonist or as a fire extinguisher. First he had to ask respect for his players and reached a pact of good intentions in a tense meeting that took place on Sunday as a result of the messiness of Messi, Rakitic or Luis Suárez to Eder Sarabia, his second, in Balaídos.
And after 2-2 on Tuesday against Atlético, he promised to give an explanation to Antoine Griezmann for remembering him only in injury time against his former team in what has been interpreted as a humiliation towards the French world champion , although qualifying that “I will not ask for forgiveness”.
Really, that Griezmann is a substitute at this club should not surprise anyone. Nor with a lower average level than normal in the performance of the squad, the former Atlético has managed to earn that indisputable condition that he did, but only verbally, Quique Setién three weeks ago. ANDn a 4-3-3, displaced to the left, is harmless and cannot resist the comparison with the courage of an Ansu Fati 17 years old. In a 4-4-2, like Tuesday, he is sacrificed to locate a midfielder with more defensive work and with arrival.
It happens what was feared when he was signed to checkbook. If your whole life has played as a second tip next to a big battering ram to do your dirty work, How was he going to fit in at Barça? It is not a dribbler or combinatorial, another essential characteristic of the Barça team. He has never competed, nor in the French team, in teams that have possession almost the entire game, with rivals locked in his area, forcing static attacks in which it is necessary to be very precise. His great level has been achieved by playing more against, with spaces, in the race. And Barça does not play like that.
From there to give him the minutes of the trash, there is an abyss, especially since Luis Suárez was completing, half lame, a lamentable gameand. And that is the problem of Quique Setién, who already gave up a long time before the heavyweights of the squad. That is what Alain, Griezmann’s father, reproached him on social networks, responding to a headline in which the technician said that he was not going to apologize to Griezmann: «To have this type of conversation you need to have the keys to the truck and this is not the case, it is only a passenger». And her brother, Theo, was also going to let go: »It makes me want to cry, two minutes …«. The two ended up deleting their posts, possibly at Griezmann’s request.
Although Josep Maria Bartomeu, president of the club, showed his support for Setién on Monday during a visit to his own private home, it is not a secret that is on the tightrope.. The top president would not have liked me to devalue a player with the Griezmann cartel, as has already happened to the club for other reasons with Coutinho and Dembélé. Three signings over the 100 million who have not succeeded. They are still the effects of Neymar’s escape in the summer of 2017. He left 222 million in the box that were spent quickly, and badly, and a hole in the team that no one has filled yet.
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