The keys to the announced decline of Barça

Barça said goodbye to the League in very bad manners, losing their first game of the season at the Camp Nou against Osasuna, who without playing anything put more interest and achieved the final 1-2 in injury time with only ten footballers in field. Humiliating. And the ridicule could have been greater, since Villarreal had an opportunity at the Santiago Bernabéu in the last minutes to start a 2-2 that would have forced Zinedine Zidane’s men to suffer in Leganés if Quique Setien’s men had won both of their matches.

A ‘Tenerife League’ was about to be possible, since the cucumber team will have options to stay home for victory on the last day. But already in the previous it had been clear that the Catalan team not only had no faith in the miracle. The sad thing is that I didn’t even feel like making one last effort. He has arrived physically and psychologically destroyed at the end of this mini league of eleven days post-confinement. And since in sports it did not intimidate anyone long ago, the disaster was on the way down and Messi put a voice to it.

Among his strong self-criticism, lamenting “the lack of intensity and desire” not only against Osasuna, but during many games of this League, he dropped a significant “from January to here, the season was very bad.” It is not difficult to grasp that the recipient of that message is Quique Setién and his coaching staff, as Ernesto Valverde left the Barca bench on January 10 after the league derby against Espanyol (2-2) and the KO in the Super Cup semi-final Spain against Atlético (2-3).

Something was no longer working, but the romantic idea of ​​the Cantabrian coach not only has not helped fix something, but has allowed it to spoil completely slowly, like the Barça game since his arrival. With Valverde he had lost the regularity and control of some games too crazy, but the team was alive, it had a rhythm.

With Setien a false control was recovered, with a supposed ‘cruyffista’ plan that Johan would have irritated to be alive. The touch without going deep, the eternal maturation of the plays and the matches. Barça improved their defensive numbers because with so much possession, the rival came little, yes, always in danger. But he has created fewer chances than ever and even Leo Messi has seen small goals and huge defenders for the first time in his career.

But Setién, although he already doubts that he will be sitting on the bench at the Camp Nou on August 8 on the return leg of the knockout stage of the Champions League against Napoli, after 1-1 in the first leg in San Paolo and with a place for the Final 8 in Lisbon at stake, is not the only culprit. Looking up and down, suspects of all colors appear.

It is an insult to Barcelona fans that an unacceptable situation has been reached in a large club: they have faced such a physically demanding section of the competition, with matches every three and four days, with just 15 first-team players, with no possibility of make rotations. Beyond punctual injuries, the club invited or let players like Carles Pérez, Todibo, Aleñá, Rafinha, Wague …

With everything at stake, he sold Arthur to Juventus in a trade with Pjanic for next season. The Brazilian has only played four minutes since then. And he stayed with players like Umtiti, knowing that his knee, beware, is perhaps irrecoverable for elite soccer, and Luis Suárez, who operated in January, reappeared after confinement, but far from his level and, despite this, essential because no one has signed competition.

The sports management, with an inexperienced Eric Abidal and a Ramon Planes of a minor team, has not been able to enhance the squad and Josep Maria Bartomeu, in need of strange operations to balance the economic balances, has fostered this situation. He spent it all on Griezmann despite the fact that it was obvious that it would be difficult to fit him into the Barça system due to his characteristics and because the players received him with nails for the previous year’s sit-in. Ansu Fati (17 years old) and Riqui Puig (20) have lent a valuable hand.

And among the players, more of the same. Now they doubt their hunger to win. The last League 2018-19 was barely held, as if it had no merit. The Champions League mattered more, but Anfield’s horrific KO left soulful sequels that have been paid for this season. No one escapes. Gerard Piqué has completed a good season in general, but in the last two weeks he has again shown that he does not have his head in place when he reached the derby against Espanyol on an electric bicycle, at full speed and without a helmet or license plate, and at showing off wakesurfing in a swamp two days before playing La Liga against Osasuna in what was his worst game of the year.

Nor Messi, who despite achieving a great goal and rebelling in the second half, showed in the first that he did not feel like competing, perhaps probing his speech. It is they, together with Suárez and Busquets, who decide how he trains. Apparently little and bad. Not to mention the questionable quality of several overrated players.

Among some things and others, the logical question is whether to make decisions for the next season, with time to work and assimilate ideas. Or if you postpone everything until you see what happens in the Champions League in August, with less time later to react. It has taken time, they have been announcing it for a long time, but Barça kept winning and re-entrant with Luis Enrique and Ernesto Valverde. But now it seems that the end of the cycle is here.