To analyse
Spanish football crash
Mouse-gray present: FC Barcelona and Real Madrid are working on their self-dwarfing
Sad present despite bright yellow Champions League jerseys: FC Barcelona is going through a serious crisis
© David Ramos / Getty Images
FC Barcelona, once revered worldwide for its magical game, has not yet won the Champions League. Real Madrid are also embarrassed and lose to a team from Transnistria. Spanish football is in deep crisis.
Stammtisch poetry seldom impresses with its artistic value, but sometimes bundles truths into a catchy rhyme. In the 90s, for example, the famous FC Schalke was mocked: “If you want to see Schalke above, you have to turn the table!”
Since Wednesday evening, this sentence has also been valid for FC Barcelona, which is preparing to become the Gelsenkirchen of the Champions League: a lot of tradition, but the present is mouse-gray. With zero points and minus six goals, the club is at the bottom of the table in preliminary group E and has to line up behind middle-class clubs such as Benfica Lisbon and Dynamo Kiev. That club that not so long ago was revered all over the world for its Tiki-Taka. That short pass game in which the opponent was often excluded from participating for minutes because he could not get the ball.
The crisis sets in before Messi leaves
Pep Guardiola once cultivated the Tiki Taka with the Catalans, whose proud slogan is: “Més que un club” – more than a club. Today Barca have a coach who doesn’t even seem to know about the sparkling past – at least the Dutchman Ronald Koeman exclaimed in a recent press conference: “Should we play Tiki Taki?”
At the moment, Barcelona actually only play Tiki Taki, it is not enough for more. And that has little to do with Lionel Messi’s departure to Paris. The crisis set in earlier, with the now legendary 2: 8 in the quarter-finals of the Champions League 2020 against FC Bayern. Seldom has the great FC Barcelona been so humiliated as in this game; Messi also went under at the time.
The only consolation for the Catalans is that rival Real Madrid are also working on their self-dwarfing. On Tuesday, Real lost 2-1 at home to Sheriff Tiraspol, a club from Transnistria, which in turn belongs to the Republic of Moldova. This is also a historical setback, and this is also a result that fits into the overall picture: the great days of Spanish football are over for the time being. “To big to fail” may apply in the world economy, but not in world football. The competition no longer has to fear Barca and Real; the power centers are in Paris, London, Manchester, Liverpool and also in Munich, at FC Bayern.
Real Madrid suffer from missed rejuvenation
Real Madrid is suffering from a missed rejuvenation of the squad: Players like Toni Kroos (31), Marcelo (33) or Luka Modric (36) have passed their zenith. But no one is pushing from below who could replace them permanently – that’s why the club is sticking to them. Barcelona, on the other hand, has long since said goodbye to many big names, not just Messi. The club is reportedly in debt with 1.3 billion euros, because you then borrow a striker like Luuk de Jong, who once could not prevail in Mönchengladbach, and at the same time gives Antoine Griezmann, 2018 world champion with France.
Ronald Koeman is given little time in Barcelona for an orderly rebuilding. Although the coach repeatedly asks for patience and conjures up a phase of transition, club president Joan Laporta does not want to be put off. In the background they are supposedly looking for a successor for the incumbent coach, but only with restrained vigor. A severance payment for Koeman and a salary for the new coach – Barcelona just can’t afford it at the moment.
