Another difficult awakening in Barcelona. This time, the Catalans did not even wait for the chopper laps to be eliminated, and took the door in the group stage. But this elimination did not surprise many people in the end, at least, as soon as we knew that it was against the Bavarians, Barça’s pet peeve, that Xavi Hernandez’s men were going to play their qualification. As is often the case in such situations, we tend to look for a culprit, a Turkish face on which to lay the responsibility for failure. And that’s good, in Barcelona, there are plenty …
Obviously, in football, everything is a question of context. If things go badly in the office, it is very rare that things go well in the field. We can say without blinking too much that Josep Maria Bartomeu, the former president, as well as his henchmen, have a great deal of responsibility in the current situation of Barça. They left a club practically in ruins, an unbalanced workforce and some underperforming players with colossal emoluments; hence the last very calm summer transfer window even after the return of Joan Laporta. We could write a book on the management of Barça under the Bartomeu era, since in addition to the purely sporting and financial aspects are added a whole bunch of controversies and scandals … The law of the field always prevails, but when we compare the financial and institutional situations of Barça and Bayern, it is clear that the Barcelona had no chance.
Many players are no longer there
Against Bayern yes, you might say, but what about Benfica, or even a good number of modest La Liga teams against which the Barcelona were unable to win? There, we must point the finger at the players. And above all, the captains and / or executives of the team, starting with the goalkeeper, Marc-André ter Stegen. If we could legitimately include him in the debate of the best goalkeeper in the world a few years ago, the German is extremely far from it today, and is struggling to be decisive on his line. And what about the Alba-Pique-Busquets trio, the old Catalan guard of the team, still as important and titular despite more than mediocre performances most of the time. Then comes a category of players that many supporters have taken in flu, since it contains players supposed to be important, in view of their salary in any case, but who are not for various reasons, like Philippe. Coutinho, Ousmane Dembélé or Samuel Umtiti. If they are rarely on the field and therefore not directly responsible for the poor results, they are annoying because they are considered to be at fault for the financial situation and the inability to recruit world-class players.
Then there are those players who are simply not up to par, like Oscar Mingueza or Clément Lenglet, not to mention Luuk de Jong, and this last list of players where we find elements that are straddling two categories, such as Memphis Depay or Frenkie de Jong, who without being inherently bad, are a little below what one would expect of them. Concretely, only a small handful of players like Pedri, Ansu Fati, Gavi, Nico Gonzalez or Ronald Araujo – the young guard of Barça in short – escape criticism.
The Laporta-Xavi duo begins to receive some criticism
If we were talking about Josep Maria Bartomeu earlier in the article, Joan Laporta is also starting to take a little for his rank. With hindsight, we can say that the summer was badly managed from a sporting point of view. There was the Messi case, of course, while the Barça boss had been optimistic on numerous occasions and had bet on his proximity to the Messi clan – ultimately not really proven – as one of the main assets of his campaign . Then, he failed to part with many players who are no longer at the level, and did not strengthen the workforce as expected, although it should be noted that his work on the accounting plan is quite good. . The case of Ronald Koeman was also annoyed, insofar as the main Barcelona leader was never really clear on his intentions with the Dutchman, whom he sometimes criticized, sometimes praised, not parting with the coach in time and leaving therefore the team sink into the crisis.
As for Xavi Hernandez, he arrived recently so for now, he mostly suffers the situation. But we were still entitled to expect a little more, since fundamentally, it’s practically the same Barça that we saw with Ronald Koeman. No big changes in the game, therefore, with a team still as harmless once arrived in the last meters. The Catalan continues in addition to betting on the executives mentioned above, which makes people cringe, while many expected a small revolution in the workforce. If the Barcelona coach still has plenty of time to get the team back on track and is not in danger, some players are completely burnt out …
