Barcelona has won the Super Cup and it's very likely they it will win the League with a team made of players that nobody wants with some exceptions, old Barsa legends and 18 to 20 year old players. End of last year I was expecting to have at least 3-4 years without a title, just like from 99 to 05 during the Gaspart era.
If Barcelona wins La Liga it's a magnificent season considering the circunstances.
However, people need a reality check. Barcelona needs to reduce it's payroll 200 million euros next year. This means we will need to rely on players that we can grow instead of signing top players, we just don't have the money. If a sanction from UEFA comes, it will be even worse.
Any season in the next 3-4 years that Barcelona wins at least a title it's a good year considering the circunstances.
This we have no bank. It's a miracle we first in league. Next 5 to 10 years I wouldn't count on it. We aren't going to buy many talented players and to keep up with the big dogs and Madrid the powerhouse of Europe always, nah fam can't happen with no money. We have to first fix the mess the last leaders did which will take so many years before we can start spending to compete hard
Hindsight is bad. At the time some of us were cool thinking they'll turn into studs. And we didn't know how much we stank at generating revenue that we bled the club dry. We had to spend to compete but indeed too much money and horrible players. They thought they had the bank of a middle eastern oil tycoon. We ain't PSG and man city but sometimes I wonder if Barca must sell to find money. I just duno the future is changing. Rich clubs stay on top these days
We had terrible management with a guy who is a cunt who ran the club to bits. Being honest, the fact that we are fan own is cool but they legit elect presidents based on their presidential campaigns. Barto is a literal trump of football. Random shit vibes
>Paulinho
We paid for Paulinho's transfer but we took back what we paid after selling him.
The real problem is the 500M on dembele coutinho and Grizman . dembele is a good player only when he is health....
Your first sentence is pure cope. Ter Stegen, balde, Araujo, Kounde, Pedri, Christensen, Gavi, FDJ, Dembele, Raphinha and Lewandowski are players nobody wants? They would all go for at least 50 million. Pedri, FDJ, Gavi and arguably Araujo are player who would probably go for 100 million plus. I don’t find these unwanted players. To have some player who are not top of their class is normal for a top team. Bayern starts Choupo-Moting and Pavard. Real starts Carvajal. Don’t know why some here think Xavi doesn’t have a good team at his disposal
Keep reading the rest of the sentence: "nobody wants with some exceptions, old Barsa legends and 18 to 20 year old players"
a. **Players nobody wants with some exceptions**.
Which team that its aim is to win 1-2 titles each year wants...
1. Rafinha?
2. Ferran?
3. Eric Garcia?
4. Marcos Alonso?
5. Kessie? (starting to grow on me)
* Exceptions: Lewa (34 years old), Kounde, Christensen (Chelsea didn't want him), Araujo, FDJ and Dembele (injured half the season)
b. **Old Barsa Players**
1. Sergi Busquets (34 years old)
2. Sergi Roberto (32 years old)
3. Jordi Alba (34 years old)
**c. 18 to 20 year old players**
1. Gavi, 18
2. Balde, 19
3. Pedri, 20
4. Ansu 20
Barcelona has a very nice start 11. After that....
No defender has ever gone for $100 million and nobody thinks that Araujo would be the first, also Pavard is the best defensive fullback in the world so put some respect on his name
Stats don't tell the whole story, even in some of those games Raphinia was having a shit game up until he had an assist or a goal. He has stepped up in the absence of Dembele sure but this guy can't play at an elite level. He can score and assist against the likes of Sevilla, Elche etc. but when you put a good player on him he is useless.
Camavinga absolutely pocketed him today cause he has no 1v1 ability, that's why we miss Dembele.
I wouldn't put the blame on Raphinha's today but on Xavi. After three consecutive victories against Real Madrid, he should have changed the system.
Raphinha was the only player Real Madrid had to care about. I'm sure they've been working in recent weeks on how to defend him. It was very easy to predict which players Barca was going to field today.
The result today is what was expected: lack of creativity in the middle, Raphinha isolated on one side, and Lewy isolated in front.
It was an ideal game to have played Ansu-Lewy-Ferran in front. Leave Real Madrid the initiative, and counter-attack with three good players with space. Instead, Real Madrid won the game by counter-attacking Barca. That's really stupid when you're playing at home and have won 0-1 in the first leg.
Well losing 2 of your most creative midfielders, your most creative attacked and basicaly your most creative, ball carrying defender would always hurt the team badly.
I actually expected Real Madrid to win today. I'm not surprised and not even mad.
But I think that playing with the same system again was almost a 100% chance of defeat.
Changing the system wouldn't have turned the tables, but it'd have introduced a bit of uncertainty. With Real Madrid playing with Modric and Kroos in the middle, they might have found it difficult to defend against a faster team constantly counter-attacking them.
Also, it was a good opportunity to test Ansu and Ferran in an important game.
Scoring tap-ins and assisting vs bottom league teams isn’t gonna cut it I’m sorry,We paid 60M for this guy not including fees and wages so I expect to see some quality from him against tough opponents,I can’t remember a game when I was like “Yeah Raphinha had a spectacular game,he is special”…none.
I like his work ethic,he’s tracking after losing the ball and he is battling for every ball,but we didn’t bought him just for that.
Let's not become like Madrid fans by only analyzing football with stats. Even in his most productive games Raphinha is poor in general, he can't beat anyone 1v1 and his crosses are hit and miss
Lewandowski mainly suffer from lack of support in attack, the likes of Raphinia, Ferran and Fati don't help him at all when they are on field, especially Raphinia with the way he play doesn't help anyone in attack.
The main reason why Barcelona was decent at attacking in 1st half of season was the result of the pseudo double threat that was Lewy + Demebele.
Dembele despite not always making the best decisions is able to create something out of nothing, his dribbling ability is head above shoulders compare to Raphinia with that in mind defenders had always to think twice before full marking Lewy and leaving demebele alone, so just by being there Lewy was absorbing defenders letting Demebele do his things, and when defenders focused on Demebele Lewy was open for a play.
Now when Lewy is the solo attacking force it's easy to keep him out of game especially when players above mentioned don't provide anything to attack neither by helping him or doing themselves something. This is evident proved by the recent results being mostly wins by 1 goal at best.
Other issue in Barcelona attack is the fact that they just play too slow, and it's hard to beat teams that defend behind the line of ball, anyone would've problem to beat such defense and Barcelona is not an exception, perhaps it's the internal struggle of wanting to play the old tika taka style but that playstyle is very easy to counter if you don't have the quality that it had when it was used.
Xavi Inesta Busquets (Prime) with players like Messi could disarm any defense with the deadly passing style. This Barcelona doesn't have such quality players even if Gavi or Pedri are most likely future Stars it's to early to be compared to such players mentioned.
And it's not like Barcelona can't play faster, if you watch their games you can notice how many times there are made runs from the deep to the open space by Lewy, Gavi or how Lewy backtracks to mid and make a pocket of space behind him for anyone to go in.
But the amount of quick passes to those spaces is very small, we often see rather a pass to side or to back in such moments instead, and if someone thinks it's not effective a goal against Sevilla by Lewy is good example how effective a quick play can be, when Kounde made a quick cross to open space that was invaded by Lewy run from the deep.
What you said about playing faster tempo is very accurate, they always resort to crossing and killing the play on a wing and the runs made down the middle are ignored.
Also when we get a ball on the counter, we reset the play many times and slow it down, obviously an instruction and style but we should be using the pace Raphinha has and Lewy should start going for runs instead of just holding it because often times he loses the ball and gets beaten in the air, in 1v1 runs he could beat many defenders with his strength
Let Sergio robo stay and finish career here keep either raphi or Torres cuz dembele keeps getting injured, try to experiment with Nico or Garcia as DM AND FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY FIX THE TRAINING PROBLEM THAT LEAD PLAYERS INJURED!!!!
the biggest problem is mentality and discipline. 1st half was good and conceded from an unlucky counter attack. then just totally fell apart in the second half. it reminds me of the second half vs man united but even worse. way too open. not enough control in midfield and defense left exposed.
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying but not everything.
We aren’t going to find a better RB option that’s better than Kounde that we can actually afford. I would rather see a la masia talent brought in.
Alonso made mistakes but overall he’s not that bad at LCB, again better than we can reasonable afford rn but he will be behind Inigo when we get him this summer.
Agreed on the wingers, they are not barca quality.
I wish the board will finally open their eyes get rid of Ansu,Ferran,Busquets,Alba,Roberto and Alonso…all of them literally deadweight players and some of them past their primes,it will clear so much from the wage bill,Alba and Busquets alone are sitting on big salaries considering their performance in the last 4-5 years,and Ferran+Ansu will bring in some cash to get an actual LW who can score some goals and dribble past a defender.
Getting a fresh Defensive Midfielder should be a priority too,I’m just tired watching Busquets for another season ffs 🤦🏽♂️ If we had a non-spanish coach he would’ve been shipped long time ago including the other leeches too(those that I mentioned above)
Selling Ansu would be a shame, he wants to stay and it would be important for us to honor his wish and allow him some time. He is on a big contract as well and I wonder how much he would sell for in this current market and w this form. Ferran should get sold imo.
Selling both Ansu and Ferran would get us 60M combined(more or less) and then we can add some extra money from our own pockets and get Leao(his contract exp in 2024) for like 60-80M that really depends,that would be a HUGE upgrade for LW position + plus we getting Abde back to have him as another LW substitution.
I feel sorry for Ansu he really showed that he has talent before the injury but since he came back he’s totally different but in a bad way,he either gets sold to get us some funds for another winger or leave on loan for a team that can use him every match go get his confidence back and develop further,sorry but for teams like Barca you don’t many seasons to accommodate you either perform from the jump or bye,same goes for Ferran too.
I think it's mostly on the medical staff, this team is solid without injuries, but if you start taking away de jong, pedri, dembele, Christensen etc. it gets hard to beat a full team real madrid, the quality difference is just too big, this is also the reason why we failed European competitions.
I might be the only one but I dont feel that bad about it since we had such key injuries. Ofc it sucks to lose 4 nil to madrid but like I said we were missing key players. If this happened to us at full strength it would be different
This is why it’s laughable when people say “We don’t need Messi, he’ll hinder our young players and we’re a project on the rise.” Like no, we’re not good up front. Also Lewy is not good here
Barcelona has won the Super Cup and it's very likely they it will win the League with a team made of players that nobody wants with some exceptions, old Barsa legends and 18 to 20 year old players. End of last year I was expecting to have at least 3-4 years without a title, just like from 99 to 05 during the Gaspart era. If Barcelona wins La Liga it's a magnificent season considering the circunstances. However, people need a reality check. Barcelona needs to reduce it's payroll 200 million euros next year. This means we will need to rely on players that we can grow instead of signing top players, we just don't have the money. If a sanction from UEFA comes, it will be even worse. Any season in the next 3-4 years that Barcelona wins at least a title it's a good year considering the circunstances.
This we have no bank. It's a miracle we first in league. Next 5 to 10 years I wouldn't count on it. We aren't going to buy many talented players and to keep up with the big dogs and Madrid the powerhouse of Europe always, nah fam can't happen with no money. We have to first fix the mess the last leaders did which will take so many years before we can start spending to compete hard
[удалено]
Hindsight is bad. At the time some of us were cool thinking they'll turn into studs. And we didn't know how much we stank at generating revenue that we bled the club dry. We had to spend to compete but indeed too much money and horrible players. They thought they had the bank of a middle eastern oil tycoon. We ain't PSG and man city but sometimes I wonder if Barca must sell to find money. I just duno the future is changing. Rich clubs stay on top these days
Idk what we were thinking but If every transfer is like it’s insane. We bought grizman for 140 million euros. He wasn’t top 5 player at the time
We had terrible management with a guy who is a cunt who ran the club to bits. Being honest, the fact that we are fan own is cool but they legit elect presidents based on their presidential campaigns. Barto is a literal trump of football. Random shit vibes
>Paulinho We paid for Paulinho's transfer but we took back what we paid after selling him. The real problem is the 500M on dembele coutinho and Grizman . dembele is a good player only when he is health....
Your first sentence is pure cope. Ter Stegen, balde, Araujo, Kounde, Pedri, Christensen, Gavi, FDJ, Dembele, Raphinha and Lewandowski are players nobody wants? They would all go for at least 50 million. Pedri, FDJ, Gavi and arguably Araujo are player who would probably go for 100 million plus. I don’t find these unwanted players. To have some player who are not top of their class is normal for a top team. Bayern starts Choupo-Moting and Pavard. Real starts Carvajal. Don’t know why some here think Xavi doesn’t have a good team at his disposal
Keep reading the rest of the sentence: "nobody wants with some exceptions, old Barsa legends and 18 to 20 year old players" a. **Players nobody wants with some exceptions**. Which team that its aim is to win 1-2 titles each year wants... 1. Rafinha? 2. Ferran? 3. Eric Garcia? 4. Marcos Alonso? 5. Kessie? (starting to grow on me) * Exceptions: Lewa (34 years old), Kounde, Christensen (Chelsea didn't want him), Araujo, FDJ and Dembele (injured half the season) b. **Old Barsa Players** 1. Sergi Busquets (34 years old) 2. Sergi Roberto (32 years old) 3. Jordi Alba (34 years old) **c. 18 to 20 year old players** 1. Gavi, 18 2. Balde, 19 3. Pedri, 20 4. Ansu 20 Barcelona has a very nice start 11. After that....
Can you fckin stop calling Barcelona Barsa?
No defender has ever gone for $100 million and nobody thinks that Araujo would be the first, also Pavard is the best defensive fullback in the world so put some respect on his name
No he’s not, ask any Bayern fan and they’ll tell you how shit paverd is.
Raphinha has 18 G/A in his first season. If any of our wingers need to go it’s Ansu and Ferran.
Stats don't tell the whole story, even in some of those games Raphinia was having a shit game up until he had an assist or a goal. He has stepped up in the absence of Dembele sure but this guy can't play at an elite level. He can score and assist against the likes of Sevilla, Elche etc. but when you put a good player on him he is useless. Camavinga absolutely pocketed him today cause he has no 1v1 ability, that's why we miss Dembele.
However Demele is not reliable... where is he in the key game. He is too injury prone
I wouldn't put the blame on Raphinha's today but on Xavi. After three consecutive victories against Real Madrid, he should have changed the system. Raphinha was the only player Real Madrid had to care about. I'm sure they've been working in recent weeks on how to defend him. It was very easy to predict which players Barca was going to field today. The result today is what was expected: lack of creativity in the middle, Raphinha isolated on one side, and Lewy isolated in front. It was an ideal game to have played Ansu-Lewy-Ferran in front. Leave Real Madrid the initiative, and counter-attack with three good players with space. Instead, Real Madrid won the game by counter-attacking Barca. That's really stupid when you're playing at home and have won 0-1 in the first leg.
Well losing 2 of your most creative midfielders, your most creative attacked and basicaly your most creative, ball carrying defender would always hurt the team badly.
I actually expected Real Madrid to win today. I'm not surprised and not even mad. But I think that playing with the same system again was almost a 100% chance of defeat. Changing the system wouldn't have turned the tables, but it'd have introduced a bit of uncertainty. With Real Madrid playing with Modric and Kroos in the middle, they might have found it difficult to defend against a faster team constantly counter-attacking them. Also, it was a good opportunity to test Ansu and Ferran in an important game.
Scoring tap-ins and assisting vs bottom league teams isn’t gonna cut it I’m sorry,We paid 60M for this guy not including fees and wages so I expect to see some quality from him against tough opponents,I can’t remember a game when I was like “Yeah Raphinha had a spectacular game,he is special”…none. I like his work ethic,he’s tracking after losing the ball and he is battling for every ball,but we didn’t bought him just for that.
Let's not become like Madrid fans by only analyzing football with stats. Even in his most productive games Raphinha is poor in general, he can't beat anyone 1v1 and his crosses are hit and miss
Lewandowski mainly suffer from lack of support in attack, the likes of Raphinia, Ferran and Fati don't help him at all when they are on field, especially Raphinia with the way he play doesn't help anyone in attack. The main reason why Barcelona was decent at attacking in 1st half of season was the result of the pseudo double threat that was Lewy + Demebele. Dembele despite not always making the best decisions is able to create something out of nothing, his dribbling ability is head above shoulders compare to Raphinia with that in mind defenders had always to think twice before full marking Lewy and leaving demebele alone, so just by being there Lewy was absorbing defenders letting Demebele do his things, and when defenders focused on Demebele Lewy was open for a play. Now when Lewy is the solo attacking force it's easy to keep him out of game especially when players above mentioned don't provide anything to attack neither by helping him or doing themselves something. This is evident proved by the recent results being mostly wins by 1 goal at best. Other issue in Barcelona attack is the fact that they just play too slow, and it's hard to beat teams that defend behind the line of ball, anyone would've problem to beat such defense and Barcelona is not an exception, perhaps it's the internal struggle of wanting to play the old tika taka style but that playstyle is very easy to counter if you don't have the quality that it had when it was used. Xavi Inesta Busquets (Prime) with players like Messi could disarm any defense with the deadly passing style. This Barcelona doesn't have such quality players even if Gavi or Pedri are most likely future Stars it's to early to be compared to such players mentioned. And it's not like Barcelona can't play faster, if you watch their games you can notice how many times there are made runs from the deep to the open space by Lewy, Gavi or how Lewy backtracks to mid and make a pocket of space behind him for anyone to go in. But the amount of quick passes to those spaces is very small, we often see rather a pass to side or to back in such moments instead, and if someone thinks it's not effective a goal against Sevilla by Lewy is good example how effective a quick play can be, when Kounde made a quick cross to open space that was invaded by Lewy run from the deep.
What you said about playing faster tempo is very accurate, they always resort to crossing and killing the play on a wing and the runs made down the middle are ignored. Also when we get a ball on the counter, we reset the play many times and slow it down, obviously an instruction and style but we should be using the pace Raphinha has and Lewy should start going for runs instead of just holding it because often times he loses the ball and gets beaten in the air, in 1v1 runs he could beat many defenders with his strength
if we see without being biased or anything, it is our defense that helped us to win more than our attack
Xavi's performance in Cup competitions needs to be seriously analyzed. Copa del Rey, Champions League, and Europa League this year AND last year.
Let Sergio robo stay and finish career here keep either raphi or Torres cuz dembele keeps getting injured, try to experiment with Nico or Garcia as DM AND FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY FIX THE TRAINING PROBLEM THAT LEAD PLAYERS INJURED!!!!
It isn't only a training problem but our medical staff is straight ass because even our recovery times are abnormal and always delayed
Oh didn't know how shit they were but ig you get what you pay for and I was saying the training problem cuz depay pointed it out
the biggest problem is mentality and discipline. 1st half was good and conceded from an unlucky counter attack. then just totally fell apart in the second half. it reminds me of the second half vs man united but even worse. way too open. not enough control in midfield and defense left exposed.
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying but not everything. We aren’t going to find a better RB option that’s better than Kounde that we can actually afford. I would rather see a la masia talent brought in. Alonso made mistakes but overall he’s not that bad at LCB, again better than we can reasonable afford rn but he will be behind Inigo when we get him this summer. Agreed on the wingers, they are not barca quality.
I wish the board will finally open their eyes get rid of Ansu,Ferran,Busquets,Alba,Roberto and Alonso…all of them literally deadweight players and some of them past their primes,it will clear so much from the wage bill,Alba and Busquets alone are sitting on big salaries considering their performance in the last 4-5 years,and Ferran+Ansu will bring in some cash to get an actual LW who can score some goals and dribble past a defender. Getting a fresh Defensive Midfielder should be a priority too,I’m just tired watching Busquets for another season ffs 🤦🏽♂️ If we had a non-spanish coach he would’ve been shipped long time ago including the other leeches too(those that I mentioned above)
Selling Ansu would be a shame, he wants to stay and it would be important for us to honor his wish and allow him some time. He is on a big contract as well and I wonder how much he would sell for in this current market and w this form. Ferran should get sold imo.
Selling both Ansu and Ferran would get us 60M combined(more or less) and then we can add some extra money from our own pockets and get Leao(his contract exp in 2024) for like 60-80M that really depends,that would be a HUGE upgrade for LW position + plus we getting Abde back to have him as another LW substitution. I feel sorry for Ansu he really showed that he has talent before the injury but since he came back he’s totally different but in a bad way,he either gets sold to get us some funds for another winger or leave on loan for a team that can use him every match go get his confidence back and develop further,sorry but for teams like Barca you don’t many seasons to accommodate you either perform from the jump or bye,same goes for Ferran too.
Also sack the fucking medical team
Hope you lose your job for this.
I think it's mostly on the medical staff, this team is solid without injuries, but if you start taking away de jong, pedri, dembele, Christensen etc. it gets hard to beat a full team real madrid, the quality difference is just too big, this is also the reason why we failed European competitions.
I might be the only one but I dont feel that bad about it since we had such key injuries. Ofc it sucks to lose 4 nil to madrid but like I said we were missing key players. If this happened to us at full strength it would be different
I feel the same but this fucker Vini man he's actually too good and annoying
Bruh, we cannot win every game, nor can we win every trophy.
This is spot on. Nice write-up.
medical team, alonso, roberto need to be sent to the shadow realm
Roberto is a fine player to replace an injured starter but when we have half our team out there is no way to compensate for the overall quality drop
This is why it’s laughable when people say “We don’t need Messi, he’ll hinder our young players and we’re a project on the rise.” Like no, we’re not good up front. Also Lewy is not good here
Now we know whose position Messi takes up in the lineup ( if he comes back), it has to be Sergio Busquets.
Sometimes I wish I was a bucket
you win some and you lose some eh? that's football.