So I agree that Vidal has been underutilized, he shows great promise in his limited minutes, has made a goal and about 4 assists in just his last 5 or 6 performances, etc. What I really disagree on is the notion that "upper management should interfere" or somehow force Lucho to change lineups, tactics, playing time, man management, etc. You undermine the coach's authority and your team is lost. The media, the fans including the card holding socios, even the many board members may disagree and even voice that but let's not undermine our coach by forcing him to do something. And the salary / fee argument does not sway me at all, that is a sunk cost. We have no idea how Vidal came to be in Lucho's doghouse but he is working his way out on his own like a player and coach need to do or not do. When you start telling a coach you must play this guy cause we spent alot of money for him, again you have undermined the coach to the teams detriment. It all sounds way too much like what I think goes on with Perez at Real Madrid. Do we really need that here?
I disagree with what you said. A successful company/enterprise or in this case club should have a balance between sporting project and financial strength. If a certain player is not utilized then he should be sold. Barcelona's bench becoming a host for frozen players like Douglas and Vidal. This practice shouldn't be encouraged for the long term financial and sporting success of the club. Vidal's case is not a player who should play because we spent money on him, it's a pure personal stubbornness that has nothing to do with tactics or football. Lucho is trusted by the management with the club biggest assets (the players) and like any other employee should be questioned especially when it comes to managerial stubbornness or sheer incompetence. And to be a more specific issue with Lucho is inertia.
But upper management is involved in hiring and firing managers. Their influence comes through the manager that they hand-selected. Like when the people of a country vote for a President, you don't then have a referendum every time an important decision needs to be made.
No one should hold ultimatum authority. The President of a democratically elected country still questioned by Congress and Senates and his action (even executive action) can be overturned by the supreme court. We are talking here about some players are unfairly mistreated. This shouldn't happen in a club that its famous motto is "Més que un club".
24 hours later I just had another look. Following the two yellows a replay of Neymar-Yuri incident was being shown but you can hear the crowd react with more jeers. Moments later as play resumed the international feed on-screen graphics noted Alba receiving a yellow. Official match report says it was for dissent. It's Alba's second booking of the tournament. Umtiti, Neymar and Alba on two bookings going into the semi first leg.
Isn't that exactly what's happening with Gomes !?!?!? and please don't tell me he is better than Denis or freaking Rakitic Heck even Rafinha or Arda who excel at playing as wingers in the front 3 still better than him when they play in the midfield , He is preferred over all four of them for what reason other than we spent alot of money for him ?
Yes, as I wrote that, I did think of the Gomes situation, and whether that played in to his being picked over cheaper players (Rafinha, Denis, even Rakitic, heck even Ini and Busi). But we paid as much for Paco too and he barely plays. I mean who knows, I do think some players are more picked by the "g.m. / technical staff" some by the board/president, and some by the coach, and in the latter case it makes sense that the coach has a more vested interest in seeing them play and adapt and ideally succeed. So maybe Lucho championed the expensive Gomes signing and feels a need in that way. But we really don't know what goes on in practice, the players personalities, instructions they have been given, etc. Vidal admitted he did everything in practice at 90% when he could not play games and maybe he is still paying the price for that. Lucho also had a great comment about Denis, how you only have the ball for a minute or two per game but what is more important is how you work, position yourself, etc. the rest of the time. He was lauding how Denis does the little things and saying that is why he is getting more chances, not simply because he all of a sudden has scored 3 goals. Same thing could apply to Vidal but in a reverse way, just because he has a few assists and a goal of late he still needs to position better, work harder, etc. Lucho did not say that but we fans are left to read tea leaves. Maybe he actually likes Gomes work rate and positioning despite some of the crap we fans see like that give away which led to the first Real goal...
His positioning is AWFUL , his work rate is as slow as a turtle and he can't defend for shits , just go see all his games and you will notice how utterly useless he is , it's like we are playing with 10 men and we suffer from this defensivly since poor busquets and iniesta have to do double thier efforts to defend the midfield and that put massive pressure on Busi. just watch him for the entire game for 1 match and see , he didn't change at all , no awareness what so ever and no creativity in front which is really frustrating to see , right of the bat he looks like he was playing for 90 minutes and tired as hell , damn there is no excuse to play him ahead of the others and trust me if we didn't have MSN we would've seen the other useless **** Paco playing as well
Damn, if he admits to 90% effort that means in reality its probably more like 50%. If that's true not only should we not be blaming Lucho for not playing him enough, the club should get rid of him in the summer.
It appears that he has turned it around. Players are human and get in funks. Teams need to deal with that holistically not in a one size fits all. We've all personally witnessed 75% Messi and it was infuriating. They kept him around. james