Rumor: Mission Impossible: Replacing Infinito ∞ | The 2018-19 Transfer Thread

Discussion in 'Barcelona' started by Viscaelbarca, May 28, 2018.

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  1. Rana catesbeiana

    Mar 11, 2008
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    I agree, more goals could always be scored. Players have their weaknesses and their strengths, to me it's cool we go into the season with Suarez as our starter ST, because his whole package is good enough.

    Nah, I don't think our style is simple as "abandoned what works for the sake of Suarez".

    I don't think it's a culture in Barca that players can remain as starters if they don't deliver. In City, in Barca, basically everywhere in top level it's the same, and it couldn't be otherwise because teams with high ambitions don't have that room for charity minutes.

    I think that's an oversimplified view of Rakitic. To me, he looks better than what you described in those skills you emphasized (which, to me, are very important, of course).

    Yeah, well, Barca plays a little differently in different years, and that will continue to happen. The debate on results vs style is maybe for another day, but I'd just say that football is sports, and as long as the team gets good enough results, they get a green light from me tactics-wise. There are styles I like, and styles I don't like, and Barca obviously has its tradition of emphasizing certain aspects in their game, but to me the team's job is to win, and winning in a certain assumed style is secondary (not meaningless, but not the highest priority).

    What do you have when the results are not there? Not much. But attacking football also gives you not much in those cases. Although I'd have to say that I think the separation of "good football" and "rubbish football" is too black and white: seasons rarely are just rubbish or just good, but rather a mix of both.
     
  2. Fezza

    Fezza Member

    Barcelona
    Argentina
    Nov 16, 2017
    There is a difference between safe passes which allow you to build your attacking structure and safe passes for the sake of it (Spain) or passes just to get rid of the ball because you're under pressure or not (Rakitic).

    Xavi and Iniesta are once in lifetime players but it wasn't until Rijkaard came around that they found their feet. Xavi, for the longest part, was competing for a spot against one of the legends of the game and Barcelona in Guardiola and Iniesta was up against Deco and was tossed from position to position just for development time. It was said that Xavi and Iniesta playing together was just a pipe dream due to this sideways passes you speak of but look how that turned out.
     
  3. Rana catesbeiana

    Mar 11, 2008
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    I don't see it like that. For one, it's not like he was the only one whose opinion decided what happened, secondly it's just too much to group the ones we got as "bums" and the ones we lost as "world class signings", not to mention his team worked really well.

    Can't sign all the good players in the world.
     
  4. BocaFan

    BocaFan Member+

    Aug 18, 2003
    Queens, NY
    Didn't de Jong play centre-back against Standard Leige this week?
     
  5. Fezza

    Fezza Member

    Barcelona
    Argentina
    Nov 16, 2017
    Whole package? After what you saw last season... That's a stretch.

    Yes it was. Suarez couldn't get to grips with playing as an inside forward and a move to a 4-4-2 happened. The football suffered but the results remained which was good enough for some like you. It was only after the pressure cooker let go after the Roma debacle that Valverde saw to change things.

    It appeared to be that way under Valverde last year. Paulinho was at his best in a 4-3-3 False 9 but he too was sacrificed for Suarez so much so that he often played as a wide midfielder in a 4-4-2 in some key games. Overall, Iniesta was played out of position as a wide midfielder, so was Paulinho on the opposite end, Denis who was great on the wing in the early going was dispatched to the stands, Messi was moved further away from goal despite having the best start to a La Liga campaign in his career and Coutinho was often played on the right side too. All this happened just so Saurez could play centrally too which meant the midfield suffered.

    Ok. Why don't you tell me what Rakitic brings to the team so we can debate this?

    This is where you're wrong. Barcelona are expected to win and they're expected to win a certain way. Barcelona lost only 1 league game last year but scored only 3 more points than in the previous year... 9 draws and 1 loss is equivalent to 3 wins and 7 losses... I'd much rather have the 7 losses for the same points if the football was more attacking and better.

    I mean this is pretty easy to see... See above. The football was atrocious last year.
     
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  6. BocaFan

    BocaFan Member+

    Aug 18, 2003
    Queens, NY
    Not to mention, we finished 18th out of 18 teams in the ICC. Playing champagne football and all. :sneaky:
     
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  7. TitoTata

    TitoTata Member+

    Jun 26, 2014
    How did we miss out on Santi Cazorla !?!

    He'd have been great short term
     
  8. Fezza

    Fezza Member

    Barcelona
    Argentina
    Nov 16, 2017
    It's this attitude that has led Barcelona into the current cul-de-sac... And no the teams of 15/16 and 16/17 didn't work well at all.

    It's also pretty easy to separate the good players from the bad. Pjanic is playing at a high level for Juventus and Gundogan is playing for the best team around at the moment. Arda is on loan in Turkey and Gomes was just loaned to Everton... Nobody wants to buy them... Come on man.
     
  9. BocaFan

    BocaFan Member+

    Aug 18, 2003
    Queens, NY
    Turned out great largely because of a huge stroke of luck by playing alongside prime Ronaldinho followed - after 2 years of losing - by prime Messi. Of course one player doesn't make a team and we needed a good midfield to effectively support R10 and Messi, but Iniesta and Xavi win a meager fraction of the trophies they won at Barcelona w/o that luck.
     
  10. Fezza

    Fezza Member

    Barcelona
    Argentina
    Nov 16, 2017
    How can you say something like this when they played together for Spain too and there was no Ronaldinho and Messi?
     
  11. Forzabarca

    Forzabarca Guest

    Rumours about Thiago and LPB having an agreement. Barça loss? Idiot board acting like crying babies losing the opportunity to bring him back and now perhaps ending up in LPB.
     
  12. Rana catesbeiana

    Mar 11, 2008
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    I said it was my opinion: all elements of players evaluated, I'm fine with Suarez as starter. Also fine with people disagreeing.

    Again, when we start separating "football" from "results" it's another debate. But just repeat: my opinion is that Suarez as a starter is fine, not that everything in our performances is so good that we don't need to seek ways to improve.
    Let's agree to disagree.

    I'm not gonna get into in-depth analyses now, but simply his overall game is good enough to merit a status of a heavily used player.

    I think this is a little bit of a half-true cliche. I mean yes, there definitely are expectations regarding our style, but for one, Barca fanbase is not one homogenic mass who wants the same things, and secondly, I think the debates of what is good style normally raise significantly when the results are not there. But when we win, the debates exist, not as loud. So yeah, I'd too like to win beautifully as opposed to some other way, but that's obvious. To me, it seems there is this idea of Barca needing to play at a certain style, and some people do feel that way, but when I see trophy celebrations of Lucho, Valverde, Messi, Ter Stegen, Busquets, Rakitic, S. Roberto, Suarez etc, I see happy people, people who also are happy when one of those two coaches make us beat RM without tiki-taka.

    You think it's a fact, it's a question of opinion. That atrocious football won us Liga, and if you want to talk style, it's easy to pick million examples of beautiful plays from last season.
     
  13. BocaFan

    BocaFan Member+

    Aug 18, 2003
    Queens, NY
    Spain had the best all-around squad among NTs of that generation. The standard is so much lower though. None of the opposition at NT level come close to the Madrid, Bayern, Chelsea, PSG and Juventus teams you face at club level. Especially in that particular generation (there was no team near the level of 2014 Germany nor did you have a good defending Italian-like side to worry about).

    Look, XavIniesta were great at wearing down teams and Barca owe many victories to them, but tiki-taka was basically solved early this decade. Post 2010 Barca wins nothing without Messi going into full beast-mode. Plain and simple. Of course would have been hard to win anything w/o XavIniesta too but I think we still grab a major trophy here and there.
     
  14. Rana catesbeiana

    Mar 11, 2008
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    Cul-de-sac? We just won Liga. In addition: we have top class young goalkeeper. We have a top level defence that isn't old. We have world class attack with youth and experience, same with midfield, and numerous young players aren't squad fillers but either significant this season or in the very near seasons. We have a solid coach. Our global brand is strong. Having a little perspective of where clubs can be, cul-de-sac is something else.

    Never said all the players we signed turned out beautiful. But Arda was good when we signed him so there was logic, Gomes was a not-expensive young high-potential player, so there was logic as well. Doesn't mean I wouldn't take Gundogan and Pjanic over to what we got from Gomes and Arda on the pitch. Arda especially was disappointing, Gomes always had that "might not work" vibe around as a lot of young players just don't become significant Barca players. But one would have to add that players' quality is not only independent of the clubs they play for, as in it's not 100% guarantee Gundogan or Pjanic would've been great successes here. More successful players have come here and failed.
     
  15. Fezza

    Fezza Member

    Barcelona
    Argentina
    Nov 16, 2017
    Wow, this is some way to marginalise some all time great players' ability...

    Also, Guardiola and Barcelona did not play tiki-taka.
     
  16. BocaFan

    BocaFan Member+

    Aug 18, 2003
    Queens, NY
    To me it was tiki-taka. But its not a well-defined term so its a matter of opinion. In any case, it was distinctly different from the champagne football that was played by Barca from 2004-6 and 2014-16.

    Well....this is where the conversation went – i.e. discussing the elite of the elite. I guess people might take it to mean I am marginalizing them or insulting them, but they are not once in a generation type players. The term gets overused IMO. There can't be 5 once-in-a-generation players in the same generation. That doesn’t mean they aren’t legends for club and country.

    As for playing “atrociously” last season – agree to disagree on that too. I enjoy watching a team winning by any means. Yes, it was very pragmatic but I can’t help admiring how the team snatched victory from the jaws of defeats/draws again-and-again, with Messi carrying them on their shoulders many times. It was a pleasure to watch, albeit also stressful and worrying (but so is passing the ball sideways against Chelsea for 45 minutes when you're losing :p )!

    Even if we ignore pure results, the extent to which the team was not pretty to watch has been grossly exaggerated by many on this board! Part of that I guess is that Barca really did play champagne football for 2 years starting with the 2014-15 season – so there’s that direct comparison to which the 2017-18 team doesn’t compare well in terms of prettiness. So I can sorta see where the argument stems from, but at the same time its not like they were Man Utd or Chelsea or Atletico.
     
  17. Fezza

    Fezza Member

    Barcelona
    Argentina
    Nov 16, 2017
    Yes, a cul-de-sac... As in a dead end of bad sporting decisions. The players signed and the football played has not been at a level required by Barcelona. Your results based approach is the very definition of short-termism.

    Buy a misfit player, if he doesn’t work out buy another... It’s almost as if they consciously decide to sign random players and build a system around them instead of sticking with the model that was set forth some 30 years ago and recruit based on that. Look at the state of La Masia... Digne was signed at the expense of Grimaldo, who is now starting to attract the attention of big clubs all over Europe. What have we done? Sold Digne to a mid-level club with the hope that Miranda, who has no first team experience, can fill the void when needed. It is the same with Aleñá and Samper... How many first team outings have they had? Less than 20 between the 2 of them? And yet they’re expected to perform on a whim or they’re sent on loan. What are the chances of them succeeding when absolutely no consideration has been made for the gradual introduction into first team football despite their obvious talents. How many minutes did La Masia players get in La Liga last year despite the title basically being sealed by December? A magnificent total of 5 minutes for Arnaiz (who’s not even a La Masia player) and the substitution was that of a time wasting exercise.

    Look at the Thiago situation too... Bayern are willing to sell. The player wants to return and knows the style inside and out. But yet there is a faction in the club who don’t want to sign players who’ve left but the season before they were actively chasing Bellerin who did the exact same thing only worse. He left when he was still a kid... They’d much rather stick with what they have in Rakitic despite his obvious shortcomings for our style of play.

    The signing of Mina is another example but it can be seen as market opportunity due to how it played out but it could have easily turned out to be a situation similar to that of Marlon, Gomes, Arda etc. This is not how big clubs are run.

    This is the first season in some time that I can really say I’m mostly happy with with where the squad is at because there is competition at every position except for maybe Alba and Busquets.

    Those signings make no sense when you weigh them up against the players they were signed over. Arda over Gundogan and Gomes over Pjanic and for more money and wages too on both counts. Make sense of that...
     
  18. Leon12

    Leon12 Member+

    Jan 5, 2006
    Man of the world
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    He is a better player than Rakitic, no?
     
  19. BocaFan

    BocaFan Member+

    Aug 18, 2003
    Queens, NY
    To this day, I don't think anybody has been able to locate Kroos on the Suarez goal in the Bernabeu last season. :laugh:
     
  20. celito

    celito Moderator
    Staff Member

    Palmeiras
    Brazil
    Feb 28, 2005
    USA
    Club:
    Palmeiras Sao Paulo
    Nat'l Team:
    Brazil
    Different strengths and weaknesses. I honestly don’t see the big deal with Kroos.
     
  21. evil_allan

    evil_allan Member+

    May 3, 2004
    Turtle Island
    this conversation is getting tedious and off topic, but that's just my opinion.
     
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  22. Gilmango

    Gilmango Member+

    Jul 20, 2006
    San Francisco, CA
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Weird detail emerged re Gomes loan, Everton has ZERO Option to purchase him. Not to say that we won't sell him to them (or another club) if price can be agreed upon, but there is no option included at all, not even for an excessive price (like the 35M we paid plus variables, like the Ballon d'or variable:D). https://www.sport-english.com/en/ne...hey-have-no-buy-option-on-andre-gomes-6984238

    Meanwhile Mina can be bought back by Barca albeit for 60M which just aint happening (not sure if the 60M is option for just one year or for two).
     
  23. Leon12

    Leon12 Member+

    Jan 5, 2006
    Man of the world
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    Because he is one of the best midfilders in the world. Anyway, all about opinions, we'll have to agree to disagree.
     
  24. TitoTata

    TitoTata Member+

    Jun 26, 2014
    The Real Madrid fans around seem to be pretty certain they're signing Thiago from Bayern !?!

    If it IS true I'm glad we didn't get him back as his heart clearly was never with Barca..

    Many are also thinking Modric is on his way out ..
     
  25. Rana catesbeiana

    Mar 11, 2008
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    Nah, caring about results isn't short-termism. Short-termism is when you make moves that sacrifice tomorrow for the quick results. I've never wanted Barca to operate like that.

    I would also say that "level required by Barcelona" is a little bit of a tricky concept. What do you mean by that? That the players/performances aren't as good as before, or that they don't amuse some people? Or that we play in a certain style, but we should play in some other style?

    I agree that we should try more actively to forge Masia players into the first team regulars. As for buying players, we obviously analyze the different candidates professionally and try to find good matches instead of shooting random.

    Thiago has his shortcomings as well. I don't think it was a choice between signing Thiago or keeping what we have, but rather signing Thiago or signing someone else. This summer, they enforced the midfield with Arthur and Vidal, and who knows we might sign De Jong as well. Personally I would've been ok with Thiago, although just simply I don't think he is THAT good.

    Well, there were some important issues pro-Arda. He was familiar with Liga, and Gundogan didn't have the best injury history. Not sure Pjanic would've been cheaper that Gomes. Either way, four midfielders that all had some things for them and against them. To me, the transfer decisions were better than how it turned out, but that's how it sometimes is. Sometimes you make a deal and it works our surprisingly well, sometimes not so much.
     
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