News: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻: The 2020-2021 Season Thread

That’s a 30 year old woman and her name is Marta. She later clarified it in Twitter.

 

Never mind magic, right now I'll be happy with sanity.

 

He was very lucky with the golden generation of Masia. That will not happen again. There are some promising players from Masia but will never top the golden generation.
Also Laporta managed to buy many players with decent price like Ronaldinho, Etoo, Deco, Giully.... Right now he will need a lot of money to buy top players. And Barca needs plenty of them.

This time is tougher than 2003.

 

Might still be too early though to think mid-table teams will be apathetic. At this point I think every team has something to play for in the league (at least a Europa League spot if they aren't fighting to avoid relegation).

The only 3 teams that may be overlooking the league right now are Athletic (distracted by their 2 CdR finals), Villarreal and Granada (focused on the Europa League).

Relegation battle is shaping up nicely though. Anyone below Valencia in 12th place is vulnerable and will be fighting until they reach 35 points or so.

 

Well the Womens CL draw was today and Barca have a tough quarter final, followed by a tougher semifinal. Lyon is the overall favorite, Barca might be the second favored but now will likely have to face Lyon to get to the final (though PSG could trouble Lyon), assuming Barca can beat City:

What is the full draw?
Quarter-finals: Bayern Munich vs Rosengard, Sparta Praha/PSG vs Lyon, Barcelona vs Manchester City, Chelsea vs Wolfsburg

Semi-finals: Sparta Praha/PSG or Lyon vs Barcelona or Manchester City, Bayern Munich or Rosengard vs Chelsea or Wolfsburg

 

I just recalled that only 2 teams qualify for the EL from now on. If Athletic win the CdR ( ) that would mean only the 5th-place La Liga team would join them in the EL (with the 6th place team going to the European Conference League, or whatever its called).

That could make mid-table "No-man's Land" a bit bigger.

 

Cool little factoid from the club's official site, with Mingueza v. Huesca (and Moriba v. Osasuna, and Firpo v. Alaves in recent games) joining the ranks, Barca now has 17 players who scored in La Liga, Barca boasts more league goal scorers than any of the other teams in the top 5 leagues:

• Messi: 21 goals
• Griezmann: 7
• Ansu Fati: 4
• Jordi Alba: 3
• Trincão: 3
• Dembélé: 3
• De Jong: 3
• Braithwaite: 2
• Pedri: 2
• Coutinho: 2
• Riqui Puig: 1
• Araujo: 1
• Sergi Roberto: 1
• Lenglet: 1
• Junior: 1
• Ilaix Moriba: 1
• Mingueza: 1

Atalanta and Manchester City come closest with 16 different goalscorers each.

Barça only has six outfield players that have yet to register a goal: Dest, Piqué, Umtiti, Busquets, Pjanić and Matheus (although Dest did get one on the Champions League and Piqué scored the crucial equaliser against Sevilla in the Copa del Rey. That’s 19 goalscorers in all competitions, although Villarreal can actually go one better in that category with 20.

 

That's missing Barca's third best scorer, Own Goal with 4 goals.

 

Fati has been out for 4 months but is only 3 goals away from Greizman and 1 goal ahead of Dembele.

This is very telling indeed.

 

decent read / overview of Barca's situation: https://www.espn.com/soccer/barcelo...-maybe-not-here-are-11-reasons-to-be-cheerful

 

Current odds to win La Liga (bwin):

Atleti: -120
Barca +160
LPB +450
Sevilla +10,000

Best odds we've seen in a while for Barca, but still underdogs.

BTW, in the betting world there are only 2 title races still fairly open among the top leagues in Europe. The other one is Ligue 1:
PSG -200
Lille +350
Lyon +400

 

And yet AG still gets so much hate from Barca fans:

Lionel Messi and Antoine Griezmann are, statistically speaking, the best duo in La Liga. The two have scored 28 goals and have provided 15 assists as well. Luis Suárez and Marcos Llorente, the Atlético Madrid tandem, are ranked second with 27 goals and 10 assists. [md]

 

And now slightly better after a statement win:

Atleti -125
Barca + 150
LPB +550

Next two rounds of La Liga will be crucial: Atleti with 2 away matches in Seville while LPB and Barca have an easier match followed by el clasico. Real potential for the winner of el clasico to gain significant ground.

Even if we draw Madrid it is quite possible that we gain ground on Atleti over these 2 weeks. So as I think celito said earlier, el clasico is a must-not-lose. Draw is okay.

 

While the first team pauses (in the midst of an 18 game undefeated in La Liga streak) for international break we have Barca B playing their last game before the playoffs - on Sunday at Badalona, but seems meaningless as I think we are locked into 2nd place behind Gimnastic and ahead of Andorra where top 3 make playoffs.

But Barca's women just had a huge 3-0 home win v. ManCity: some great goalkeeping in that match by both keepers and Barca still scored 3.

winner to meet PSG-Lyon winner in semifinal, PSG and Lyon drawing 0-0 in Paris with 15 minutes to play. Next legs of both on March 31. Lyon of course are the favorites for the whole competition. (On other side of the draw, Chelsea 2-1 over Wolfsburg, and Bayern already up 2-0 over Rosengard with 60 minutes left).

 

Gutted about Fati. With that being said though, it’s probably better if he gets everything properly taken care of instead of rushing him back half-assed.

Start next seasons completely healed up and ready to hit the ground running.

As for Couts, I hope he heals up quickly of course, and gets to go to a nice club where his qualities can be exploited.

 

Actually I think the match still means something as your point total carries over to the next round. I'm not sure how much of the point total carries over, but probably all of it. In which case, Barca's promotion playoff group and starting point totals will look like this:

Ibiza: 40
Gimnastic: 33
Alcoyano: 31
Barca B: 31
Villarreal B: 28
Andorra*: 28

Andorra's place not yet confirmed and of course point totals will change slightly with still one more game to be played this round. Currently Barca in 4th place but could be anywhere from 2nd to dead-last when this rounds begins, depending on this weekend's results.

There will be six matchdays in this next round with top 3 (and best 4th-place finisher) advancing to the promotion semifinals. Barca would play Alcoyano, Villarreal B and Ibiza home and away.

So, Ibiza pretty much guaranteed to be in the top 3 already. The other spots are totally up for grabs.

 

Thanks, super helpful. So we play home and away with the top three from the related sub-group, keeping our 31-34 points, adding 0-18 points to that total, all to determine top 3 from this subgroup. Then the play-offs start, only after that 6 game "group stage".

 

Too lazy to dig up the Barca on Int'l duty thread but Dest goal, beauty from distance and he was not playing RB:
https://streamable.com/i38u99

Braithwaite goal, nice run, seal, and dink of the keeper: https://streamja.com/jnRml

 

Pedri on as a sub along with 20 y.o. newbie Bryan Gil Salvatierra (Alba and Busquets on bench). 1-1 in 73rd minute. Eric Garcia also starting.

 

Might be getting close to a return of fans to Camp Nou. Estadi Jordi Cruyff is opening this weekend for Barca Femini's match against Levante. There are also music concerts with up to 5,000 people happening last weekend in Barcelona.