Does Barça already play better than City?, by John Carlin

“The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage.”

Thucydides, Greek historian

I watched two football matches on Saturday, starting with Manchester City (first placed in the Premier League) at home against Southampton (last.) I make a habit of watching City games whenever I can. For your nice game It is the team that I have enjoyed the most since Messi left Barcelona.

Then I saw the classic, Barça (first in the League) away from home against Real Madrid (second). It made me question everything. Well, a few months ago I questioned whether it was worth insisting on City. Now I wonder if I should reverse the order of my agenda and prioritize Barça over the English champion.

After seeing City beat poor Southampton 1-0 and seeing the Barça Babes annihilate Madrid 4-0 at the Bernabéu, I have a clear answer. Given the choice, I will opt for the moment to watch the team from the city where City manager Pep Guardiola became great and famous.

I’m starting to get tired of seeing City play more and more a repetitive offensive variant of the ugly game of parking the bus. A sequence in the 80th minute against Southampton portrays the already tiring modus operandi. After a play that lasted an eternity, most of it against the windshield on the periphery of the rival area, the ball was delayed and delayed until it reached the feet of the City goalkeeper. And so, from side to side, up and down, with hardly any variations, the entire game from start to finish. The Southampton goalkeeper had little to do except observe, as if he were watching a tennis match, the horizontal game of his rival.

Watching Barça a couple of hours later was like going from masturbation to a night of good sex. Or, if you prefer, an endless military siege followed by an electric guerrilla assault. Or from senile weariness to joyful youth.

I’m starting to get tired of seeing City play a repetitive offensive variant more and more

Barça’s four goals came from short intervals of possession finished with dagger-like passes – often long passes, oh happy innovation! It turns out that sometimes you have to abandon the orthodoxy of tiqui-taca and launch missiles like American football without fear of losing the ball.

This Barça is brave, as befits when one is young and unaware of the dangers that life entails. It started at the Bernabéu with six players aged 21 or younger, and two aged 17, for God’s sake. But the coach is braver. Hansi Flick could be the grandfather of half the squad. He does know that life is scary.

The advanced defensive line that Barça plays with is an audacity unparalleled in contemporary football. And a sign of enormous intelligence from the German Flick, perhaps the first coach who has known how to take competitive advantage of the blessed VAR.

Whether or not to point out penalties and such, the VAR is a waste of time. What it is useful for is to determine millimetrically whether a play has been offside or not. Without VAR, Flick’s tactics would be too risky. Madrid could have scored two or three goals on Saturday if it depended only on human judgment. With science on his side, Flick has calculated, correctly, that the risk is worth it.

Statistics show that no European team generates more offsides than Barcelona, ​​or scores more goals. And speaking of goals, and grandparents, Barça’s center forward, Robert Lewandowski, is today the top scorer in Europe, above the City giant Erling Håland.

Flick is the first coach who has known how to take competitive advantage of the blessed VAR

Is Lewandowski better? Not anymore. The difference is that the fast and vertical play of his teammates creates more scoring opportunities. Lewandowski scored two against Madrid; Håland, with the same passes into the area, might have scored four.

Of course, football allows for more variety when you don’t play against teams that pack eleven players like sardines in their own area, the sad fate that awaits City in almost all of their games. Now that Barça has returned to the front row of the world’s great teams, this is a challenge that they will soon have to face. We will see. Everything in football can change from one moment to the next. But what does seem true is that Barça, due to its youth, is going further. City? It is better never to bet against a Guardiola team, but watching them play is not, at the moment, the necessity it once was.

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