Analysis
With a conformist message, Koeman’s team no longer trusts in winning the matches and is touched before the national team break
Now we are what we are. This is what there is, “said Gerard Piqué almost three weeks ago after Barcelona’s blushing defeat in the Champions League debut against Bayern. That day, Barça began to accept the message that the team did not give for more and created a shield with which each debacle carried a justification. That speech, fed continuously by Ronald Koeman, has had a deep impact on a squad that no longer feels capable of competing against the big teams in the League and the Champions League.
There was a time when Barcelona went out to rival fields with their style ahead, ready to carry it out regardless of the quality of the rival. That ‘modus operandi’, with footballers like Xavi, Iniesta or Messi, died as these players got older and gave way to a time in which they tried to continue with the ‘tiqui taca’ despite the talent drain. Today that idea is in danger. The current Barça plays according to the rival and is content to lick their wounds when they fall against rivals that should be direct such as Bayern or Atlético.
The sample of this conformism is the last league match against the current champion. Koeman varied the system from 5-3-2 to Barcelona’s classic 4-3-3 in the last quarter century. The culés collapsed at the first change as soon as Lemar began the bleeding and, far from reacting, they conceded the second and ended the duel with a single shot on goal and with Gerard Piqué, one of his captains, acknowledging: «We could be three hours playing football that we would not score a goal. It is difficult. We’re suffering”.
The resignation of Piqué, a footballer accustomed to rebelling with everything and against everything, is that of a team in which confidence has completely disappeared. The departure of pillars such as Leo Messi or Antoine Griezmann and Koeman’s continuous statements disparaging the level of his players have buried the confidence of a squad that was already at low levels after the end of the cycle. After the duel against Atlético, the Dutch coach left a new sign that Barcelona can no longer leave with the mentality of before. “It may be that now you understand why we have sometimes played with three centrals,” he said.
Koeman’s words at a press conference are in addition to other statements he has made previously and that have been detrimental to the morale of the team. After the game against Bayern he stated that “it is very difficult to accept, but this is what there is”, after the duel against Granada he assured that “one point is better than nothing” and after puncturing with a draw against Cádiz he concluded that ” You have to be realistic and see the template we have ».
Laporta ‘buys’ the speech
That conformist message has been installed in the squad and has led Barcelona to an endless sporting crisis before the national team break. Koeman’s men have added five points from the last 18 they have played between the League and the Champions League and have barely managed to score four goals. In this interval, the Catalans have also remained unmarked in four games, something unthinkable just a year ago and a situation that Koeman hopes to solve with the return of Ousmane Dembelé, Sergio Agüero and the best version of Ansu Fati.
After having a foot and a half outside the team, Joan Laporta came out in the preview of the match against Atlético, ensuring that Koeman would continue “regardless of the result” that occurred at the Wanda Metropolitano. That message, enhanced by the difficulties in finding a new coach and the club’s financial situation, also serves to buy into the coach’s pessimistic discourse regarding the present and hopeful about the future.
After the ratification of Laporta, Koeman again showed at a press conference that Barça, for the moment, or at least until the injured return, does not give for more, so it is intuited that from the club they could have already assimilated that this speech is the one that plays while the Dutchman continues on the bench.
The ‘llamadita’ of Luis Suárez’s revenge
Koeman called me and said he wasn’t counting on me. It was hard because of the way in which I was despised », revealed at the beginning of the year Luis Suárez, who on Saturday night took revenge with the goal that sentenced Atlético’s victory against Barça and with the ‘little call’ that he returned to the Dutch coach . Koeman fired the Uruguayan striker by phone and in less than a minute and Barcelona then chaired by Josep Maria Bartomeu came up with the idea of giving Luis Suárez to one of his great rivals, so that the Pistolero was last season one of the main architects of the conquest of the league title with Atlético and on Sunday he took revenge against his exes. Barça was the only team that Luis Suárez had not scored, who last season scored 21 goals in 32 league games – Messi signed 30 in 35 games – and currently has four in the championship and another decisive in the Champions League. (from penalty in Milan). And precisely when the Barça team is now very much missing, among many other things, a scorer. Without having premiered in Europe with a 6-0 against, Memphis Depay is the top culé striker (three goals), ahead of Braithwaite and Sergi Roberto (two each). Piqué, Araujo, Luuk de Jong and Ansu Fati are the only other Barça players who have seen the door so far.
“For something things happen, for something they happen, and fate will mark who was right and who did not,” proclaimed two days before facing Barça Luis Suárez, who said he believed “in karma, in fate, whoever despises you” . “I do not forget that last year in the preseason they sent me to train separately to make me angry and as a professional I would train every day without a bad face,” recalled Atlético’s ‘9’, who already had thinking that if he scored a goal for Barcelona he would not celebrate it, although he did reveal that he had prepared “a surprise”. And he decided to stage it in the form of a phone call, immediately after apologizing to Barcelona, ”out of respect, out of affection, for being one more culé, for the moment the teammates and the fans are going through.”
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