Someday, perhaps in a few years, perhaps in a book or in a documentary, someone will sit in front of the camera or in front of the pen and tell you, in detail, what the hell is happening to Blaugrana basketball.
(Well, Barça has lost three of its last four league games and is eighth, and in the Euroleague it is not shooting either: it is eleventh, with eight wins and seven losses; right now it is out of the playoff).
At the moment, we have Àlex Abrines and Chimezie Metu saying their thing.
The first does it live and direct, before the reporters, and the second, on social networks, replying to the captain:
Joan Peñarroya, Barça coach, in a recent image
–We have to have respect for this shirt starting with me. And we must all respect this club more. It’s a wake-up call, this can’t be. We are Barça and we are playing like a Third Division team –Abrines said on Sunday, hot and with an open heart, after Barça’s painful defeat in Zaragoza (108-95)–. We are failing the fans time after time. I can only ask for forgiveness. As captain, I’m going to put everyone in the same bag, and if we have to play with only five, we don’t need more.
And Metu?
Yesterday, in X, I posted:
–Àlex!!
(As if telling him: these things are talked about and they stay in the locker room, and that’s it).
And this is how this Barça of Joan Peñarroya (on the bench) and Juan Carlos Navarro (in the office) lives; He lives in a hotbed of mixed feelings, in a disorder of interests. It is a volcano in the hands of a coach who has lost the magic of the first days, it is a team without a goblin and without direction, with essential players in the infirmary (Laprovíttola), with stars who do not shoot (until now, Juan Núñez does not work like Jokubaitis did, and Punter doesn’t do it like the best Kalinic did) and with strange, selfish and toxic elements in the locker room (let’s ignore the name, because things from the locker room stay in the locker room…).
The complaint
“I put everyone in the same bag, and if we have to play with only five, we don’t need more,” Abrines explodes.
Broadly speaking, Peñarroya lives in the same situation that, last year, had involved and tormented his predecessor in office, that Roger Grimau who was going to be fired without the right to reply despite the fact that his team’s performance, and The performance bordered well above what this squad does: just a year ago, that Barça appeared in the noble zone of the ACB League and also led the regular phase of the Euroleague.
Was his game convincing?
Yes or no, depending on how you look at it.
Did it work?
Until then, I was doing it, the numbers speak.
(…)
The problems stay in the locker room, or so Metu claims in X, but that is a euphemism and it is also a lot to ask, because body language, when the ball is in play, tells us what it tells us.
Nobody hides a reproach anymore after a failure in the defensive system. We see slumped shoulders when the score goes uphill and franchise players who barely appear on the court (Willy Hernangómez, when did the star of the NBA and the Spanish national team miss? Is he that old? He’s barely 30 years old! ).
Against the current
Today’s basketball is vertigo, races, sacrifice and risk, everything that Barça de Peñarroya does not show off
We observe a well-off squad, comfortable in its hypothetical pedigree of being presumed rich, incapable of assuming that the basketball of 2024 is all vertigo, races, sacrifice and risk, since this is how Valencia, Unicaja and Tenerife play, and also Paris Basketball , Monaco and Bayern, new blood for a new era.
We observe a sports director who never offers explanations to the press and a coach who is pinching his skin and can’t believe it: what is a squad like this doing in a place like this?
And this is how the fans, disoriented and hurt, listen to the captain’s lament, this Abrines who asks for forgiveness, but that is no consolation. The fan wants the team to give him joy, I accept my baby’s pouting.
#us.. #Sergio #Heredia
