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The excuses for Barcelona to be 12 points from the top of LaLiga are scarce at the moment. The best proposals so far have been “Koeman should play 4-3-3 and not 4-2-3-1” and “Messi’s contractual situation is disturbing the team.” Neither really gets washed – it’s time for certain players to stand up to save the season.
On the podium of Barcelona’s most expensive signings of all time, Philippe Coutinho, Ousmane Dembele and Antoine Griezmann take gold, silver and bronze, but the trio, who pushed Barcelona back for just under £ 367 million, it never seemed like they wanted to. responsibility, their price tags suggest they should.
Last season there was an excuse. Barcelona was still the spectacle of Messi and Luis Suárez, but when Suárez left in the summer a power vacuum opened: none of the three astronomical signings have seemed to fill it.
There are some excuses for Dembele. He is still only 23 years old and injury problems are a constant obstacle to his having a sustained impact. But Griezmann is 29 years old and he is a world champion. Nobody is going to put the crown on his head, he has to stand on the throne.
True, it was uncomfortable for him at times last season. Returning to training after the confinement and discovering that in the small training groups designated by the players it was the teenager Ansu Fati who had been paired with Messi and Suárez, and not Griezmann. That left him feeling disrespected.
But it no longer seems true that he is marginalized, apart from those who rule the henhouse. Nobody rules the chicken coop! Barcelona is a club without leadership, without any kind of hierarchy. And if Messi is disinterested and uncommitted (and it didn’t seem like it in the middle of the week when he was Barcelona’s best player and had six of his seven shots on goal), then that’s all the more reason to step up.
Likewise, Coutinho is no longer the shy 25-year-old who came to the club in January 2018. When he returned to Barcelona this summer he did so with a Champions League champion medal. It should have been the trigger for him to take over.
Coutinho, Dembélé and Griezmann are part of the reason that Barcelona is in the financial well in which it is. Surely the financial blow of the pandemic has devastated the club and Messi’s salary weighs heavily. But Barça has spent so much on three players who have given so little.
Whispers about training also sound hollow. How can Koeman play 4-3-3 when his team is so devoid of midfielders? Faded Sergio Busquets, fighter Frenkie de Jong and ‘Arthur Melo trade’ Miralem Pjanic could make a three but there is nothing beyond that.
Some fans are clamoring for Carles Alena and Riqui Puig to get more involved. But the former had no impact on the loan at Betis last season and the latter remains the victim of his own reluctance to accept a similar loan challenge.
Koeman has invented the not very convincing 4-2-3-1 because of those limited midfield resources. And he’s done it to shoehorn as many No. 10’s on the team as possible. He has inherited a team in which Coutinho, Griezmann and the impressive 17-year-old Pedri, plus Messi, want to play as number 10. Their 4-2-3-1 allows them at least to reach the starting line. -up, but players don’t find it halfway.
There are complaints about having to play open in the three behind the striker. Did Samuel Eto’o and Thierry Henry complain about having to play open on the side that Pep Guardiola built to win the Champions League in 2009? Did David Villa complain when he had to play open two years later for the team that won the same tournament again?
They are not only Coutinho and Griezmann. Marc-Andre ter Stegen was the main culprit for Atlético de Madrid’s defeat and Clement Lenglet’s naivety was key in the defeat of the Clásico: don’t pull Sergio Ramos’s shirt in the area, he will fall, he will win the penalty. Lenglet and Ter Stegen were also the two main protagonists of the comedy of errors that produced the second goal in the 2-1 loss to Cádiz last weekend.
Jordi Alba’s release was the first act of that farce and it has also been below average. And De Jong is another one that Barcelona fought so hard to sign ahead of Manchester City and since then he has seemed a shadow of the player who was at Ajax.
Those four also need to find their shape. But it is the winner of the Champions League and the winner of the World Cup, Coutinho and Griezmann, who should be the true catalyst for change.
Watching Real Madrid on Wednesday it was remarkable to see how Luka Modric and Toni Kroos got Zinedine Zidane out of trouble with their best performances of the season.
Nobody defends Koeman in the same way today.
Griezmann and Coutinho have the price, they have the pedigree, it is time for them to show that they also have personality.
This is a bad time for Barcelona, but there has never been a better time for new leaders to emerge.
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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