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Arturo Vidal has struck out at Barcelona, criticizing the club’s management on and off the pitch, and hinted it would be open to a return to Serie A amid ties to Inter Milan.
The 33-year-old Chilean midfielder is one of the players that Barça president Josep Maria Bartomeu and new manager Ronald Koeman are willing to let go of this summer.
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Vidal participated in the 8-2 Barcelona Champions League quarter-final win at the hands of Bayern Munich, and hinted at the reasons for that defeat in an interview with Daniel Habif on YouTube.
“Barcelona have to change their way of thinking,” he said. “Soccer has evolved a lot, DNA is lagging behind, other teams are improving in other ways. Soccer is more physical now, it’s about more strength and speed, and technique sometimes becomes less important.
“In the end you pay the price when you face an organized team, a team that has a winning mentality, with players who prepare physically and who have a strong game system. That ends up costing you when you are weak mentally and in terms of energy. . That’s what happened “.
Vidal also criticized Barça’s recent squad planning and transfer strategy, after sporting director Eric Abidal resigned earlier this month to be replaced by Ramon Planes.
“Barcelona has to change a lot of things. A team that I think is the best in the world cannot have 13 professional players and the rest be young,” he said, referring to his threadbare squad towards the end of last season. “Each team has 23 players to fight for a place, to grow and improve every day. When they do not advance, when you think that with your DNA you can always win, you are very wrong.”
Vidal came to Barcelona from Bayern in 2018 and before that he spent four seasons at Juventus, winning four Serie A titles.
He has been strongly linked to a meeting with his coach there, Antonio Conte, now at Inter, and suggested that he would also be willing to link up with his former teammate Andrea Pirlo, now in charge of Juve.
“He was amazing as a player. Imagine him as a coach,” he said. “If he or Juventus call me, I’d be happy, but you have to be calm. If it happens, it happens. I have a lot of affection for Juventus and Andrea.”
