• Chronicle.Maxi Gómez disconnects the blurred Barça de Setién
  • Analysis: The disaster of Setién, by Julián Ruiz

The environment is no longer divided only between cruiseries and nuñistas , but between those who count passes and those who laugh at those who count passes. The discussion about the style of play was always welcomed in a club whose great torment is his habitual dissatisfaction with the present. The hiring in a handful of hours of Quique Setién by President Josep Maria Bartomeu - executed after failing negotiations with Xavi Hernández, Ronald Koeman and Mauricio Pochettino - brought a subliminal message. In case of sinking, there would always be the option of blaming Cruyff's apostles. No to the directive. No to the locker room .

During the past five and a half years, both Luis Enrique Martínez and Ernesto Valverde executed survival plans. Never stay. They managed in their own way the decline of a generation without equal . They sacrificed the aesthetics and rhetoric of the midfielders - if it was an obligation to what they found in the dressing room only they know - but they also managed to catch titles and move on. Nothing strange with Messi on your side. The board thus chose to disregard the transition. And he closed his eyes to the growing power of a locker room that went from advising Bartomeu to acquit Valverde after the collapse in Anfield to see with good eyes his dismissal in the middle of the season and with the League's leading team.

Perhaps nobody noticed that Quique Setién, firm in his convictions, hardly adapts his tactical ideology to decrepitude. He impacted his analysis of the first defeat as coach of Barcelona: «There are some things that players do not interpret well. Or maybe we don't explain them well. More than a reproach, some frustration began to be sensed in the face of the impossibility that the games played in his head have continuity in the field .

The 3-5-2 that Setién is trying to drive into the meninges of his players, beyond the fact that the poor planning of the squad could discourage the drawing, has forced several of the players to leave their comfort zone. Griezmann is asked to uncheck. It does not . Ansu Fati, at 17, is claimed to be a demigod as a lane. It is not your role. Sergi Roberto, who started the season on the promise that he would be another midfielder again, is asked to learn to be central now. Mestalla revealed the consequences. Umtiti, ahead of Lenglet, is asked to be the center that won the World Cup with France. And there is no match in which he himself denies it. Piqué remains untouchable, and Todibo, once the hope of Abidal, marched to Germany. De Jong is asked for control and impudence, and what should be learning has changed into worrying involution . Arthur is asked to give coherence to the possession, and it is Arturo Vidal who sublimates the power of disorder. The team is asked for depth and goals, but look at the bench and see that no one can replace Luis Suarez. Because last summer nobody remembered the grotesque step of Kevin-Prince Boateng. Or that in the defeat of the Cup final against Valencia who finished the game as center forward was Piqué. We forget fast. Now it will be time to open the safe to solve the urgencies of the past. It was always like this.

He also insists on his own. He tries to convince the dressing room. Deny holidays because there is no time to lose. With or without storms. Some people twist the gesture.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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