Analysis.The Barcelona suffers a total bankruptcy
Before recounting his time in prison,
Sandro Rosell
already had another published book.
It was called
Welcome to the Real World
and it was published in April 2006, 10 months after leaving the board of directors of
Joan Laporta
and when he was already beginning to prepare the ground for his assault on the presidency in 2010. The memory of that text of 345 pages before the temptation to turn a tactical drawing into a matter of state.
Rosell, who referred to
Johan Cruyff
as "the phantom threat", gave his version of that primal Barcelona of
Frank Rijkaard
, who could well have been fired in the middle of his first season to be replaced first by
Pere Gratacós
, then coach of the subsidiary, and later by former Brazilian coach
Luiz Felipe Scolari
.
Both good friends of Rosell.
Rijkaard had spent the first round playing with a 4-2-3-1 in which they passed through the double pivot
Xavi Hernández
,
Gerard López
,
Cocu
or even
Rafa Márquez
or the pubescent
Andrés Iniesta
.
"Until we went from practicing that system proposed by
Txiki Begiristain
and Johan Cruyff to play with a 4-3-3, which was the one that Rijkaard himself preferred," Rosell wrote, despite the fact that Laporta's version was never the same and despite the fact that Cruyff spent half a career showing his rejection of the idea of the double pivot before the danger of the depopulation of the center of the field.
The fact is that
Edgar Davids
arrived
to act as a bulldog for a few months, the new drawing stabilized,
Ronaldinho
found his place closer to the area and Rijkaard's Barcelona finished his work with the Paris Champions League.
Since then, beyond episodic variants, 4-3-3 was considered a gospel.
Until this summer.
Until Koeman arrived as a standard bearer, 17 years later, of the double pivot.
The double pivot, the 4-3-3 and the identity question
"It seems that Barça can only play with a 4-3-3!", The Dutch coach rebelled on Monday, aware that the environment, always playful with these identity and ideological issues, is already beginning to have him at the point of watch for his stubborn tactics.
The starting tandem,
Sergio Busquets
-
De Jong
, has never flowed.
Pjanic
, traded for
Arthur
to make up last year's accounts, has spent more time looking for a pass to
Messi
than devising a better static attack.
While the homegrown players
Aleñá
and
Riqui Puig
have been nothing more than specters for Koeman at the start of the season.
"You can say many things, but this does not depend on the system," he insisted on his appearance prior to the trip to Kiev, where the Barça first team is in a position to settle their qualification for the second round of the Champions League.
A tournament that, for once, is serving the Catalans to forget their poor performance in that League in which they are poorly alive in the middle of the table.
Unlike in the Champions League, where Barcelona has won its three games, up to three defeats and two draws have suffered in the league tournament.
Trips that had a common denominator, the difficulty of Koeman to correct tendencies on the fly and the insistence on piling up forwards without rhyme or reason in the final stretch of the games, at the risk of emptying the wide zone.
In the last defeat against Atlético, and with
Sergi Roberto
injured, his team ended the night without midfielders.
Messi's break
Koeman, in this case, also has alibis.
And none as convincing as that indescribable accumulation of matches that is pushing footballers to the limit.
There are already three long-term casualties that Barcelona has.
Ramon Cugat
, a traumatologist who has joined the presidential candidacy of
Víctor Font
, already predicted on Monday that it would be difficult for Piqué to return to the pitch before six months.
A
Ansu Fati
will have four ahead, and two Sergi Roberto.
And Koeman, aware that his continental classification should no longer be in jeopardy despite the cold sweats that Dinamo Kiev caused him at the Camp Nou (2-1), had no qualms about leaving both De Jong and, above all, in Barcelona , to Leo Messi, increasingly musty.
The Argentine had just played the 11 official matches this season, with only 45 minutes of rest on Betis day.
De Jong's break had been shorter so far, just ten minutes against Getafe.
“They need a break,” cried Koeman, who charged hard at the soccer leaders: “It is time for FIFA and UEFA to think about what they are doing with the players.
It's crazy.
Thus, with
Lenglet
as the only healthy center-back in the first team, Koeman will have no choice but to give the youth squad
Oscar Mingueza
the alternative
, champion of the Youth League in 2018. He achieved it together with
Riqui Puig
, who should compete with
Aleñá for
a position together to Pjanic in that double pivot where some of the torture lines converge.
The strange case of Matheus Fernandes
Matheus Fernandes (Itaboraí, Rio de Janeiro, 1998) was never introduced as a Barcelona player.
He was signed by the Barça club on the last day of the winter market in January 2020. For the defensive pivot, he agreed with Palmeiras a payment of seven million euros plus another three in incentives after the advice of the 'achiever' André Cury.
Eric Abidal gave his go-ahead.
He was signed by Barcelona until 2025. And he loaned him to Valladolid, where he only played 166 minutes spread over three games.
Two of them were the ones who closed the championship, when the Valladolid people were no longer playing.
There was no way that the technical secretariat got his exit in the last summer market, so Ronald Koeman ended up accepting that the Brazilian had a first team number.
After dispensing with him throughout the preseason and after 11 official matches, Koeman decided to summon him for the first time due to the multiple absences of the team on his visit to Kiev, where Barcelona aspires to close their classification.
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