Madrid (AFP)
How to rebuild on a fallow field? The terrible debacle against Bayern Munich 8-2 in the Champions League quarterfinal on Friday is forcing Barcelona to consider "profound changes". Coach, managers, players and even Lionel Messi: every corner of the club is now called into question.
The end of an era. That of the great Barça who marched on Spain and on the European continent for nearly a decade. The end of Quique Setién's short eight-month freelance on the Catalan bench, too, no doubt.
But the worst defeat in Barca's history in a European game means a lot more than that.
- "Need for changes" -
"It's very hard, I hope it will be of use to something, to make us all think together about what is best for Barca. The club needs changes. And I am not talking about the level of coach or players, but structurally, the club needs changes of all kinds, "called central defender and blaugrana training manager Gerard Pique (33), Friday night at the final whistle, at the microphone of the Spanish channel Movistar +.
"There, yes, we hit rock bottom. Coaches and players follow one another, but it's been several years since we are no longer able to be competitive on a European level. We all have to think internally and decide to which is the best for the club, for Barça. It is something unacceptable for FC Barcelona ", underlined the Catalan, even proposing to leave the ship" the first "if" it is necessary to bring new blood ".
Where to start ? After this "horrible match", this match "of shame" in the words of Piqué, and a year without any title for the first time since 2008, symbol of the decline of the Spanish Empire (with no representative in the last four of Champions League for the first time since 2007), how to start from scratch?
After apologizing to the Catalan supporters, the president of FC Barcelona Josep Maria Bartomeu, himself in the viewfinder and who could announce early elections in the coming days according to the Catalan press, took the floor as rarely to address at the "Barcelonists", Friday evening.
He indicated that "decisions will be announced and explained in the coming days, some of which had already been taken before, even before the resumption of the Champions League".
- Setién threatened, Messi in question? -
Coach Quique Setién is notably already "condemned", according to the Catalan sports newspaper Mundo Deportivo on Saturday. Recruited in January to give his DNA back to a drifting Barca after almost three years of Ernesto Valverde, Setién, unresponsive and visibly lost in an oversized suit, has failed to restore his going to the Blaugrana club in eight months exercise.
Former Catalan legend Xavi, currently coach of Al-Sadd club in Qatar, and Mauricio Pochettino, ex-technician from Tottenham and former player and coach at rival neighbor Espanyol Barcelona, were notably surveyed to start the reconstruction site, according to the Spanish press.
But Pique said it: all the evils of Barça are not to be blamed on a technician called to the rescue barely eight months ago. The roots are deeper.
The average age of the eleven Blaugrana aligned on Friday night is almost 30 years old (29 years and 329 days), the oldest Barcelona eleven aligned in the history of the C1.
The six-time Argentinian Ballon d'Or Lionel Messi, still crowned last December but who at 33 is no longer able to carry Barça's ambitions alone, must he refuse the extension of his contract to avoid devouring the club which fed him since adolescence?
The Argentine superstar offered no public reaction to coming out of the defeat on Friday night. But he hasn't stopped repeating it since February: Barça is "not good enough". The last astronomical recruits, Dembélé (138 M), Coutinho (145 M) and Griezmann (120 M), did not have the expected return.
The only option, the revolution? The future could go through its young rising stars, like Frenkie de Jong, Riqui Puig and especially the nugget Ansu Fati. But the great Barça of the 2010s is gone, and reconstruction will take time.
© 2020 AFP