Koeman Market: "Mbappé? Lukaku? It is absurd to pay those amounts seeing how the world is doing"
LaLiga Barcelona lives a defensive ordeal in San Mamés
Ronald Koeman's
situation
at Barça is strange.
When he moves away from the memory of the Wembley shoe or that press room where he feels respected and unique, he is no longer an icon.
The day his team beat Real Sociedad at the Camp Nou on the first day of the League, the fans, who had not been to the stadium since the days of
Quique Setién
, did not pay much attention to his presence. His name, unlike that of
Luis Enrique
, was not chanted in the rebellious background of the stands. His skills as a coach and his pragmatic and simple rhetoric are not useful either to build stories in the surrounding media pulpits.
Johan Cruyff
and
Pep Guardiola
are in another dimension.
Koeman is a club man drawn into contradiction. Because in the board of directors, where it was already reluctantly assumed that his dismissal was financially unaffordable, his figure never aroused passion. President
Joan Laporta
, who came to confess that he was looking for a replacement before accepting his continuity, then made a series of stylistic and conceptual appreciations that the Dutchman, in his own way, tries to follow. His contract, yes, was never renewed. It concludes on June 30. Instability, therefore, will load the environment and will be the norm throughout the course.
Even more so if Koeman does not manage to stabilize sportively a project that squeaks in the same dressing room.
Griezmann
, who confessed after the draw in San Mamés that he expects a difficult campaign, also said something that went unnoticed: "We didn't know how to get out of the pressure."
Because the mechanisms for this are not yet worked out.
Because the associations between the pieces are not greased.
Because, without the spotlight on
Messi
, there is no longer a safe way out.
From Umtiti to Pjanic
The fronts that Koeman has open are many and varied.
Samuel Umtiti
, his sixth central, will stay, even if it is living off the silly soup.
Miralem Pjanic
, whom the coach wants little to know about, closely controls whether any of his suitors can pay him what Bartomeu signed him one fine day.
Ilaix Moriba
has gone from being his favorite youth squad to a footballer abducted by the financial claims of his father and the German agency Rogon. While
Coutinho
, the most expensive signing in the club's history, appears as a hypothetical hope while
Dembélé
, the next on the list of rude disbursements, negotiates the renewal from the stretcher.
Martin Braithwaite
is the center forward. At least until they return from their injuries
Ansu Fati
, who was intervened four times on his left knee at 18, and
Sergio Agüero
, who is 33. Kun, Laporta's personal bet before backing down on Messi's renewal, is the second oldest player in the squad after Piqué (34). Last season he started only eight times at City.
Beyond the importance of the return of
Ter Stegen
, another year captain without an armband, perhaps the only evidence is Memphis. He has already accepted a residual salary for accompanying his former coach in the Netherlands. And
Griezmann
, already without the alibi of Messi's brilliance, continues to be more concerned with collecting balls in his own field than creating in attack.
The scenario is not simple.
Koeman directs a dressing room in which both, under pressure from a club in ruins, monitor each other to see who has lowered their salary (
Piqué
,
Jordi Alba
and
Busquets
for now) and at what level.
In which sacred cows share the box office (eight players are 30 years old or older) with beardless children (in the first two days they have already debuted the pivot
Nico González
, 19, and the winger
Yusuf Demir
, 18).
Of
Riqui Puig
, despite his hours of golf with Laporta, nothing is known.
And the squad, as the coach complains, looks like the Marx brothers' cabin: it can reach 33 footballers.
'Cruyffist' commandments
One of the commitments that Koeman acquired with Laporta was that his team would be recognizable with a brave game and according to the
Cruyffista
commandments
. Coincidence or not, the 3-5-2 was barely seen for a while in preseason. The coach has proposed to grow from 4-3-3. Change the shape, not so much the background. It is a system that only holds if the center of the field is authoritative with the ball and monopolizes the rhythm. It did not happen in Bilbao. Koeman still believes he needs a strong and passionate midfielder to balance. But
Wijnaldum
preferred the PSG safe.
Suffocated and on vacation
Pedri
,
De Jong
leads his own war.
The rearguard suffers.
The bands of
Dest
and Alba hold the rifts.
And in the center, Piqué continues to cheat with his physical problems - he will return to the Pizjuán, he decides - while Eric García, sanctioned, needs a corrector at his side.
It will be difficult for
Araujo
, with more body and faith than foot, to lose a place that he will recover against Getafe.
Lenglet
will also return
, a suspect who drags into the past.
Koeman, in San Mamés, closed everything in one sentence: "Before we gave Messi a pass and we knew that he would not lose it."
But that no longer works.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
sports
Ronald Koeman
Leo Messi
Antoine Griezmann
Ter Stegen
Joan Laporta
Frenkie de Jong
Clément Lenglet
soccer
HBPR
FootballThe great nightmare of Barcelona: the reunion of its myths in 'exile'
FútbolA Barcelona in 'shock' after resigning Messi has not yet been able to register his four signings
LaLiga SantanderThe gray future of Barcelona: Is there something after Messi?
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