Wasn’t he one of the gems of the youth system? I thought I saw more than a few comments billing him as Alba’s eventual replacement?
I think the not promoting from La Masia criticism is a bit overblown tbh. How many players recently can Barca say they truly regret not keeping all of this time? Not to mention that the Munir’s of the world will only tolerate back-up minutes for so long.
The lack of development is at the heart of the issue and the cause of it, the effect being the lack of home grown players.
There’s more options than that and promoting a bunch of La Masia kids though. Like if they bought Lautaro who they want now instead of Coutinho, for example.
I’m sure some is due to a lack of development but let’s also not forget that re-producing the likes of Xavi, Iniesta, Pique, Messi, etc. will likely never happen again.
Ah, so you’re saying if they had a time machine and went back to avoid all of shitty buys they made due to lack of vision and preparation and instead made different, better purchases they wouldn’t be in this mess? Great insight.
Well yeah I don't think anyone expects that, but at the same time the only regular that I can think of since those guys is Sergi, and that's more out of necessity than him forcing his way into the team. Fati and Puig are promising which is nice but fortifying the back line and the attack through La Masia instead of $30+ transfers is a good way to ease the budget. The problem is compounding, between panic signing Coutinho and Dembele after Neymar left and trying to force Coutinho into being a wing, and then panic signing Greizmann when those two signings didn't work the club has put themselves in the financial situation where they have to swap 23 y/o Arthur with loads of potential for Pjanic in order to gain financially. The chain reaction that has happened since Neymar left has just amplified the problem.
More so saying deciding to buy over promoting from the academy wasn’t necessarily the wrong choice, though they of course haven’t been great in choosing players.
Tifo did a good report on La Masia that's always a good rewatch. It's not as simple as "just play more players from La Masia"
Sigh You guys know we're going to lose to Napoli, right? Barring some sort of Messi miracle, or genius tactical moves by Quique. We'll have zero midfield. Busquets and Vidal suspended. de Jong injury doubts. Arthur will have zero fucks to give. That'll leave Rakitic, Puig, and....? If we'd ever shown another formation it'd be one thing but we haven't done anything outside of a 4-3-3 in more than a decade.
Well, I'm a bit shocked in that we tried something different at all. First time in more than two seasons we tried anything different
Red card on Ansu was justified but the one on Espanyola was kinda BS, imo. I don't think they were the same. Oh well. Madrid been benefiting from officiating all season, so we can take one for ourselves. Sergio Roberto being back is so nice. Two great games back to back from him. Diego Lopez sold himself out to absolutely ROB Messi of a goal. Good Lord.
Puig, Roberto, and Frenkie together in the midfield might be pretty nice. Might be enough to get us past Napoli
Straight red seemed harsh on Ansi given the timespan when he got the first touch. But yeah, he obviously can’t be flying around that recklessly.
You guys ever wonder what it'd be like if we spent 400M on youthful replacements for our 30 y/o's instead of 400M on 3 left wingers?
b team advances to the promotion final on sunday would be big for continued development for moriba, konrad, monchu and others, obviously
looking like the first move of summer will be bringing eric garcia back hopefully it can work out even half as well as the last time we brought a cb back home from manchester
This is 100% our stupid-ass board's fault. Of fucking course he doesn't want to give up his 230k per week. It's the same with Coutinho. They're shopping him for about 50M, but he's not even worth that. We might get a 1/4 what we paid for him. This board is so goddamn awful
City is going to take us to the cleaners for him. Pep loves the kid and wants him as the future of their D. Our board is guaranteed to do something stupid as fuck and overpay Eric, instead of just keeping in constant contact with him and getting him for free in '21. If we can get him now for ~21M, that's not terrible. City's demanding 30M rn and that's outrageous.
pep coming out and saying garcia isnt going to extend his contract doesnt do much for city trying to leverage a higher payment if he was 25 i would say just ride it out and let him come back in a year, but at 19 years old id rather just bring him in now instead of having him stay somewhere that wont give him game time and wont be interested in his development
I don’t want to take anything away from Messi’s goal, because that was pure alien Messi magic, but that little hop to get his foot in front of Koulibaly and draw the penalty was one of the niftiest moves I’ve seen in a long-ass time. Just the split second intelligence to know that if he quickly switches feet, he can get in front of Koulibaly’s foot.
frenkie was really good in the first half I like the sergi-semedo interchange on the right hand side as well
no plan at all in the second half if youre gonna sit back and invite pressure, either bring on ansu so you have an option in the counterattack or bring on an extra defender and commit to the bit
Glad we beat Napoli, but we are going to get dicked so hard by Bayern unless we can manifest Zidane’s black magic and shit-house our way to a title.
We can do it. Pique and Lenglet have career defining games. We play that beautiful 4-4-2 diamond with Saurez and Griezmann up front and Messi roaming behind them. We have a chance. We can do it.
This team is gonna play Vidal and Roberto. Will get trucked in the midfield. Overwhelmed by pace on the wings. Team is so slow. And Bayern isn’t that
Roberto and Alba, probably give us our best chance. Semedo is all attack and a liability on defense. FdJ, Vidal, Busquets in the middle, please. I just can't trust Puig's first Champions League game to be a knockout game against Bayern. By all means, please sub him in. But not a start.
Nah, the play should be: Semedo pique lenglet Alba De Jong Busquets Vidal Griezmann Messi Suarez Have to go defensive and for ball control in the MF. Have Vidal run around like the fucking lunatic that he is. Bring on Roberto for Vidal if tied or ahead, or Semedo if trailing, to keep the energy up. And if we’re chasing for a goal or goals, Fati for Griezmann and Puig for Busquets to bring creativity and speed into play.
I forget if it was Roberto or Semedo that got absolutely abused by Vinicius. I could be completely misremembering, but I remember being surprised at how well one of the two handled him compared to the other, so my feeling is that Roberto got abused by him and Semedo actually did reasonably well. Then again, I could have been surprised that Roberto did well because he’s considerably slower. Basically I know nothing outside of one of the two dealing with him decently
Well, everyone with a good Left Winger abuses Semedo, so my immediate assumption is it was him. BUT, there are people that claim he's got defensive skills, so maybe this is the one game they point to. IDK. I like the guy and definitely want to keep him, but for my money in a game we need more D, I'm going Roberto
I dream of a day when Dembele doesn’t fall apart whenever he touches grass, so that Messi can just spray balls all over the field for he and Fati to run onto