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Jumping off this thread to add a general point: there's a lot of talk about "institutional" and "systemic" problems at Barça, but at least based on typical social media chatter, many fans have not grasped what that really means, b/c the focus is still on player quality. https://twitter.com/TuanTzu/status/1293937185243136002
Someone (xaviesquement?) tweeted once about how misguided it is to still be talking about individual quality when the club has spent over 1 billion in transfers. Exactly. This is one reason why I'm a bit tired of most discussions on problems w/ the club.
Even analyses of transfers still focus on almost entirely on quality & "fit," but here's the problem: you can put together an entire starting 11 of players who fit perfectly & that still won't solve the real issue, which is that Barcelona is no longer cutting edge.
Barça is like a superpower resting on its laurels instead of actively staying ahead of the curve. It boasts a highly productive sport-research arm but does not apply those results to their 1st team (see retweeted example).
It does not have a team psychologist when the pressure to perform is crushing & being mentally healthy demonstrably improves performance.
In the draw against Celta Vigo, Aspas commented that their technical staff told them Barça's wall is always set up a particular way.
In the draw against Celta Vigo, Aspas commented that their technical staff told them Barça's wall is always set up a particular way.
When was the last time a Barça player credited their technical staff for a planned move? Celta friggin' Vigo does better opposition research than Barcelona, & rather than be outraged at that, fans were getting angry about Griezmann not jumping properly. Missing the point!
I remember people laughing when Liverpool hired a throw-in coach, & it really brought home to me how the average fan is working w/ knowledge that is at least a decade behind (no thanks to supposedly expert journalists perpetuating outdated ideas).
I had a tiresome argument w/ a fan after Anfield. They kept insisting TAA came up w/ that corner taken quickly by himself. They dismissed the involvement of Klopp/technical staff by saying TAA didn't have an earpiece to receive real-time instructions. But that's not necessary.
All that was needed was a pre-game talk: "Based on our opposition research, Barcelona is slow to defend set-pieces. Look for a moment when they're distracted & take a quick corner." It's on TAA to be alert & execute those instructions (that's player quality), but he had help.
After Anfield, Busquets said that Liverpool were faster & smarter. What he likely noticed was that no matter what Barça did, Liverpool was able to anticipate. And why? B/c behind the players in red was an entire competent technical department. https://twitter.com/MaaxiAngelo/status/1267423915330199553
Why did the likes of Alba, Rakitic, & Coutinho make critical mistakes at Anfield? Probably b/c Liverpool's technical staff/research team identified which players on the team weren't press-resistant & targeted them.
In contrast, Barça's players are left to flounder on the pitch. Their technical staff offers no solutions, leaning on individual quality that is increasingly read. Messi, Busquets, & Piqué have been pros for over a decade; they are some of the most studied players on the planet.
The fact that they aren't totally irrelevant by now is testament to their quality. But individual players, no matter how great, cannot counter the might of big data w/o help. Recall Messi's shots being saved? That's probably in part b/c they're being predicted by analytics.
Barça's technical staff could counter w/ their own analytics, identifying habits the player himself may not be aware of to help him be less predictable, but we see no on-pitch evidence that they are doing this (or are any good at it).
The club is happy to let media & fans descend on the players (good, bad, amigos, whatever) b/c they know this distracts from their real problem: Barça has fallen behind due to a lack of investment in the sport. Here's Bartomeu re: his priorities. https://twitter.com/elfals9/status/1276313038103199744
Guardiola's revolution at Barça wasn't just down to his tactics nor his eye for quality. It was innovation, proto-analytics (Alves recalled Guardiola coming in w/ reams of paper to convince players), emphasis on how lifestyle (diet, sleep) affects performance.
The importance of a proper lifestyle is so widely accepted now that ppl forget it was totally new then. In the 90s, players were getting drunk after games & partying constantly. You frequently hear retired players marveling at how much more professional modern footballers are.
There's a military saying: Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. In my opinion, Guardiola's major breakthrough was to emphasize, more than any other big club at the time, logistics as much as on-pitch tactics.
And that kind of innovation, the development of ideas that are scoffed at initially (stricter lifestyle, throw-in coaches) but then get widely adopted b/c they work, it should have kept happening at Barça. They should've been the club surprising the football world.
Instead, Barça let others take the lead. They were too busy becoming the richest club to look for novel ways of gaining an edge.
Discussing players is fun & part of being a fan, but I can't take seriously any diagnosis of Barça's problems that puts players at the center.
Discussing players is fun & part of being a fan, but I can't take seriously any diagnosis of Barça's problems that puts players at the center.
