FanPost

Barcelona 2013-4: The Remnants of a Transfer Gone Horribly Wrong


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I have come upon a theory that the rise of our iconic 2010-11 team and the three seasons after that may in large part have been a consequence of the most significant upheaval in our club’s recent history. This was, as if you needed to be reminded, the transfer exchange of Eto’o for Zlatan and the latter player’s chaotic stay and departure a year later.

Not only did the Ibra move ultimately result in a net loss of tens of millions of dollars, but it also largely changed our style in that Pep decided to no longer use a traditional striker up front but instead center the team’s play around its four best skilled players: Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, and Messiwith the first three responsible for maintaining possession and the latter for scoring an incredibly large percentage of our goals as a false 9.

With this decision came two significant consequences: the rise of Messi as the undisputed star of world football and its now well recognized correlate, the concern of what commentators came to call "Messi Dependency". In those years Messi achieved great heights netting 47, 53. 73, and 60 goals and won 3 Pichichi and 3 Ballon D’or awards to add to his original which he won for 2009 with a Barcelona team that was much more balanced in attack.

Partly because of Messi’s injuries this year and at the end of last, the dynamic changed when we no longer were able to count on him in the lineup. This was nowhere more obvious then when Messi picked up a hamstring injury against PSG last year and the team struggled against quality sides in the Champions League including the PSG home leg when we relied on the largely unfit star to come on in the middle of the second half to help us nick a goal to advance to the Semis. This was, of course, a blessing and a curse in that the team was really shown how vulnerable it was against top European teams without our superstar.

So how did the club address the obvious problem of Messi dependency in the summer transfer window? The club launched a daring move to bring the most promising young talent in world football a year early. With Neymar, now giving the side another powerful player to break down defenses and get his own shot. So going into this season, we addressed two problems related to Messi dependency. The first was that we had a viable scorer who could compensate for a Messi injury as well as another offensive talent of immense promise to partner with Messi in attack.

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In purchasing Neymar this year, the board’s decision at first seemed to have been brilliant. Messi struggled with his fitness in the first part of the year to a point that he had to be sidelined for weeks to allow adequate recovery. During the time he was away, the team scored at the same rate as before (one goal every 32 minutes) with Neymar, Sanchez and Pedro picking up on most of the needed goals.

So when Messi returned in January, it was the perfect time to integrate the rising productivity of Neymar and Sanchez with a now fit Messi. Unfortunately, Neymar was then sidelined for over a month when he was injured in a Copa match against Getafe and then again in the Copa del Rey Finals against Real Madrid . The end result of these injuries was that Neymar missed or was not fully fit for most of the matches in the second half of our season.

Just about the time Neymar was injuryed in January, a very important knockout tie against Man City was looming menacingly. It was probably at this time some of our most experienced players came to think that our best chance to taking home silverware at the most important time of the season was to go back to our old style, the one perfected under Pep which relied on Messi’s brilliance in the false nine role and Xavi and Iniesta attempting to slow the tempo in the midfield and control possession.

At first, as Guillem Balague’s article below written around that time suggests, this seemed like the right move as we were able to handily control Man City by keeping possession and relying on a brilliant Iniesta pass to Messi to prevail as we had in Champions League knockout rounds of the past. After that, however, the decision to revert to our old style may in retrospect be viewed as more of a trap than a blessing.

Could part of our difficulties in the second half of the season also been the result of the team trying to figure out whether to also return to the type of play characterized by Messi dependency? That is, should the team try to focus itself around our best player again or not, particularly if he was not on his best form and our opponents went even further out of their way to take him out of the game? Other players may have been largely caught between two conflicting impulses: should I try to get the ball to Leo to bail us out again or try instead to use my own skills to win the game?

For this reason, maybe one of the bigger questions for Martino and the team in the second half of our season was not just the dilemma of Fabregas or Xavi but also Messi dependency or not.

Link: Guillem Balague’s Article

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<em>This does not represent the views of Barca Blaugranes or SBNation</em>

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