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It was a bad day at the office for Tata Martino on Saturday. Barcelona had played in the Champions League on Tuesday and had three days rest before their match with Real Sociedad. They don’t play again for a full week, yet they went conservative with their starting 11 and now find themselves squarely in second place. Despite this, I think there is some major good to come out of this and maybe the coach has learned a valuable lesson or two.
Tata started with this lineup;
There were massive changes from the week’s match at Manchester City. They also don’t play with a double pivot. Sociedad on the road is the 3rd toughest match for them away this season by far after the two Madrid teams. You don’t play for an entire week, so at worst you play your best 11 barring injured players from the week. Xavi and Cesc were available to start and play. Only Cesc was subbed on. This was not a match to take lightly.
Sociedad has a strong midfield and they know how to beat good teams despite losing players over the summer. They grew the grass long to slow the passing and played with the loose striker upfront and deep in defence. The classic “how to beat Barca 101? strategy. They slow the ball down coming at you and speed the ball up by going in the air when moving forward, hoping that Barca gets caught too far up field and can’t recover over the slow grass a few times which might lead to a goal or two… or three. If you get a lead, drop back and clear it long.
Real are a good team and they beat Barca in this same fixture last year. To go with probably the worst lineup behind their front line all year was a major mistake. To suddenly play a double pivot when they have not played that system in years is baffling. Their linkage play comes from having two attacking midfielders. If you don’t start Xavi then start Cesc, who they feel obligated to play anyway.
Song has been suitable when needed in the defensive midfield area, but playing him alongside Sergio was pointless. Barca didn’t have their normal ball control in midfield until Cesc came on. It was extremely difficult to get the ball to the frontline in situations where they weren’t dealing with five defenders.
Neymar has been recovering from an injury and this was his first start back. He took a severe knock early on and hobbled around for the rest of the match, but they didn’t make the substitution for Tello or Alexis to get him off as expected. The backline was even worse. Bartra has shown signs he may be special, but when linked with Montoya who doesn’t see enough game time, you are asking for trouble. It all adds up to too many situations where Pique has to do too much, with leads to him looking really bad. I could hear the detractors screaming for Pique’s head despite the fact that they have one of the best statistical defenses in the world.
Gerard Pique didn’t have a good game
Then the slow substitutions occurred. Real went up 2-1 in the second half, but it was a full seven minutes plus before Cesc was subbed for Song and by that time, it was 3-1. The bench needed to rock into action quicker. Bringing Cesc on over your field general Xavi was also a little baffling. When you are down, bring a leader on, not a guy who is concerned about playing time. It was also baffling that it took Real going up a goal for a substitution to be made in the first place. The evidence was out there on the field that this was not working.
Why do we have to fall behind before we react? They went three at the back by bringing Alexis on, but why not bring Xavi on at that point? You have the attackers already, they just need to get the ball where they can do something with it. Neymar should have come off for Tello. It was a chance for Tello to step up and Neymar was not ready for 90 minutes just yet.
What’s worse is Tata was ejected at half-time with the score at 1-1 with no real close calls to complain about. It was puzzling. There did not seem to be a bias by the official or an obvious blown call the entire first half. According to Marca, it didn’t stop Tata shouting:
‘You’re an a******! You caused trouble the other day and you’re doing it today’
So with the Madrid derby next week and a chance to gain points on their close rivals, or even a chance to go top all by yourself, Barca bottled it with a C- starting lineup. The next two matches are against lower placed La Liga clubs. Tata gets an F- for his coaching performance against Sociedad.
He could have started his best 11 knowing that he could rest key players for two weeks and used much weaker line-ups. He needed to put way more emphasis on this match and instead it looked like he was trying to dance around it on the pure skill of his top players upfront.
Yet, just when I’m ready to write off this coach, he does something very surprising. He goes into the post-match press conference and admits:
“I misread the game…I thought the best approach to get the win would be to do what we did in the ‘Copa del Rey’ second leg…We delayed making any changes because I thought that Messi’s goal had gotten us back into the game. Then they scored twice in close succession and that showed I made the wrong decision. I was planning to bring on Xavi to control the game in the last 20 minutes, but it didn’t pan out like that”
My faith was restored. Maybe this is the lesson that this Barca team needed. Maybe now they can take something from a loss and rally behind it. It’s time to start dropping the hammer on teams and play full guns blazing.
The Liga is a battle, but the Copa is down to one match. The Champions League is a massive battle, but their road performance eased the pressure in their current tie making the second leg a lot less important. Barca control their own fate in the league. Beat the Madrids and stay clean the rest of the way and Barca can hoist the trophy no matter what. They could have made it a lot easier, but it’s still in their hands.
Everybody makes mistakes. Nobody is perfect. Tata needs to show his worth though now. He needs to learn from this match. Perhaps the wind under his wings after beating Manchester City had clouded his judgement. If it means he doesn’t ever do it again, then it was a lesson worth the price it cost to Barcelona’s season.
