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Finishing second in your domestic league, playing in the quarterfinals of the Champions League, and playing in the final of the domestic cup competition may appear a more than adequate season for most football teams... but FC Barcelona is not just any other football team.
For them, this season has been an unmitigated disaster (that has been salvaged at times due to the individual brilliance of Lionel Messi) and it’s not just the end result. Real Madrid have looked palpably the better team in the league while it must be worrying that, however good that defence is, they never even looked like giving Juventus a moment of bother across two full legs of football! They’ve looked toothless, aimless and utterly pathetic at times and that is no way for Futbol Club Barcelona to go about their business.
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While getting rid of the dramatically tactically-inept Luis Enrique is a step in the right direction, here are 5 major tweaks that the catalns could undertake to become the unstoppable force of yore... next season.
5. Ensure adequate squad depth
This may not sound like the most astute, Gary Neville-esque, bit of tactical analysis but the main reason for Barcelona’s poor run this season has been their rather hilariously weak squad. Where Real Madrid could afford to rest every one of their regular first-teamers and still come up with three points (as we saw happen for much of the last couple of months of the season), Barcelona simply couldn’t afford that luxury – or didn’t seem too comfortable with doing that.
A few of the buys simply haven’t been given time to settle in – like Arda Turan and Paco Alcacer, who are much better players than what most think of them today, others haven’t been good enough – Andre Gomes springs to mind here, while another bunch of players haven’t been trusted by the manager to do their jobs – fullbacks Lucas Digne and Aleix Vidal for example.
The first thing that the board must attend to (after, of course, clearing up the confusion surrounding Lionel Messi’s contract) is to ensure that they have at the very least 20 A-class players in the squad, players that the new coach approves of, so that they all get decent playing time and don’t waste away on the bench.
Re-investing a bit back into La Masia wouldn’t go amiss, either.
4. Stop by-passing the midfield
Over the past couple of years Luis Enrique’s Barcelona have been winning football games by employing the revolutionary new tactic of having three of the four best forwards in the game today on your side and simply giving them the ball. This has meant that the likes of Sergio Busquets, Andres Iniesta and Ivan Rakitic have been utterly bypassed as Barca look to bring the ball to the likes of Neymar, Luis Suarez or Lionel Messi as quickly as possible.
Forget tiki-taka, this is something straight out of the imagination of a 13-year old Playstation addict.
While it worked brilliantly for the first couple of seasons – the mere presence of those three gave Barca an incredible mental edge over their opponents – this time around teams across Spain, and Europe, have realised that while they may not be able to stop MSN when they are in the mood, they can certainly give the Catalans a shakedown if they were to venture forward.
Cutting off the supply line to the much vaunted front-trio has been easy, while the sheer lack of time they are getting on the ball has rendered La Blaugrana’s traditional stronghold – the middle of the pitch – one of their weakest areas.
They must now abandon the tactic and go back to their roots of patient, possession based football with the midfielders doing the creating rather than the forwards – how Xavi must be itching to holler this very thing from every rooftop in Catalunya.
3. Abandon the 3-at-the-back experiment and make optimum use of the full-backs
While Pep Guardiola employed the three-at-the-back experiment rarely during his phenomenal reign at the Camp Nou, Luis Enrique has been much more open to the concept and during crucial matches has gone ahead with employing a 3-4-3 system which had one of the traditional fullbacks Jordi Alba or Sergi Roberto play as wide men while forcing one of the regular central midfielders Andre Gomes or Ivan Rakitic out wide.
While supporters of this approach will point out the spectacular success it had in that remarkable Paris Saint-Germain second leg, you only have to look at the game that occurred three days later to identiffy the critical flaws of this strategy as Deportivo La Coruna comprehensively outplayed them at the Riazor. While the most obvious thing that match highlighted was how piss-poor PSG were, the key take-away should have been just how aimless Barcelona looked, both on the ball and off it. With players playing out of position and a midfield that didn’t really know what to do, it looked very much like the bad ol’ days of post-Figo and pre-Ronaldinho Barca when no one knew just what exactly was going on.
Next season, they should stick to their traditional 4-3-3 and ensure that the full-backs are given freedom to bomb forward. One of the things that made Barcelona so good back in the day was the attacking impetus provided by the likes of Dani Alves, Eric Abidal and Jodi Alba down the flanks – they were the forerunners to what would become one of the most important aspects of modern football, the presence of a roving full-back who would allow the forward player to cut in and wreak havoc while still maintaing the option of having a player hugging the touchline.
Aleix Vidal demonstrated just how better Barca are when Lionel Messi has a right back behind him that bombs forward when he finally regained Enrique’s trust but injury cut that tryst short. As good as Sergi Roberto is, it is time the new management got a proper right back to do what they do best.
2. Move on from the Busquets-destroyer role
Sergio Busquets was arguably the disappointment of the season for Barcelona as the Catalan simply couldn’t get the kind of grip on the game that made him one of the best midfielders in the world. A large part of this, of course, was due to his dip in form (something that’s understandable given how he’s been at the top of the game for so very long) but another, more worrying reason (for Barca), seems to be that opponents have figured him out.
Whilst earlier they were lulled into thinking that Busquets was hardly any danger on the ball, they’ve now realised that closing him down with increased ferocity nips many a Barcelona attack in the bud – while Busquets has a vast array of skills, a varied passing range is not one of them and this has left La Blaugrana handicapped at times in midfield.
As radical as this sounds, may be it is time then that the Catalans moved on from the 28-year-old mainstay of their tiki-taka heyday and evolved by employing a Xabi Alonso-esque playmaker in that role... someone who has the ability to create as well as destroy. A player that seems ready made for this role is Marco Verratti, or even his PSG teammate Adrien Rabiot. With the likes of Ivan Rakitic and Andres Iniesta/some kind of replacement for Iniesta on either side of said deep-lying playmaker Barca could make that ever subtle shift in strategy that could unsettle opponents who otherwise know exactly what’s coming at them.
1. Ensure Lionel Messi maintains his positional discipline
Ivan Rakitic is a fabulous player who has been getting a lot of unfair stick this season for the kind of performances he has put in. This is not to say his performances haven’t been bad, but to point out that most of that has not been down to any fault of the Croatian. Whose fault is it then?
In my books, the blame lies squarely at the footsteps of Lionel Andres Messi.
STOP! Don’t throw your device out of the window just yet. Hear me out.
While Messi has garnered a lot of praise for dropping deep into midfield and kick-starting attacks (that he himself usually finishes off), the effect it has on the team shape has gone largely unnoticed for everytime he drops deep he occupies the space that Rakitic would usually be sitting in. Forced to play out of position – a lot wider on the pitch, or a lot more forward to cover up for the glaring hole that Messi leaves – the Croatian’s undoubted playmaking talents have gone completely to waste.
Messi should take a leaf out of the noveau-adapted Cristiano Ronaldo’s book and stop trying to do everthing for his team. In that way, he conserves his energy better, and is in a much better place (physically, menally, and tactically) to wreak havoc where it really matters – in the opposition third. (Oh, refer to point 3, give him a proper right back in support, will you?)
On a related note, maybe Barcelona should indeed consider selling Neymar. Not only will this free-up funds for the much needed task of squad rebuilding, it will ensure that no one else on the football field compromises their shape. The Brazilian is brilliant, but very individualistic and tries to do too many things at the same time and Barca simply can’t afford to have two players being given the freedom of the pitch – while Messi is still on the pitch, there can only be one top dog.
