Many
of the fans might be wondering is this the same Barca they used to support few
years back. The Barcelona showed some beautifully crafted passing game combined
with excellent possession in the past years. Well, logically it is but
technically it isn’t. So what is wrong with this new Barcelona? What has
changed in this new Barcelona that made once a top-of-the-world team a weak
outfit or more precisely an unpredictable one. Well for the answers we’ll have
to dig a little deeper and look into past where our answers might lie.
The Beginning:
Thinking
of Barcelona make us automatically think of a club with some excellent passing
and possession game. The foundation of this great game was laid by Johann
Cryuff who not only introduced ‘tiki-taka’ style of play but induced some great
players capable of playing possession football namely Pep Guardiola, Michael
Laudraup, Romario and Ronald Koeman to name a few with Guardiola being a
product of Barcelona’s own youth academy ‘La Masia’ which was also an
initiative of Cryuff.
The Glory:
To
continue Cryuff’s legacy came Rijkaard and Guardiola successively who made
Barcelona which made many football fans love Barcelona and their game. Rijkaard
strengthened the now-getting-old Barcelona to a totally new outfit bringing in
players like Ronaldinho, Deco, Samuel Eto’o while at the same time bringing the
future superstars like Xavi, Andrea Iniesta, Carles Puyol, and Lionel Messi
from La Masia hence laying a foundation for the upcoming manager Guardiola.
Guardiola
who is now known as one of the greatest managers Barcelona ever had took
Barcelona to a totally new level. Following the same strategy he quickly
removed old players and replaced them with new ones while at the same time
promoting youngsters from La Masia like namely Thiago Alcantara, Pedro Rodriguez
nd Sergio Busquets. It was noted that both continued the same Tika-Taka
football throughout their tenure.
The Transition:
With
the appointment of late Tito Vilanova started the transition era of Barcelona
with the gameplay changing drastically from possession to direct play. Although
the change started quite before during the last years of Guardiola with the
signing of some fast Inside forwards like David Villa, it was further carried
out be Tata Martino who succeeded Tito. Barcelona continued to sign fast
foreign players like Neymar changing their gameplay totally.
So
now the Barcelona we see today is totally different from Barcelona we used to
know with some pacey wingers, direct style of play, some shaky defense and a
squad which mostly include foreign players. This Barcelona is still changing
with new boss Luis Enrique doing his experiments in every match to rebuild
Barcelona. Let’s just hope it might get us somewhere.
Have
your say below about Barcelona.
Writer: Usman Ahmed
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