What does Barcelona's next great team look like?

Barcelona were kicked out of the Champions League quarterfinals this week by PSG they aren't going to win La Liga and their manager quit halfway through the season which is hardly ideal so today I'm joined by John McKenzie and JJ bu to discuss the long-term future of Barcelona John has this been a good or bad season for Barcelona well I think it's important for us to remember that our answer to that question may be informed by the last 90 minutes of football that Barcelona played so that was a game of football which was largely determined by a red card and before that red card Barcelona like they were very comfortably going through and if that had happened we would be having a very different conversation now at least the narratives would be very different so I think it's important for us to to try and cut through some of that noise and think you know what are the objective reasons for for what Barcelona season actually has been like which is what we're going to do uh today although we are going to acknowledge that the narrative JJ it does have real consequences people you know people get fired because of these sorts of things we're going to try and leave it aside for now though um and with that in mind good or bad season what are the what are the what are the key key factors well I think it's important to put it all into context because they probably going to finish second in La Liga which is good they didn't get into the semi-final of the Champions League which is bad they were knocked out of both the cups which is bad they had big defeats to Real Madrid which is relevant because they are measured about well how they are against Real Madrid that is relevant but if you look at the overall it's not the worst and they did bring through top tier lamazia products who could be stars for the future going forward as well but it is worse than last season it is worse you have to look at why that might be now one big reason I think is that during this season I think only three players over the course of the entire season haven't been injured at some point and they've been really key players and so that derails a lot of what you want to do any consistent tactical ideas you can't really get them you have to drop people in they don't have a huge first team squad as it is but the funny thing with it is that despite all those things and they seem like it's worse the underlying numbers make it seem like they're actually kind of all right John yeah it's there's an argument to be made that not a lot has changed since last season so on the board here you can see we've got Arona is expected goal difference per 90 what this essentially shows is that across this season we can see here we've got seven seasons of data across this season you would expect Barcelona to put up an expected goal more than their opponent which means that you would expect them to win most of their games by a one-goal margin obviously that's not how it works but they're in a good position because most of the time you'd expect them to win but actually there a couple of interesting things for us to see here and one of them is that last season they were pretty much on exactly the same sort of figure it is a very crude metric but in terms of what they were doing last season they were putting up around one expected goal difference in in every game and that's the same as what's happening this season and then if we go back through time we can see that actually over the last few seasons a lot of the other managers haven't managed to do that we go back all the way back to anesto alde here um and he was around that same level and won the league actually won the league in The Following Season as well with slightly less good numbers too but if we move forward what essentially has happened since Javy has arrived is he starts off low moves high and has been fairly consistent since and if we break down those numbers then into attacking and defensive numbers and other few interesting things show up so this is the just the expected goal per 90 and as we can see this season actually slightly higher than it was last season so Barcelona creating around the same sort of chance quality that they were last season one of the things that people pointed to Midway through the season because I think the story of this season has been that Barcelona sort of dipped in the middle had a had a bad period and then have gotten better was that they were underperforming their expected goals and this was sort of hung out as a as a reason for for why that might be the case but actually interestingly enough they underperformed there expected goals last season as well so last season 6.5 uh under expected goals so they scored 6.5 less goals than you might have expected them to now obviously there's still seven games to go this season um but if we compare those two figures we can see they're sort of roughly analogous it's the same sort of figure that you that that they're underperforming their expected goals by again so it seems as though the reason why people are talking about that is because the season hasn't been perceived to have gone as well rather than actually there's been any great shift in the numbers and then defensive numbers this is the area where I think there's been the biggest drop off because you can see the expected goals against per 90 has dropped significantly this season risen I should say because it's you don't want to have expected goals against so up is bad up is bad so yeah slightly worse this season first goal conceded in games you can see that's gone up as well they're conceding the first goal in games in one in four game matches rather than one in five which it was last season this is relevant as well because last season they won the league on the strength their defensive numbers they massively over overperformed expected goals against a big reason for that um he not black and white but you could say that's probably cuz Andre Turan is so good as a goalkeeper so that often happens but he's been missing for 3 months of the season with an injury uh this is what the injuries come into it so even though like the underlying numbers are kind of similar when you have elite players they tend to perform better than those expected numbers so that's where you get the real difference so if you're missing tan that's a huge difference like pen is a good goalkeeper but he's not the elite level and then you start missing individual Defenders who weren't there for most of the Season you lack the consistency of your team but then you lose gavy for most of the season pedri is constantly out it's your main creat um and then your main goal scorer is out of form for a lot of bit as well so all these things have come together to kind of even though the numbers look good underneath it that makes a huge difference you don't have the players you need to make that work there was another key player missing this season wasn't there there was a bigger player missing who wasn't injured but has gone it's like the end of an era at Barcelona Sergio bus's left to sail the Seas to America where he's having a lot of fun in Miami with his Pals but in losing buset they've lost an enormous part of what Barcelona was he's one of the best defensive fielders of all time but he does so much for that team like things that buset used to do for that team you might not even notice half of them people always say if you watch busket you see the game is that what they said I don't did they say that someone said that You' looked at me so you see the game you don't see X player but if you see X play you see the game if you if you watch the game you don't see busets if you Google quotes about busket you'll find some you can't work out whether any of them are real or not but veracity yeah that's good anyway him leaving is enormous and the Tactical problems it's even caused you can see that they've had to try and adapt and put two players into that pivot role to try and make up for what he did in his own but it's also defensively the things he blocks off the way he reads the game you can't replace busket it's like if you imagine Manet without rodri how much worse they are when he's not there it's the same thing with Barcelona times three okay yeah fine so then o overall I mean if we you know we started this by TR to assess are they have they had a good or a bad season I'm confused what what did you say ultimately it has been a bad season for all the reasons we listed above but it's way more complicated didn't they've just been terrible Joe it looked like you were reading that off your computer that is that no this is my form of acting it's called computer okay now John you don't have a computer so best of luck with this one but as we said before uh Javi the coach he's he's already said he's leaving right so we know that he won't be there come the end of the season I'm curious was he ever any good yeah I think it's a really interesting one because I think when Javi arrived at the club it felt as though he was going to be the next great manager in that sort of line of tradition that goes from Yan C so Pep Guardiola and then jav I think Louis vanal would say you're skipping him out but you know let's let's carry on yeah and I think what we get from these coaches the is the idea that what they are as system managers and what I mean by that is that these managers are going to come along they're going to impose A system that they a system of tactics that these players can fit into and that will make them greater than the sum of their parts so they'll be better because of the system that they have and that seems to me to be the Barcelona way and it seemed as though Javi was going to be the the next person to to carry on that tradition I think there's a few interesting things that we've seen from him since he since he arrived at the club because on the face of it he was a systems coach we we saw him implementing structures fitting the players in and and in that respect you kind of think well he's he's in that same tradition so I've got on the board in front of me just the the team from last season and and this team I think was probably the best iteration of of of the the system that that Javi wanted to play and what we have here is um we have these these three great midfielders buskett D young and pedri we've also got Gabby who is Great Central midfielder you might wonder why is he out in the wide Channel but obviously what's going to happen here is we're going to have a lot of structural shifting around what's going to happen actually is the Young's going to drop in create space for Gaby to come inside we've now got this really nice box Midfield with really interesting profiles in every position the channel now is open for Bal to get further forward and we're doing some of those structural things that we would call positional play we'd expect from positional play so we've got five players in the channels we've got width being held by the two wide players Rafia and then the fullback here and then you have these sort of nice uh defensive structures that you can have here with with a back three and then two midfielders if you want to kundai can push forward and you can do a two three system there like lots of flexibility but this is the sort of structure this is the sort of system that you expect Elite coaches to be playing now so you look at this and you think okay Javi is is within that tradition he's in the mold yeah sort of Suits the players individually that profiles as more than being like the traditional what you think of as the Barcelona 433 or 343 the cfin thing yeah I think there's there's some really fun things here so youve got dong he's just like a ball progression monster so he can drop out into the fullback area pick the ball up carry it carry it forward you got buetts who's just like as you were saying before one of the most perfect pivots we've ever seen in in World football and then a few interesting things so Gaby like a good tight spaced player but also like really good out possession so actually helps you in your counter press if you lose the ball high up because this is quite an aggressive way of possessing the ball plus The Vibes yeah it's all about the Vibes for me yeah but I think what what happens is that because you have all of the ball progression like tending to happen over on this side of the field leowski moving across onto this side of the field as well you you you do that sort of overload to isolate thing that a lot of positional play coaches do where you end up with the possessing the ball on one side and then you create all of this space around someone like Rafia or lamin yal who you can you can then build up around here switch the ball across the field and then get them fronted up One V one against a fullback as well and then you have pedri who's like the perfect sort of other interior I think because he's fairly isolated because everyone's over on this side but he's brilliant with both feet so he can come both ways he can be creative in these sort of pockets um and I think this system it worked because the players in it were perfect but there was a few things I think that were interesting because I think when we talk about this sort of Guardiola tradition we we spent last week talking about it it's like it's all about patience it's all about risk aversion it's all about using the positions of your players on the field to move the ball through lines of pressure to retain possession to squeeze the opposition back and often that can be quite slow and and some people think it's a bit boring but what we actually have seen from jav is is a very different approach I think because rather than having this sort of slow patient buildup we've actually seen quite a lot of direct play from him so in many respects the system is already starting to feel as though it's not really the same sort of system that Barcelona managers have adopted in the past yeah and I think the reason why we said on the last episode why you don't want to play really quickly is because it's much more risky so you risk turning the ball over and then teams coming back at you now we've already talked about the the the nice defensive unit that we have here if you have busets young in this kind of organization actually if you lose the ball then you you've got a good chance of making sure that that doesn't turn into a dangerous Counterattack we've already talked about how Gabby and pedri is well good outp possession players so they can counter press immediately to make it hard for opponents to hurt you so this whole system works fine but the problem is is that for me I think that the system actually relied on the players and so we starting raising that question of actually is this a system at all if the system doesn't improve the players actually it's the players who improve the system and they get injured and you can't drop the same system yeah that's what we've SE seen right so players have got injured this season we've already talked about how pedri has been out for a long time gab's been out for a long time Bucs has gone completely and they've struggled to to sort of fill someone in in that role and then you've got players like gundan who's going to be if he's playing in the sort of Gabby role he's going to be much less intense in the counter press and then suddenly the system doesn't seem to start working at all and so for me this this kind of raises the question of actually is Javi in that same school of coaches that we were talking about before which were system coaches where the system is designed to make the players greater than the sum of their parts now it's an interesting question I think because at the elite level the Assumption doesn't always have to be that you need a coach who makes the the the team better than the Su of their parts because if you're a team like Barcelona Real Madrid the sum of the parts for your players is really good it's good anyway you don't need to necessarily improve them and this is obviously one of the big questions in modern tactical theory is like should we over Coach elite players or should we under coach them and let them do their thing we've just had Jude Bingham last night you were telling me was giving an interview where he was talking about this so Bellingham after beating Man City said that think one of the things he enjoys about ancelotti is he gives him a bit of Freedom there's not so much system so they can move and do the things they want to do which makes them more off the cuff it's one of the reasons I quite like watching them it it feels like a a real really funny thing to say after just beating Manchester City feels like it's like leaving a Bo in a little bit you think so yeah cuz our Co our coach kind of gives us a bit of freedom and we won we won the game against individuals right cuz you get more out of them like John's just saying there the barcel way if you think about what the the way is it's lots of short passing um and positional play right players right position but the way they beat PSG in the first leg was by drawing them out and pinging the ball over the top when they had space in behind and then the second leg Enrique just changed the shape a bit and went manto man at the back so they had no spare players left Rao on his own and then he's just trying to Ping the ball long that's what he always does so like maybe XVI wants to play through the middle but if you're missing pedri and Gaby uh and you've got a Rao on the ball it's very hard to play through Central areas so then you have to revert to something long which is not really what probably he wants to do not what Barcelona want them to do yeah and so the point I'm making is not that one way is right and the other is wrong but clearly both of those approaches are valid and that's why the the constant debates in Spanish football are oh you know Barcelona have won by having a system and Real Madrid are bad then because they don't have a system so they should Implement a system but then you have the opposite thing where Real Madrid do well for a season and then it's like well Barcelona are two coached and and and therefore they need to be able to implement more ideas of Freedom so in order to bring it back to the original question why it's not worked for Javi is well he seemed like he was a system manager but actually I think the system only really worked because the players in that system were good enough last season to be able to solve the problems so they would he this system works because he got four great midfielders on the pitch and they were able to solve buildup problems not necessarily using the position of the players but the the skills of the players right which is not what the Barcelona tradition is the tradition should be the system allows you advantages whereas actually what happened here is that the the players were giving good advantages so it feels to me very much like Javi was actually more in the mold of an anel l or maybe as zidan at Real Madrid is a better example because zidan was still he cared about structure maybe not to the same extent that someone like Guardiola does but he still cared about the structure but he still was allowing the players to solve those problems rather than allowing the system to solve those problems it's almost theyve not seen this as the case with Javi because I don't know what his sessions are like or what he actually does but it's as though he sees what the template of what he wants to do is but doesn't quite understand why it's the way it is like if you this sounds very pretentious but you look at a painting you're like that's a nice painting but you don't really get what the emotions are behind it and what the artist was drawing of it like guardi constructed this thing cuz he fundamentally understands all aspects of it deeply like the philosophy of it he gets it and it relates to like the city and all these sorts of things yeah why do I eat cheese at midnight you know do I know why or is it just because I do it it's because that's what you do it's frog the Scorpion you could say that xvy understands the system as a player but maybe he doesn't understand the system as a coach and that's maybe the difference between it's in the end it's almost like he's doing a paint by numbers Guardiola system so if I did a paint by numbers of amona Lisa it wouldn't make me Leonardo da Vinci it certainly wouldn't the thing with that is that you don't know whether it's that's the thing you don't know whether he doesn't know what he's doing or whether it's cuz he's had so much to deal with with the players all the stuff outside of the pitch as well and the injuries like it's hard to work out exactly what he would really have wanted to do ideally with that team well whoever comes in to replace javey is very likely going to want to spend money in the transfer market um but of course we know that Barcelona are in a perilous financial situation so we asked the Athletics Paul Bas if he could tell us specifically what impact that situation is going to have on their ability to spend money this summer here's Paul hi this is Paul and I'm here to talk about Barcelona transfer business next summer which as you might suspect this is going to be an eventful one once again because Barcelona right now cannot operate as a normal club and the reason for that is because they are spending more money in salaries than what La Liga allows them to and this is what they need to change first of all here Barcelona are going to be waiting for the players who near the end of their contract I'm talking about Marcos Alonso here who is expected to leave and Sergio Roberto who might end up staying secondly and that's possibly one of the most important points they need to meet all the conditions that they submitted to La Liga on their financial plan last summer they need to show La Liga that they can follow it and that they are on back on track to return to a sustainable financial situation and third point they basically need to bring money in and the easiest way to bring money in possibly is to assume big Sal inside the club of course it's difficult to know who will they sell but it's fair to say that possibly except the latest Academy graduation I'm talking about L Mal and B here and potentially Gabi but if we talk about names that can be expected to be in that conversation I think that the top of the list should be Ronald Aro basically because the center back is expecting he in talks over a new contract but there's doubts if Barcelona can really offer this new contract and if they would prefer to cash in on a big sale then there are other names such as Jules kund or Rafa or Andreas Christensen which if there's a good offer Barcelona would probably be willing to sell but there's doubts that the players really want to leave so that's a bit the situation here let's see how it goes huge summer ahead in Barcelona well then JJ I assume based on hearing that that it's absolutely ideal that Barcelona just have a million incredible children who Sprout out of lamazia every year it's pretty helpful yeah so you may remember that they were quite good for a long time with players like inesta and Javi and PU all the rest you came through lamazia and now what you've got is a core of players coming through who are amazing um so part of the benefit of having that system is that you bring players through who understand the system inside out which makes them really really great when you play for Barcelona when you put them elsewhere sometimes they're not as good apart from Messi who's obviously amazing but what you've got here are players like cubar who is top level pedri is one of the best you I mean I love pedri I love ped really good he's one of the best you do never stop talking about pedri that's right Gaby God is good VTO Rocky the same for a bit of money as well he's a Brazilian I think he's played internationally but he's going to be top level as well Lin yamal 16 these are all players who have played this season for Barcelona in La Liga who are under 21 mhm and yamal is 16 for example it's pretty nut Hector four is a right back who can play that left back as well but this group of players um could be very very special and Mark U came off the bench and scored I think the winner in a game for Barcelona as well the point being that like they've got quite a small first team and so when they have injuries you need to drop in someone from the team or the 19s or something and when they drop in because they know the system they turn out to be pretty good but they are all special players now if they can build a core like if they have tan one of the best goalkeepers in the world they might need to replace him at some point then you need another Center back then someone in the pivot role they're not you can't use any of the players they've got there niik Gonzalez has gone to Porto I think so they haven't got all the players they need here but this is a core that could turn out to be a really good Barcelona team and because you can't then supplement them with transfer transfers because they don't have any money this is what they'll be relying on and it could be if they coached the right way could go on to be a great team but you need experience with that team to try and take them to the next level which is why it's useful they've still got leowski and gundan to get them there yeah I wonder how long it will be until if one of Sergio buket's children is able to play in the six role maybe that will solve all of my I mean that's probably not far off actually was he 34 35 yeah I think he might be older than that I think he's 35 is he yeah should we spend ages debating how old he is uh I think I'll just tell you cuz I have this thing called the internet he's 35 oh he's 35 okay I mean funny thing about this I find is and we talked about this a little bit last week while there are plenty of teams around around the world who uh you know produce some of the great young players there are a couple who uh do that um and then just seemingly coincidentally bail themselves out of really awful situations Barcelona I feel like a one of those teams right now Manchester United the team that we mentioned last week for doing this it almost feels unfair John yeah I guess the when you get a certain status in World football you your life becomes a lot easier in terms of Youth Development because you can just sort of your catchment area is massive it's Global and you can get the teams further down the pyramid doing all of the development for you and then when they hit a certain age and you're not not only more likely to know that they're going to be good than when they're nine years old and starting out in the academy you can then say why he come and join us and you can be a premier league side I think that's kind of what man city done really well because they've got so many young players coming through now because they put the part of the infrastructure they put in when they came in was making sure they brought well they could bring through these great players and they built the bond V base that's yeah exactly they are made in like a science lab there's light there like electricity coming from the roof into green what you call them a vat I guess a vat yeah there is an interesting Financial element to this as well though because we've seen Man City use those young players as a way of like being able to generate money as well so the sale of Co Palmer for example it's for the team as much as it is the business like benf like produced so many great players but a lot of that they have to sell on CU they can't the players they can attract in they can play at that level and then they sell them on for more but I think this represents like a big problem now for Barcelona in terms of like what is their business plan going to be which is maybe a miserable way of thinking about it but I suppose the options here are you could sell these players off to make money which as we've said Barcelona have these Financial issues or do you stick with them and and try and build them into a core of players who can actually compete at the highest level and then generate Revenue in that way and I think a lot of what the conversation that a couple of summers ago was about was about was about Barcelona almost like front loading their their Investments actually taking money from the future to invest now in order to be a good team that hasn't worked out is the approach going to be that they carry on down that path but rather than having you know sold future of the club actually by having the future of the club coming through lcia and then being able to say well we are going to be able to compete because in three or four years time we're actually going to have one of the best teams in the world so do they keep these players and then sell other players how do they like how do they bring in experience around these players in order to be actually able to to to use this for their own Advantage yeah cuz then like the players coming through are amazing but you don't know they're going to form the team and you also don't know what the level is going to be when they're 2324 that was my question can can you can you look at that and say this is going to be the next great team I mean you can look at individuals I mean gab's clearly brilliant pedri is one of the best young players in the world but huge injury problems cuz I think probably because he got overplayed for that one season he played about 73 games something like that which is obviously a lot um yamal is 16 going on 17 and um has played an awful lot of minutes think he's got like 30 Games he's played in La Liga this season that's a lot for a 16-year-old and the problem is that you might get like if you can form a team that's going to be great cubar keep talking these players again but like cubar pedri yamal are incredible players who could be there for years and years and years and years but you still need other players in there you need refresh it like you need a new team every three four years that Barcelona team was amazing was Javi Messi they had Messi the best player ever then you've got Javi inesta and busets who are three of the best midfielders of all time and that's the benefit you've got pedri is maybe is he one of the best players of all time you don't know cuz you need busets there and then you need other players around them like it's very rare that'll happen before that Guardiola team that made them all massive they'd only won European Cup once when Johan C was there in the Dream Team when Ronald kumman scored a lovely free kick and so that team made them what they are now but you wonder whether they might end up turning into more of a Benfica where they have to bring through players and then sell them on a profit to try and get back to where they are and resolve all their financial problems because they have bet on the now and it's they've only really got real to compete with and they're just following on short and they can't keep doing that the other worry I think is like physical like these players as you said the yamal has played 30 games of football in a season at 16 it's going to have an impact on his on his long-term Fitness we've already seen Gaby and pedri have have issues with their Fitness having been played so much so young so again that's I suppose another thing that Barcelona will have to be hyper aware of because if they are going to rely on youth players yes it's good because it allows them to get minutes where they might not usually get them if the team was more successful um but at the same time you have the opposite problem which is you just burn these players out and then they you know their careers are over Midway through their 20s Jaa went really first team until I think they were about 21 is so even that small difference it can have a long-term effect I also have a long-term Fitness problem well I I mean what are they going to be in the future then what does their long-term future look like John do you think I think they're still on a knife edge really I think it's easy for us to look at the the short-term like positives but I think there's so much riding on the fact that as we've already said they you know they' sort of sold their future and everything has to go right for the next you know couple of decades really for them to get it right so I think there's lots of positives here like as as we've said really exciting youth team but you've still got to make that that team work for long enough for it to work financially for you so I think I'm I'm still sort of on the fence that you know that things are going in the right direction things are great now but in the future it could be very different well there we go John's on the fence if you 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Channel: The Athletic FC

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Keywords: Tifo, tifo football, tifo irl, tifo in real life, football, soccer, football tactics, premier league, the athletic, the athletic fc, the athletic football podcast, football transfers, football news, soccer transfers, soccer news, manchester city, manchester united, arsenal, chelsea, tottenham, liverpool, sensible transfers, tifo sensible transfers

Id: SBVVLtzt36A

Length: 25min 41sec (1541 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2024