Neymar Second Half Challenge Awaits.

 Neymar’s arrival at Barça has been a positive one for the club. He has done a great job in fitting in with the team and has impressed on the pitch. His performance during Messi’s absence even gave the fans a sense of reassurance as the club entered the New Year as league leaders and still in the running for all three competitions. However, Neymar faces a difficult challenge as the second half of the season commences where most recent Barça transfers have sizzled in the first half of the season only to fizzle in the ensuing second half.

 Neymar kicked off his Barça career with the equalizer goal in the first leg of the Supercopa that turned out to be difference in a 1-1 aggregate tie against Atlético Madrid. Neymar didn’t blow us away with his performances early on but then again, it is rather difficult to shine while Messi is around. Nonetheless, Neymar has been superb in fitting in with the team and being a team player.  When Messi went down, Neymar adequately stepped up and his first half stats read as follows – 11 goals and 10 assists in all competitions in 1st half. 

 Neymar will miss this weekend’s match against Elche as her serves a ban for collecting five cautions. His return coincides with Messi’s return following a lengthy spell on the sidelines recovering from an injury. One wonders if Neymar will regress or continue to impress for the second half of the season where the competition will get tougher domestically and in Europe.  Recent history has shown us that those who have a strong start to their Barça debut reach a disappointing finale. 

 Cesc and Zlatan Ibrahimovic come to mind as those who were remarkable in their Barça debuts and then struggled down the stretch. Cesc’s first half of the season saw him mostly come off the bench and help the team. Some of his achievements consisted of scoring a great header goal in San Mames against Bilbao along with insurance goals in the UEFA Super Cup against Porto, against Real Madrid in the Bernabéu in league action and in the FIFA Club World Cup Final against Santos. Unfortunately, his form would dip following the New Year. Although he did score 17 goals in all competitions in his first season, he only managed to score four goals in the second half of the season. Those four goals were scored in January and February and Cesc would go on an absurd dry run until the rest of the season. That dry run meant he could not score for three months and resulted in him becoming an unused substitute or be substituted in the second half if he was to start. 

 Ibrahimovic also endured a similar fate during his lone season with the club. Ibra won three titles as he featured in the Supercopa, UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup. Unlike Cesc, he did not manage to score in either of those games but he did score the only goal at the Camp Nou against Real Madrid. Ibra’s first half with Barça saw him score 11 goals in all competitions and he and Messi seemed like the dynamic duo upfront. However, the second half was one to forget as Ibra’s form suffered immensely coupled with some injuries as he only managed to score 9 goals, two of them in a memorable encounter against Arsenal in London. His popularity nosedived after poor performances against Inter Milan and his criticism of Guardiola made him persona non-grata and was then sold to AC Milan.

It’s not easy to play for Barça. Over the years, we have seen players struggle to fit in with Barça such as Mark Hughes, Hagi, Zambrotta, and Ibrahimovic. Neymar returns to face Getafe in the cup tie and Atlético Madrid next week. He has from now to May to beat that trend. The competition will be tougher and the backlash will be fierce if Barça stumble along the way. Hopefully Neymar will be the one to buck that trend where his challenge is to continue to do well and even step it up for the second half of the season.

In Rosell We Trust?

Sandro Rosell’s era as FC Barcelona president has seen the club enjoy success on the pitch with domestic and international titles. However, Rosell has not been enjoying the same success off the pitch. His presidency has been clouded with controversial decisions that have finally reached a limit with certain club members. It seems that for some members, the time has come for Rosell to face the music with a censure motion to be served upon Rosell and three of FC Barcelona Vice-Presidents tomorrow.

Just to set the record straight, I have never been a fan of Sandro Rosell. I despised him the minute he stepped down as FC Barcelona Vice-President and published a tell all book to sully then President Joan Laporta and reveal dirt about the club such as their flirtation with firing Frank Rijkaard during his first season and replace him with Luiz Felipe Scolari and Rijkaard not wanting Ronaldinho to be signed. I wouldn't expect that from someone who loves the club. He sure didn’t look flattering in that BBC documentary “The Inside Story” where he came off a bit drunk with power along with acting as if he was the president at times while also coming off as a whiner  exhibiting the victim mentality that Barça fans were associated with in the past when he was complaining about referees robbing Barça. I never understood his comment that clubs run by president in a dictatorial manner was a successful approach since he complained that Laporta was doing the same thing after Rosell stepped down.

I was planning on writing this blog as part of the third and final chapter of my summer trilogy following “In La Masia We Trust?” and “In Tito We Trust?”. However, Tito’s unfortunate news of his cancer returning made me put off lambasting Rosell until now. In Rosell we trust? Based on the reaction of Blaugrana faithful inside the Camp Nou and on the social media, I guess not. Rosell promised a lot of things with transparency being one of the main promises. However, his presidency so far has been clouded with many deals that have not been transparent.

As much as the club has been successful on the pitch during Rosell’s presidency, his term has been very controversial. Some of the decisions that he made range from changing the rules in becoming a member, “Socio”, of the club to the Qatar Foundation sponsorship deal forced upon the club without members voting on it first. Some also blame him for Pep Guardiola walking away from the club while others complain that he has used his presidency for applying petty revenge against Laporta. The idea to allow a Madrid based media company to handle Barça TV turned out to be a bad idea when a video leaked Xavi’s off the record comments about Real Madrid which embarrased the player.

Furthermore, the club under his era has seen some awful decisions when it comes to players such as selling David Villa for peanuts while reneging on a promise to bring back Abidal and allowing him to leave which meant the club lost a positive and rallying influence in the clubhouse. By the way, Abidal has looked great for Monaco thus far. The Thiago fiasco that saw him join Bayern Munich because the lack of minutes for the young player resulted in his buyout clause to significantly decrease was also poorly handled. The way the youth setup is being run by bringing back Eusebio and not buying a centerback the past two seasons.

For a president, his actions have resulted in a lot of foot in mouth moments such as when he said the club would reduce spending by no longer allowing color printing and his poor responses to that poor excuse of an interview with TV3 when he was questioned about receiving payments from Brazilian friendlies. He also has enraged some of the fans with his decision to replace the Camp Nou with a new stadium proposal, lying about his ties with the Boixos Nois, allegedly contemplating suing a Socio for his tweets about his presidency, making excuses about Thiago’s buyout clause being misreported by the media, his lack of action against the media whenever Pep and the players were attacked but not when he was, lack of transparency about the Neymar transfer payments, and the list goes on and on.

Well, it seems that many have had enough of Sandro Rosell and his shady ways of running this club. The group “Go Barça” which consists of FC Barcelona Socios will bring a censure motion to against Rosell and Vice Presidents Jordi Cardoner, Josep María Bartomeu, Javier Faus, and Carles Vilarrubí. The people at Total Barça have a great story describing the reasons behind this action from “Go Barça”. It seems that the final straw was Rosell’s interview about the Brazilian friendlies payments controversy. So this action will be presented tomorrow which requires obtaining signatures from of 5% of the Socios which amounts to about 7,000 Socios. Of course, Rosell had already proposed changes to that measure by raising that percentage to 15%. It seems like he saw the writing on the wall but won’t have a chance to implement in time.

So brace yourselves fans; this is going to get ugly. Laporta-Cruyff fans versus Rosell fans and the mud-slinging and accusations will be tossed left and right. Pity that this could tarnish a great start by the club but sometimes the fans cannot accept or tolerate a presidency that is run on broken promises and lack of transparency. Rosell should know, he was allegedly one of the behind the scenes players in Laporta’s Censure Motion. Like the old saying goes, “What goes around, comes around” and it is Rosell’s turn to sit on the hot seat and see who jumps ship.

 

Time to play Bartra.

Is there a Center-Back in the house? Barça’s great start to the season has suffered the disappointing news of losing both starting Centre Backs Puyol and Pique to injuries. Even though there was a need to sign another centre-back this summer, the club opted to sign another Defensive Midfielder who could play the role of a centre-back. Well, there is a young talented player on the bench waiting for his moment. The moment is now and it’s about time that the club played Marc Bartra.

First it was Puyol and then it was Pique. Barça fans have been accustomed to seeing their best players suffer an injury here and there over the years. However, we were not ready to see both our centre-backs out with injuries so soon. We went from a club that had two starting centre-backs and one young centre-back to basically one young centre-back in need of minutes with defensive midfielders sharing the load in the back. Marc Bartra has been patiently waiting for his chance to prove himself and the time has come.

I have never been a fan of Pep’s decision to rely on the likes of Yaya, Mascherano and Busquets playing in the centre-back position. Those were great ideas for a quick fix but not for the long term. As much as I enjoy watching Mascherano play, I think his time as centre-back should come to an end. The warning signs were there last season in the big matches where he was shown to be a liability such as his poor header clearance in the San Siro that lead to Prince’s goal against Milan; Ronaldo sprinting past him to scoring the game winning goal in the Camp Nou, not picking up Drogba during the counter attack that lead to Chelsea’s only goal of the game, his poor tackle on Lampard that resulted in a counter attack goal for Ramires; and more recently his poor clearance attempt in the second leg of the Supercopa. Just watching him partner Song against Spartak Moscow on Wednesday showed us that the club should have bought defenders to re-enforce the back four.

Mascherano has been a great player and person for Barça but he is not a centre-back. I don’t care that he helped the club win the Champions League when he started against Manchester United. A few good games do not wipe out a recent string of bad displays in big games. If his name was Oleguer or Rafa Marquez, fans would be all over him. The club should have bought a centre-back and I don’t believe the talk that the club never wanted to buy one because they have Mascherano so that’s why they bought Song. They wanted to get Thiago Silva or Javi Martinez but were scared off by the price tag. Unfortunately, they could have signed Botia, who is a former youth player currently on loan with Sevilla, Chico, former Barça B player who played for Pep and played a key part in helping the B team gain promotion and is currently playing for Swansea City, and Jan Vertonghen, former Ajax player who just went to Spurs for €12.5 million, for maybe half of the cost of one of those big named stars.

What’s been done has been done. Perhaps the club will sign someone when the winter transfer window opens or wait till next season when they go after the likes of Dortmund’s Hummels.  I hope the club does eventually sign a centre-back. I am tired of watching Barça repeat history by suffering from some dreadful defending too. We saw it during the final days of the “Dream Team” when Koeman was past it and it hurt this team. Rijkaard's last 2 years saw a lot of poor defenders around Puyol and now we are subjected to watching history repeat itself as we watch this team concede silly goals from poor defending. Pique still has his head in the clouds from time to time and Mascherano can't clear with his head and will get burned by a speedy forward.

If you think that this team wins on its offense alone, then look back at their triumphant Champions League titles and see how many blowouts they had in the semi-final stage, 0-1, 0-0 against Milan; 0-0, 1-1 against Chelsea; 0-2; 1-1 against Real Madrid. They relied on keeping clean sheets when they won those titles and not by winning 4-3 or 3-2 every game.

Barça’s legacy has always been on relying on their academy products. We have already seen that Montoya is ready to compete for the right-back position and in my opinion is the heir apparent to Dani Alves. Puyol was thrown in as a right back when he was young and he turned out alright. Chapi Ferrer, Pep, and Sergi were all thrown in as youngsters too and the “Dream Team” benefitted from it. Puyol was 21. Chapi was 20. Sergi was 22. Montoya is 21. I'm not saying bench Alves but I prefer to see Montoya start ahead of Adriano in that position and rotate with Dani Alves to give the Brazilian fullback some rest.

We have had a history of giving young players a chance. Xavi and Iniesta turned out alright. Messi turned out alright. Valdés turned out alright even with his odd brain farts. Busquets was how old again when he got to play ahead of Yaya? So it’s time to give minutes to Bartra. We've seen him play in Champions League games and Copa del Rey games before. He is a promising 6'0 centre-back who was also the captain of Spain’s national team at the 2011 FIFA U-20 World Cup. More importantly, he showed us that he's no Fontas with his decisions and his thinking. He deserves to be playing and he deserves playing minutes now that the club is without any centre-backs. Unfortunately, we will never know unless we see him out there on the pitch getting the minutes in matches. Today, Barça host Granada and this is the perfect moment to get him out there and gain some experience and shake off some rust. The moment is now and it’s about time that the club played Marc Bartra and not another defensive midfielder in the heart of the defense.

 

6 Point Gap But At A Cost.

Greetings fellow Barça fans. Winning sure does cure everything.

Crisis? What crisis? A draw and a win and all of a sudden the press is off Barcelona’s back and
saying they are back. Well they were never gone. They just hit a slump like every other team. The
players are human and Guardiola is still a rookie coach, so this club was never going to keep
winning every game. La Liga is never that easy or else it would not be La Liga. Barcelona got over that Atletico Madrid loss with a tough performance in Mallorca. The Copa Del Rey

Semi-Finals had been a nightmare for this team the last two years but Barcelona made sure they
would not fail this time thanks to Pinto. It what could be the most important penalty save since
Urruti’s penalty saves in 1985. We will find out in May if this will be remembered as much as Urruti’s penalty save against Real Valladolid where Barcelona won the league or more as Urruti’s penalty save in the semi-finals shootout against IFK Göteborg in the European Semi-Finals in which the team would lose in the final against Steaua Bucuresti.

Sure the game ended in a draw, but that draw had the euphoria of a win and that carried on to this
past weekend’s game against Bilbao. Many called it a Copa Del Rey Final but I never believe a
league game is the same as a cup game; just ask Celtic fans. Nevertheless, Barcelona came out
with their guns blazing and defeated Bilbao by a score of 2-0 that was never ever that close. With
Real Madrid not winning finally, the gap increased back to six points for Barcelona and all is well.
Barcelona will be hosting Lyon this Wednesday and many believe that the away goal basically
sealed this tie. I usually never believe anything is done but part of me thinks Lyon will just repeat
another quick exit in the elimination stages. I sure would be feeling more confident if Puyol was
playing. Sadly, the captain will be out for three weeks and thus we are forced to watch the non-
dynamic duo of Rafael Márquez and Pique as the centerbacks.

Guardiola has brought a lot of changes to this club, with health and conditioning being a blessing for
a team that had been haunted with long term injuries. However, for many who thought this club had
too many defenders, we now find ourselves wondering if it’s possible to get Henrique back from
Germany now. We have been accustomed to seeing forwards and midfielders getting injured, but not
so many defenders during this season and hopefully this won't lead to more wear and tear on the
defenders. The good news is that Oleguer is not the one to fill in this time.

So Wednesday will have a banged up Lyon against a slightly banged up Barcelona team and here’s
hoping for a great night of European football.

Until next time, here’s hoping for less injuries.

Visca Barça!