FC Barcelona Discussion

[Carnivore Chris]

Imagine how many goals Messi would score there? I genuinely think he'd get 80 at his best.

[SirBalon]

52 minutes ago, The Rebel CRS said:

Imagine how many goals Messi would score there? I genuinely think he'd get 80 at his best.

Neymar would be screwing....  I bet he'd think "I thought I'd gotten rid of him" 

[Carnivore Chris]

It would be hilarious if Messi/Ronaldo won the next 4 or so Ballon d'ors and then after them, it was Dembele and Mbappe who ended up fighting for the award.

Edited September 9, 2017 by The Rebel CRS

[Philippe Coutinho]

https://www.madrid-barcelona.com/2017-09-08/valverde-liquida-la-tension-en-el-derbi-de-luis-enrique-y-quique-sanchez-flores

[SirBalon]

8 hours ago, 11Neymar Ousmane Dembélé11 said:

https://www.madrid-barcelona.com/2017-09-08/valverde-liquida-la-tension-en-el-derbi-de-luis-enrique-y-quique-sanchez-flores

Valverde is completely different to Luis Enrique though.  Plus as you can read a bit in that article (there's a lot more in that story though), the history between Luis Enrique and Quíque Sánchez Flores goes way back and Luis Enrique doesn't forgive easily.

[Carnivore Chris]

One of the problems last season was the full backs, Sergi Roberto can fill in there but isn't made for the role full time and Alba wasn't as consistent as he can be. If the full backs(or rather wing backs) aren't functioning then it can have a big affect on the team and this hasn't been the case this season thus far, as Semedo is doing a great job and Alba is in top form. 3 assists for Alba so far in la liga in fact.

 

 

[bozziovai]

hat trick for Messi .............  people from argentina would go .. WHY THE FACK CAN'T HE DO THAT WITH THE NATIONAL TEAM ???

[Carnivore Chris]

@CannabisRakitic bossed it. When he plays like that, he's one of the best midfielders in the world. It's about him maintaining that level as him playing like that will be vital. He was excellent in his first season and half, so there is no reason why he can't be again for the club.

A lot of positive signs have come from him as of late.

 

[SirBalon]

16 minutes ago, Teso dos Bichos said:

😂

Umtiti's top! 

Plus it seems the French defender wants something more than just friendship from Rakitić hahahaha

[Philippe Coutinho]

Look at Deulofeu next to all these "darkies" lol. He just looks so uncomfortable and awkward next to his teammates.

I like Deulofeu. He's a good player, but he does seem kinda standoffish/a bit of a self-absorbed jerk.

By all accounts, Messi isn't overly fond of him either.

We all know what happens when Messi isn't your biggest fan, don't we?

 

 

Edited September 12, 2017 by 11Neymar Ousmane Dembélé11

[SirBalon]

1 hour ago, 11Neymar Ousmane Dembélé11 said:

Look at Deulofeu next to all these "darkies" lol. He just looks so uncomfortable and awkward next to his teammates.

I like Deulofeu. He's a good player, but he does seem kinda standoffish/a bit of a self-absorbed jerk.

By all accounts, Messi isn't overly fond of him either.

We all know what happens when Messi isn't your biggest fan, don't we?

 

 

Messi also had an issue with Cristian Tello.

Deulofeu has a bit (but not as much which is impossible) of the Jesé Rodríguez in his character...  It has worked against him in the past at Barça and it could work against him in the future if he doesn't sort it out.

[HK85]

I love Deulofeu. Wanted it to work for him here so much but he's just not cut out for it. 

He does have a huge ego as well, comes across in his play at times. 

[Machado]

 

Edited September 13, 2017 by Machado

[SirBalon]

Nélson Semedo is actually beginning to look like a bargain.  Barcelona got him before the market went mental although he wasn't exactly cheap.  The full-backs are extremely important for the way Barcelona play and having that right-back position inhabited by a genuine right-back is incredible.

[bozziovai]

do barcelona need a coach ??   coz as far as i'm concern, Barca only needs a healthy Messi both physically and mentally. 

[SirBalon]

Lionel Messi's display against Juventus doesn't make UEFA's XI for the week

 

Messi controlled the game, played in midfield and scored two goals...  Messi played a Xavi type role but then turned into a Neymar to revolutionise the game.  Max Allegri the Juve coach called him a martian, an extra terrestrial while Gianluigi Buffon said that whoever disputes he is the greatest player ever knows nothing about the sport.  This after his all-round performance against Juventus.  He conducted the orchestra and also added his little ounce by scoring two goals, the same amount of goals as Cristiano Ronaldo did against APOEL...  Yes, APOEL!

Infact no Barcelona player made the fantasy XI for the week.

[RandoEFC+]

7 minutes ago, SirBalon said:

Lionel Messi's display against Juventus doesn't make UEFA's XI for the week

 

Messi controlled the game, played in midfield and scored two goals...  Messi played a Xavi type role but then turned into a Neymar to revolutionise the game.  Max Allegri the Juve coach called him a martian, an extra terrestrial while Gianluigi Buffon said that whoever disputes he is the greatest player ever knows nothing about the sport.  This after his all-round performance against Juventus.  He conducted the orchestra and also added his little ounce by scoring two goals, the same amount of goals as Cristiano Ronaldo did against APOEL...  Yes, APOEL!

Infact no Barcelona player made the fantasy XI for the week.

It's one of those lazy crowd-pleasing Teams of the Week. In fact it looks as if it could be based on fantasy football points? Either way, the fact that they've picked a full back line of defenders that scored means you can probably conclude that whoever picked it has done it based on some sort of stats or fan ratings rather than observing the football themselves.

[SirBalon]

5 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

It's one of those lazy crowd-pleasing Teams of the Week. In fact it looks as if it could be based on fantasy football points? Either way, the fact that they've picked a full back line of defenders that scored means you can probably conclude that whoever picked it has done it based on some sort of stats or fan ratings rather than observing the football themselves.

It's absolutely retarded with no correlation to football.

[Cicero]

4 minutes ago, SirBalon said:

It's absolutely retarded with no correlation to football.

Nah mate. Its worse than retarded 

[SirBalon]

10 minutes ago, Cicero said:

Nah mate. Its worse than retarded 

Who votes for these things?  Infants writing names down at nursery using crayons?

Edited September 14, 2017 by SirBalon

[SirBalon]

An emotional embrace between Quíque Costas and Andrés Iniesta

 

Who is Quíque Costas?

Born in Vigo (Galicia) in 1947 and played 169 times for Celta Vigo, 170 for FC Barcelona and 13 times a full international for Spain.  He played at centre-back and coincided with Johan Cruyff as a player.  For many that moment was one of the turning points in the fortunes of FC Barcelona and their transition in the "Cruyff Project".  Both Quíque Costas and Johan Cruyff hit it off straight away becoming great friends forever and even when the defender decided to call it a day in his football career, Cruyff persuaded him to stay on at Barcelona and not return home to Galicia.  Cruyff had a plan, a big plan for the future of the club and Costas was a major player in that plan.

At the petition of Cruyff who was still playing for Barça, Quíque Costas wasn't permitted to leave the club and kept on as part of the training staff.  Many evenings did both Johan and Quíque stay on after training where they began to plot something special...  What was it?  The plan was to resurrect the meaning and emphasis, to make La Masia the corner stone of the club.  Quíque Costas admitted in an interview years ago that even while Johan was still playing for the club, he kept on telling him that he (Johan) would one day become head coach of Barça and that God had told him in a dream that I (Quíque Costas) would become the general caretaker and controller of FC Barcelona's youth system from top to bottom...  La Masia.

Quíque Costas deserves a whole post on his career as the head of La Masia but this isn't the moment because the reason I'm writing about it is due to an emotional reunion between one of his many pupils on a curious day which seemed pre-ordained as destiny.  Quíque Costas worked in total for 43 years for FC Barcelona, but some years back he decided to call it a day and return to his homeland of Galicia where he lives in peace and quiet in a rural area near the city of Vigo.  But he was asked to return to the club to lay the first stone of where the new Ministadi will be built...  It will be called The Johan Cruyff Ministadi and is where the youth teams including Barcelona 'B' (incidentally Costas coached Barça 'B' for 20 years) play their games.  Quíque Costas didn't refuse and travelled to Barcelona to do his duty, his final duty for something that he was told to do four decades ago by a very special man...  So the tides turn, so the world revolves in circles because the circle in all its forms rules everything on our beloved planet.

Andrés Iniesta didn't know that Quíque Costas would be there and tears of emotion soon ran down both their faces as they spotted each other and embraced.  There's an anecdote Quíque Costas once told about "Andresito" (Iniesta) on Jose Ramón de la Morena's late night radio show, El Larguero years back;

"I've had many kids under my wing while l was the guardian at La Masia but Andresito was something special.  He gave me many headaches as an infant player but one particular moment sticks out.  Andrés was known to miss his parents so much that he would somehow manage to escape La Masia where he would then be caught by the staff roaming the streets close by crying.  But one particular evening I overheard the kids talking about a particular movie which I think was Indiana Jones or something like that.  Knowing what Andresito was like, I hung around the office at La Masia a couple of hours more.  How he managed it I don't know because my office is right above the main entrance of La Masia and he somehow managed to escape (laughter).  I never got to find out his escape route but it certainly wasn't via the main entrance!  He was 9 at the time I think, he was sneaky (laughter).  Anyway...  One of the boys knocked on my office door and said that Andrés had once again gone missing...  We searched everywhere and just as I was about to call the Mossos (regional police) I remembered the conversation about the movie so I went to the local cinema where we would take them from time to time and there he was inside watching the movie with a bucket of popcorn that was bigger than him".

The last time both Iniesta and Quíque Costa met was at Johan Cruyff's funeral, and here we have an emotive meeting where emotions ran high and possibly many many memories.

Edited September 15, 2017 by SirBalon

[Philippe Coutinho]

Today would have been Tito's birthday. Rest In Peace. You are always in our hearts.

 

[SirBalon]

'Those crazy little ones...'

 

It was Johan Cruyff who when he put everything into La Masia he said this:

"I'm gonna change this.  Call me mad, but those crazy little players will one day be the focus of attention.  It's harder for a smaller player to rise above his contemporaries in the youth categories because physical prowess is more evident then.  What a smaller player must provide at youth level should be harnessed and should have more emphasis put on it.  I will change the way footballers are seen!  I promise you one day it will all be seen differently."

La Masia

Johan Cruyff wasn't wrong...  Was he ever?  Yeah, he had his ways of saying things that at times was taken as arrogance or even like he was just trying to go against the natural wave on purpose.  But he was always right, sooner or later, he'd be given the credit for his foresight.

Today in Barça's youth football there are various examples that demonstrate all of this but none better than in the Infant 'A' (2017-2018) category.  At this precise moment it's the most promising of all the categories because of the amount of extremely talented individuals at La Masia.  But there are three infants...  A triangle of midfielders that if nothing gets twisted, they've got it all to become something special.

The three protagonists are:

• Adrià Capdevila (1.46cm)
• Aleix Garrido (1.47cm)
• Pablo Páez "Gavi" (1.52cm)

It all started to gestate in the 2012-2013 season.  In that year FC Barcelona added the boys Capdevila and Garrido to their ranks.  The first born in Gurb, he came from the town setup of Vic Riuprimer REFO.  From a non football family but always with a smile on his face Adrià united himself to the Benjamin 'D' setup.  Aleix on the other hand went into the Benjamin 'C' formation.  Right from the outset he was different, very timid but with an exceptional technical ability and a character change when playing.

In the following year it was the technicians at La Masia that united them both into the Benjamin 'A' setup which was a sign of something that was occurring.  The technicians wanted to see if they could gel together without informing them that there was a plan at hand...  From there a special relationship and friendship has been formed between the two of them which is another method the staff at La Masia do with these kids that they initially keep separated in different categories although in the same age group.  They call them Zipi & Zape which are two Spanish comic characters that cause all sorts of mischief.  This is exactly how the relationship between the famous duo Xavi and Iniesta was formed many years back although nobody is saying that this will occur again and every situation is different.  Adrià is organiser, the one that takes home all the MVPs and Aleix Garrido is the dribbler, the fantasy player that makes the ball look like it's being commanded via remote control.

If that wasn't enough, there was another kid a year younger and in another infant category called Pablo Páez, known as "Gavi".  He was brought at a very very early age (as Iniesta was from Albacete) from Andalucía, Real Betis.  The reason they call him "Gavi" is from his second surname (in Spain people carry both surnames, father's and mother's second) which is Gavira.  He is a player with a lot of character on the field of play, he is very vocal and very attractive to the spectator due to his extraordinary natural ability to read the game from midfield, arrive late and score goals.  Also with great vision, but mainly in the short quick pass he excels.  This year he's been moved up an age level and added to the duo of Capdevila and Garrido to form the triangle in midfield that is so important at FC Barcelona.  Capdevila is the 6, Garrido the 8 and Gavi the 10.  Early on this season the work the team at La Masia has been doing for a few years seems to be coming to fruition and European wide scouts are attending every one of the games this trio are playing in.

This is the bible on how La Masia's mechanics work...  This is the essence of the club and what needs to once again be put to the forefront as the most important factor at FC Barcelona.

Keep you eyes open if you're into following young talented footballers of the future with the trio of Capdevila, Garrido and Gavi.

Edited September 17, 2017 by SirBalon

[Carnivore Chris]

People always speak about Guardiola(justifiable of course) and what he did for Barcelona when he was promoted to coach of the first team, but not everyone speak about his number 2 and closest mate, Tito Vilanova, who was equally as important as without a great playing staff, a manager can only do so much. Guardiola had a fantastic group surrounding him and Tito was his right hand man.

What happened was tragic and just shows that even the more wealthy people aren't prone to nasty illnesses and life problems.

R.I.P Tito, a figure who will always be remembered fondly among anybody associated with Barcelona, in fact Spanish football in general.

 

 

 

[Stan]

Dembele out for 4 months!