You have eyes don't you? Why are you all so biased? If Gomes played a match like this you would shit all over him but since this is La Masia kid he was "superb"? Come on get a grip. I hope the kid will succeed but he was mediocre yesterday. He basically had a few good moves and when Rakitic was subbed off our midfield completely lost control not to mention that our second half ball possession was quite bellow 50%.
We can choose to lie to ourselves but this is not the right way to go. This was his debut in CL and he needs time like any young player. I believe this kid can succeed but I for sure won't lie to myself and claim he had a great match. He simply didn't but rarely any player has a great debut. As I said he needs playing time and patience but he also needs to improve his first touch.
[MENTION=20420]God Serena[/MENTION] I know you like La Masia kids (especially Alena) and so do I and I also hope he will surpass Rakitic in every aspect of the game but for now he is far from that. Only sure thing is that he needs plying time and I sincerely hope Valverde will give him more minutes from now on.
Also, player's development (as seen in Dembele's case) is not only about a potential.
It consists from: technical skills and technical potential, IQ, player's professionalism and a factor of experience (true, where coaches need to help you with playing you a lot from the early age).
I have seen posts how Alena is already better than Rakitic
or how he will surpass everything what he has done in his career.
1. Raki has just been voted as the 19th best player in the world in the last year
2. he has been the most used Barca's player over the last 5 years, even before the Psg's clause
3. has just played in a Wc final
4. plays as a midfielder starter in his NT team from the age of 19
Btw, an interesting comparison of where their career's where at a certain moment.
Today, Alena is 20 years and 11 Months old. He is getting his first minutes for Barca and played till now in a Bteam.
Rakitic, one of the most underrated players here, aged 20 years 3 Months (8 Months youngers than a current Alena) was playing here already as a somewhat important and established midfielder:
Euro 2008, Croatia:Germany:
In terms of development in matches and big matches, Rakitic's level at the age of 20 was already 3-4-5 years infront of a current Alena.
So, Alena would need to have a way higher potential and IQ than Rakitic to overcome these obstacles (playing time & development and experience in big matches).
Btw, do you know how many mistakes Rakitic and Modric needed to make in order to develop their steel-mental strength on penalties? A lot.
That mental strength didn't come over 1 day, they needed years of losing, making mistakes and learning to get there.
Rakitic, a world cup her for Croatia on penalties in 2018, look at his and Modric's pens in 1/4 of Euro 2008, 10 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXq13PjO-FQ
My point is: Alena is already a few years behind Rakitic (and Rabiot, for example) in that area of learning, making mistakes and developing on the highest level.
And even when he'll start to play those matches, he will need years and years of learning and making mistakes to eventually reach the even higher level.
Let's go back to the beginning of a post: Alena can't be better than a current Rakitic and he has 1000s of steps infront of him to get even close on that level of tactics, IQ, mental strength, experience and similar.