Barça's Transfers and Rumors

[DonAK]

We obviously need to take an advantage of Leo's prime, but not at the expense of the academy and youth in the squad because we also have to be prepared for a life without Messi.

That means focusing short-term + long-term.

Right not it seems like the focus is solely on short-term and Messi's years.

 

[Jombi]

My point is he almost was loaned. ONE single game changed it. Messi, MESSI, was 90 minutes away of going to espanyol
And it's not like he did anything different. He had already scored his 1st goal. And he still was almost sent away.

Didnt this had something to do with him not having received the Spanish citizenship by that summer and the number of non-EU players already in the team? He obtained the citizenship later in the fall of 2005.

 

[Flavia]

Didnt this had something to do with him not having received the Spanish citizenship by that summer and the number of non-EU players already in the team? He obtained the citizenship later in the fall of 2005.

I dont think the reason matters much, and maybe that was an excuse from laporta to try and justify this insane idea. It shouldn't had crossed anybody's mind to loan him. Some players you just keep at home. Loans rarely work for Barça.

 

[Barcaman]

B team was crap last season and Lucho was in no position to risk that much with promoting/playing youngsters.
Or he could, but then we wouldn't have won the treble.

 

[Jombi]

I dont think the reason matters much, and maybe that was an excuse from laporta to try and justify this insane idea. It shouldn't had crossed anybody's mind to loan him. Some players you just keep at home. Loans rarely work for Barça.

But wasnt the point that he couldnt play until he had a Spanish passport because he was non-EU?

 

[Flavia]

But wasnt the point that he couldnt play until he had a Spanish passport because he was non-EU?

I doubt that was really the reason. He started playing in september, I think. It wouldn't take that long for him to get his passport, as it didn't.

 

[xXKonan]

Barcelona director Braida has met with representatives of Monaco defender Aymen Abdennour (25), who can leave for 20+M. [sport]

 

[SeloBarca]

Current crop of youngsters arent good enough. Maybe Samper, as a DM.
Barcelona are the top team in the world, you cant be a good talent, you have to be superb.

 

[Co0ter]

Then what? taking advantage of Messi prime might be a priority but shouldn't be at any expense .
We won CL back in 2006,Milan won it next year and appearing in their 3rd final in 5 years.they kept their policy of signing ready player to continue their winning phase .we kept caring about youth with veteran player .we won 3 CL after.Milan doesn't look like a team that will qualify qualify for CL next year .and missed it for 2 years in a row now .Inter had same struggle after winning treble with aging squad
Some would point to financial struggles but it isn't like we are immune to that .Liga isn't very strong in that and without prime Messi we might not have star power to compete with them
The fact is that .Last season out of the 14 players who played most games in the season .only 1 of them will be younger than 26 when next season starts .and our 2 signings aren't younger either .
Also every team need a backbone of the right mix of youth old and players in their prime even to win now in most cases
Our young squad players are bench players .this squad starve for youth and in 2 years when basically almost every star in the team not named Neymar will be around 29 we might be in trouble

Right now we don't even have a prospect who we can say that he is a sure thing that we can feel he is surely can be barca starter quality in a season or 2 .a lot of question mark surrounding almost everyone of them
Our top youth signing are now on his way out and to be sold after only 1 year ?! our next youth signing will be an overrated Brazilian wing who is less talented than him?!

One last thing,who was the last prospect who being patient had really benefited him? the last 2 I remember was Pedro and Oleguer .other than them almost everyone who became starter here has been impact player early .reaching 1st team at the age of 21 to be playing sparely couple of years isn't usually the best bet for a prospect and many would understandably will go for Thiago way and leave

Why wouldn't we do whatever we can to get the best out of Messi. Some of you Barca fans are either delusional or living in a dream world. Messi is arguably the best player EVER, he certainly is to me. We should be doing everything we can to get the best out of him, at any expense.

We won the CL in 2006 eh? It might have had something to do with Ronaldinho...who by the way, we bought. His light went out rather quickly though. How many champion's leagues did we win before that?! One.

We've won three Champion's leagues since Messi was 21. Three. Yes we've had Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets etc but don't think for a second that any player is as important as Messi to this team. When someone needed to pull through for the team, something magical when we really needed it, it was almost always Messi. He is 28 years old now, in his prime but to start declining in a few years. Once the Messi era is over I think many people will be in for a rude awakening.

Milan is broke and had a horrible selection of players brought in for many years now. We'd have to run this club into the ground to end up like them, it's not happening. You also need to come to grips with that every cantera product isn't going to be great, or even good. We can do better with the youth team atm that's for sure, but that doesn't mean we should cease to strengthen our first team in the meantime. If we didn't buy Suarez or Neymar who would have replaced them from the cantera? Anyone worthy?! Did we ruin a youth product or blow their chances? No..there was no one with enough quality to step in.

Why blow our chance at winning titles now with Messi? I just don't understand your logic.

 

[Bran the Greenseer]

Lets not forget that once Messi starts declining Neymar will be entering his prime, which is the whole point of why he was bought to one day replace messi. He'll win us a CL or two then we'll either have another guy bought to replace him or someone from la masia will break through.

 

[Co0ter]

I love Neymar and he is a fantastic player, but that is only wishful thinking- hopes and dreams. Messi is real. He's proven he can carry us to titles when the going gets tough. Messi is still in a league of his own; there is no replacing him.

Neymar was brought to strengthen the team and that's exactly what he did.

 

[khaled_a_d]

Why wouldn't we do whatever we can to get the best out of Messi. Some of you Barca fans are either delusional or living in a dream world. Messi is arguably the best player EVER, he certainly is to me. We should be doing everything we can to get the best out of him, at any expense.

We won the CL in 2006 eh? It might have had something to do with Ronaldinho...who by the way, we bought. His light went out rather quickly though. How many champion's leagues did we win before that?! One.

We've won three Champion's leagues since Messi was 21. Three. Yes we've had Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets etc but don't think for a second that any player is as important as Messi to this team. When someone needed to pull through for the team, something magical when we really needed it, it was almost always Messi. He is 28 years old now, in his prime but to start declining in a few years. Once the Messi era is over I think many people will be in for a rude awakening.

Milan is broke and had a horrible selection of players brought in for many years now. We'd have to run this club into the ground to end up like them, it's not happening. You also need to come to grips with that every cantera product isn't going to be great, or even good. We can do better with the youth team atm that's for sure, but that doesn't mean we should cease to strengthen our first team in the meantime. If we didn't buy Suarez or Neymar who would have replaced them from the cantera? Anyone worthy?! Did we ruin a youth product or blow their chances? No..there was no one with enough quality to step in.

Why blow our chance at winning titles now with Messi? I just don't understand your logic.

I talked about youth in general ,as I said our main signing were older players and the youth signing are now leaving
Neymar is gr8 player and he is the one young player I am talking about .I am not against winning with Messi but that doesn't mean we should ignore youth .whether it is signing,cantera
Right now that isn't the case .it is let's win with Messi and then god help us approach .that what happened with Milan . and it isn't like we didn't have our own share of bad signings .2 transfer market in a row our signing was Cesc/Alexis/Song/Alba .we needed to get rid of 3 of them and replace them to get team back in track
Everyone knows that Messi is at least the greatest player we ever had if not the greatest of all time .but that doesn't mean we can't win without him . since he was 21 for example Bayern played same number of CL finals we had and they don't have Messi . CL was won b4 him and will be won after him .
You can't ignore the lack of youth just because you want to win now ,hell even winning now need young player like Neymar .I am not talking about 17-19 years old player but at those between 22-25 .we lack those right now except Neymar .hell we reached a point that people still think Bartra is a prospect and he will be 25 mid way this season FFS
There is no real sporting vision on how to deal with Cantera and our youth ,I said that in that thread in the Poll forum .look at Chelsea .they are in a win now mood too but they knew what to do with every prospect to develop .they loan players and follow them and see who should return and who should be sold for a good price

B team was crap last season and Lucho was in no position to risk that much with promoting/playing youngsters.
Or he could, but then we wouldn't have won the treble.

I don't think anyone can blame Lucho tbf .he has given the chance to Munir and Sandro .played Rafinha/Roberto a lot considering their abilities . allowed many prospects to train with 1st team many times and gave few games here and there for Samper .was fair with Deulofeu and asked to loan him because he wasn't gonna count on him so he should go elsewhere to develop (and it isn't his job to say which club he should go) .May be he could have treated Montoya a little better but that's it
But the lack of youth is more about the management and sporting directors IMO .Barca B was doing well in Segunda until last season and it isn't like we used them .Tito(RIP) and Tata was allergic to young players and didn't use them tbh

 

[Bran the Greenseer]

I love Neymar and he is a fantastic player, but that is only wishful thinking- hopes and dreams. Messi is real. He's proven he can carry us to titles when the going gets tough. Messi is still in a league of his own; there is no replacing him.

Neymar was brought to strengthen the team and that's exactly what he did.

We don't need Messi to win a CL, don't even need Messi to win a Treble (Theoretically). Messi makes it so that we're perennial favorites every year in every competition but thats not what I meant when I said Neymar was brought in to replace Messi. I just meant Neymar will be the star that drives the team like Xavi/Ronaldinho before Messi. And he more than has the capacity to do it, you just need to watch Brazil with and without neymar to see that, and he's only going to get better.

And if Neymar is lucky enough to get a supporting cast close to what Messi has gotten we'll probably have similar levels of success if the coach is competent. And it's likely that Neymar will have his own Xavi/Iniesta in Messi when he's out of his prime.

 

[Topolino]

Can't compare our current transfer policy to the fall of Milan.

Milan fell due to them selling their main players - Zlatan, Thiago Silva and they let Pirlo go to Juventus (and that's a whole new story) and we must remember that they had Pato, who was extremely good at scoring but he had a bad injury record, and I mean BAD.

Add to that the fact that Milan was signing older players (van Bommel, Seedorf, Mexes and they already had Nesta and Inzaghi) and we understand the fall of Milan. (Ofcourse we should take into account that it was an economy meltdown in Italy at the time)

 

[BBZ8800]

Then what? taking advantage of Messi prime might be a priority but shouldn't be at any expense .
We won CL back in 2006,Milan won it next year and appearing in their 3rd final in 5 years.they kept their policy of signing ready player to continue their winning phase .we kept caring about youth with veteran player .we won 3 CL after.Milan doesn't look like a team that will qualify qualify for CL next year .and missed it for 2 years in a row now .Inter had same struggle after winning treble with aging squad

Imo, Italian teams are not a good example for this debate.
Milan crashed not because of their policy but because of a Italian laws in early 2000s since when Italian teams needed to pay much higher taxes then the rest of the Europe, and then they slightly started to overpay and eventually they fell into the debts.

Inter, well, they are the crappiest team in the world, who would never have won a scudetto (something like a modern Liverpool) if Juventus wouldn't have been involved in a fixing scandal.
Then a crappy Inter (crappy because they had the worst sporting project for the last 20-30 years) suddenly bought half of the Juve's squad and with Juve in Seria B, and with Milan in financial problems, they turned into a winning team, when their only opponents were Roma in debts (in debts for the same reasons as other Italian teams, when they overpaid for Batistuta and other players in late 90s and early 00s, and especially since the Italian laws are not friendly towards sport lately) and Lazio in debts.

So, Inter getting on top is something like Atletico or Sevilla now rulling La Liga because Barca would get relegated and punished and Real bankrupted for some reason.

Anyway, I am also for buying older player TODAY while we have Messi.

The fact is that .Last season out of the 14 players who played most games in the season .only 1 of them will be younger than 26 when next season starts .and our 2 signings aren't younger either .
Also every team need a backbone of the right mix of youth old and players in their prime even to win now in most cases

We can easily buy some younger players in the next 3-4-5 players.
We won't be buying 29 year old players season after Season.

About a right mix of young and older players, well...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_UEFA_Champions_League_Final

Milan in 2007:
-- Dida 34 years in that moment
-- Oddo 31
-- Nesta 31
-- Maldini 39
-- Jankulovski 30
-- Gattuso 29
-- Pirlo 28
-- Ambrosini 30
-- Seedorf 31
-- Kaka 25
-- Inzaghi 34

-- only 3 players younger than 30:
-- Kaka 25
-- Pirlo 28
-- Gattuso 29

So, a mixture of youth and experience is just one option.
There are a lot of options HOW to win a trophy.

For example, our possible team in 4 years (Champions league final 2019):
-- Mats 27
-- Pique 32
-- xx defender
-- Vidal 30
-- Alba 30
-- Busi 31
-- Raki 31
-- xx midfielder (or Turan 32)
-- Messi 32
-- Suarez 32
-- Neymar 27
-- add Bartra 28, Roberto 27, Rafinha 26, Samper 24
-- and at least 1-2 gems will pop up from our La Masia in the next 4 years

Still, a quite "young" team without any player older than 32 (compare that with Milan's winning squads).
But, it is a known fact that Barca's fans are slightly obsessed with youth in general, and that a younger player always looks "better" and with more potential than some player aged 28 or 30.

Also, as I have said, Barca can easily rebuild in only 2 years with 2-3 players each season for 30-40 Millions (some younger players like defenders, midfielders or similar).
About attackers, we will either have Messi until his age 35, so no need to worry there about a new attacker.
Or we will sell him aged 33 for 80-100 Millions and use that money for a new attacker.

So, basically, we have young Neymar and we will have Messi until his retirement.
Basically, the only "expensive" signing which we need is a XX player after Suarez, one day.

And possibly one midfielder.
We have enough of defensive midfielders in Busi, Roberto, Samper.
We have enough of midfielders and we will buy some over years (or produce some new midfielders).
And in defense, we can always just buy a bunch of Mathieu's and Vermaelen's aged 28 for 20 Millions.

So, our future doesn't look that grey even now, when we will have all "older" players.
We will NOT need that many players to rebuild one day.