George_Costanza
Active member
Coached by Roura, created by Pep. In Tito(Roura) and Tata years, we just played with a team created by Pep where the system already was drilled into our players, and the players were basically the same. We didnt evovle at all, and all tho it was enough to win domestically, we did pay the price vs big teams. So im basically saying, im fine how tito/roura did it, but the groundwork was done by pep, and they really didnt do anything special.
It depends.Tito/Roura were successful enough, but lets say Valverde only won league first year, i would still consider him more successful and impressive ( to Tito/rouras double) because of the circumstances he had to operate under.
Tito/roura never got the chance to prove themselves (all though they kinda did vs big teams and failed miserably changing tactics), but it was the easy but still right choice to continue Peps work.
What Valverde has accomplished is far beyond that. Our second best player and vital for our formation and tactics, backstabbed the club after pre-season. Valverde needed therefore to completely change his tactics. And introduced 4-4-2 distancing us from both ATM and Real and finally winning la liga and Copa del rey. We also had a lot of bad media talk in that first half year, where his personality did great work to not let it affect the team. What he did accomplish in his first year is so underrated, its crazy, just because of a bad levante-game and especially roma-game. He did an amazing job. Now in his second year, he again is top of the leauge and cdr finale - found a way to make the team competitive with 4-3-3 and a lot of old players. This squad was and is WC and terms of talent but in terms of composition (how well they work togehter) its actually pretty bad, the players dont fit/fitted each other that well (age, type, etc.) and Valverde has found a system/systems to make our WC player work as a team and is in the making of winning us the double/treble.
I dont really have a specific general creteria(s). It always depends on the circumstances.
"I would still consider him more successful and impressive ( to Tito/rouras double) because of the circumstances he had to operate under"
What circumstances you are talking about? Losing Neymar? What did Neymar do when Real won the double a season before? We lost Neymar but gained Dembele and Coutinho. Didn't work in the first season due to Valverde's lack of trust in Dembele (besides his injury) and playing Coutinho out of position. If I would say, the team was much stronger than the season before.
You spoke of a system, I'm still and I think I speak for most of us don't know what system are we playing. We really don't have a specific system. The only sure system I know of is this team built around Messi and has a more defensive approach.
Also, you didn't answer my question regarding what's your criteria for a successful manager and leader of Barcelona?
I spoke about this many times before so I don't want to sound like the Copypasta guy. Barca job not suitable for everyone, it demands a high degree of performance and should have a rigorous performance evaluation system just like any top fortune 500 firms. After all, Valverde is getting paid in millions. If the manager does not meet the acceptable levels of performance and goals, he should be given a warning and asked for improvements. If he persists and didn't improve, he should be fired. Winning trophies is just one part of what makes the manager doing "damn good job". First, that's the minimum requirements for any Barca manager. We won 7 Liga titles out of 10 the past decade, so what EV did wasn't exceptional by any means. You have to have a clear identity and style of play. No team in the world has a more iconic style of play than Barcelona, so when a manager comes and tweak that style, we are all fine with it, it's part of the evolution. But what EV did is transform Barca style into something we don't know, maybe it's defensive, or maybe call it Mourinho style, whatever you want to call it, it's not Barcelona, it's ugly and boring.
lack of game tactics, overly reliance on Messi, overplaying underperformers, man-management, treatment of youngsters like Malcom and La Masia...etc. The list goes on and on. A high degree of performance at Barcelona require excellence in all those important aspects, not just one aspect.
So when you say "damn good job" I have no idea what's a good job means or did you base it on results alone which can easily be credited to Messi.