Gerard Piqué

[jamrock]

So Ramos and Varane wouldnt improve our defence? We concede less because we have like 70% of the ball in most of the matches so our defenders our tested much less then others. Thats the way our team defends through possession. Still our defenders come up short when the opposition has the few chances it has.

and Madrid defending by keeping two pivots in front of the defense and play with one defensive fullback, their is more than one way to protect the defense, we do it by possession they did it under jose in a more traditional manner.

I will stop myself from getting it to more detail, pointing how high of a line we play with, so even with the possession, when the players lose the ball and the opposition attacks, their is often times no one between the defense and the attacker are at most one in busquets, three players defending the entire space, the opposition has to attack in.

with, Madrid that's never the case, but actually thinking and the least bit of under standing of the is lost on the barcaforum in 2013.

no football thinking is put down to having his chest to the player.
know this before you start talking crap, but then again you would probably talk crap anyways.

 

[Barcaman]

There is no question about Pique's ability as a a player. He's fits in like a glove.
Problems when we defend are bigger. From attacking full backs to Busquets.

Having said that, he could use some competition for his spot as Bartra doesn't seem to be in Tata's plans.

 

[alex88bg]

Bojan ,piques abilities must never be questioned,but the thing is he ISNT USING THEM ! His body is weak and his mind is somewhere else.He needs stronger competition and thats the fact,he isnt someone like puyol that only needs to put his barca shirt on and be at 110 % of his abilities.He hasnt got a training approach or a game approach as puyol,maybe he never will but he needs to try to get there ,every game every training session...He isnt the only problem in this deffense but he should be the one to step up,to be the best to make a difference and to be an example..Well sadly that guys name is Mascherano,and he is a Dm...

 

[lostchild]

as much as his performance was horrible
im still positive that its not about Pique, Dani Alves or any specific player
Messi lost the ball like an amateur at least 4 times that game. leaving the place for an easy counter everytime
and thats ^ not the first time thats happened lately aswell.

the main problem imo is the way of play
"slaves of tiki taka" ? really? since when is passing the ball 200 times in defence/midfield is tiki taka ?

this was Tiki Taka -

please tell me when was the last time you saw anything close to that ?

i remember one game
it was after we lost 2-0 (?) to Milan and had to overcome that in order to stay ... players ran like crazy, and it was really refreshing to see.

thats what helped secure games quickly, make the opponent go crazy, secure possession
teams have put 11 players on the back a lot before, and we still managed to overcome it. with quick runs.. creative thought, through passes, overall quickness of play.

today
seriously
i dont know wtf is going on, no one is playing close, making runs.. im sick and tired of this RETARDIC move of "Dani.. here.. get the ball and please take the most idiotic cross you can think of, all the way to a throw in"

Pique was always kinda fragile and slow in the same way that Dani was always horrible in defense. but we made sure we finish games on attack instead.

so yea, i wouldnt mind some nice new promising CB to join. but until then.. we could at least try to play like Barca again.

 

[Boris]

we'd b be unstoppable with defenders from a team that has conceded more goals than us in la liga over the past two years, keep in mind this is two years where our overall team play has been crap, yet we still managed to concede less.

AH Jesus.
this place.

Goals conceeded don't say everything. Our possession is what does that trick.
Our opponents put less pressure on defenders because of this, and yet they fail us in those 2-3 chances that opposition creates.
Madrid is playing bad overall, so there's been a constant threat to their defense because midfield is still clueless.

All I'm saying is that this team's attack deserves a better defense. Imagine Ramos instead of Pique... faster, stronger, better in air, technicaly equal.

 

[suckabov]

I myself have said that Pique hasn't been playing well the last few seasons, so enjoy taking my post out of context all you want. But if you go through this thread, you'll find about a billion comments about how Shakira and modeling are the reasons why he's having blunders, and very few quality posts with arguments and logic, while with Mascherano and his blunders it's the other way around. Pique deserves criticism and I've already said that, but he gets extra (and this is usually what we see around here) for being who he is outside the pitch, and that's bullshit. Bashing Pique has become a trend, just like it has with some other players, like Sanchez (guilty as charged), Pedro, Fabregas and others. But they're no competition to Pique.

I have to agree. I've seen multiple posts in which people actually blamed Shakira for his decline in form, or said Pique was more interested in her than in football. Also, there were several occasions were Pique posted something that wasn't related to football on Twitter and people on this thread said things like, "He is so lazy, he should be training instead". Two examples I particularly remember would be a picture of him with his grandmother eating snails, which of course also resulted in "slow-as-a-snail" jokes, and a tweet in which he talked about listening to Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" and people said he spent too much time in bed with Shakira.
So I, too, think he gets criticised more easily than other players might with the same performance. And some of the criticism isn't objective or football-related at all.

It's clear, though, that Pique has been off form and probably shouldn't be in the starting 11. But people can exaggerate it. I particularly don't see slipping as an example of bad defending. As others have said, the problems are bigger than Pique. If I remember correctly, none of last game's goals were solely his mistake. And if he had one or two serious contenders for his place, I'm sure he would perform better.

 

[alex88bg]

The problems are bigger than him but you are trying to protect him while he shouldnt be protected.People have been throwing statistics in our faces how bad he is and even if u decide to overlook those bcs statistics arent always right u cant deny the subjective feeling of his bad plays.Pique needs a very harsh training with his physical coach but unfortunately its too late now he should have done that during the summer.Whatever our problems are one thing stands PIQUE ISNT PERFORMING !

 

[kollegah]

honestly, everyone who thinks pique is good enough for a club like barca who have ambitions to win every title, who have some of the best players in the world in the squad, has just no clue about football. you can put every yes every la liga defender in pks place, wont do worse, more likely better

 

[suckabov]

The problems are bigger than him but you are trying to protect him while he shouldnt be protected.People have been throwing statistics in our faces how bad he is and even if u decide to overlook those bcs statistics arent always right u cant deny the subjective feeling of his bad plays.Pique needs a very harsh training with his physical coach but unfortunately its too late now he should have done that during the summer.Whatever our problems are one thing stands PIQUE ISNT PERFORMING !

I wasn't defending Pique at any point. It's as clear as day that our current defence isn't good enough for good offensive teams, and that Mascherano is currently performing better as a CB than Pique. I don't think anyone doubts that. The point Stric made that was some of the criticism goes a bit overboard, especially when people bash him about his private life (as has been done), which has zero objectivity to it and has nothing to do with football at all. So I was more criticising the the way he is criticised sometimes, than the criticisism as such.

Doesn't mean that he doesn't need to improve drastically - he does, be it through more competition or a leader figure like Puyol to guide him. What I don't agree with, though, is that Pique as such is not good enough for Barca. His performance currently is not, no question about that. But he can be better than that. In any case, we need to sign some more defenders.

 

[Trickykid]

honestly, everyone who thinks pique is good enough for a club like barca who have ambitions to win every title, who have some of the best players in the world in the squad, has just no clue about football. you can put every yes every la liga defender in pks place, wont do worse, more likely better

Yeah, clearly it's the people who believe that Pique is good enough to play for Barca, who haven't got a clue about football, and not you, when you vomit nonsense like that all over your keyboard.

 

[big_man]

Right, so here's my other issue with him:

A.Madrid game

Valencia game

Sevilla game

Here's my question, fine, fair enough we all know he's slow as all hell and not much can be done about that. But why the heck is he always so far ahead of Mascherano ?!

Look at the Valencia average position map, this guy is roaming around the same position Busquets is FFS? He has zero recovery speed, just stay the fuck back! Mascherano should be the one pushing forward like he does. Why the heck is always that far up the pitch?

 

[lostchild]

Here's my question, fine, fair enough we all know he's slow as all hell and not much can be done about that. But why the heck is he always so far ahead of Mascherano ?!

Look at the Valencia average position map, this guy is roaming around the same position Busquets is FFS? He has zero recovery speed, just stay the fuck back! Mascherano should be the one pushing forward like he does. Why the heck is always that far up the pitch?

im pretty sure thats what Tata wants from him
he also said he supports his forward runs but "we need to cover him when he does that"
and i have to disagree with Tata on that (if they are actually his orders)
because Masch was ALREADY a DM! so let him go up and be behind Busquets
let the slow Pique wait behind and stop any counter wanting to happen
Masch would be even able to come back and help cause he reads the game well and he's quick enough .

 

[Cule4life]

Right, so here's my other issue with him:

A.Madrid game

Valencia game

Sevilla game

Here's my question, fine, fair enough we all know he's slow as all hell and not much can be done about that. But why the heck is he always so far ahead of Mascherano ?!

Look at the Valencia average position map, this guy is roaming around the same position Busquets is FFS? He has zero recovery speed, just stay the fuck back! Mascherano should be the one pushing forward like he does. Why the heck is always that far up the pitch?

Because he loves to attack and thinks he's a beast in the air which he's not. Couple that we with Two attacking full backs and you have 75% of barca defensive problems

 

[psychotsek]

He isn't at his best far from that actually but whole team isn't playing the way it used to.We make way to much silly mistakes in the middle,we loose threw ball way easier than we used to and exept Messi and maybe Neymar none of our attackers seem to know how to create or complete a chance properly. The result of this is that we get counter attacked easily and in combination with our weak full backs leaves the center backs exposed.

 

[Maria]

As hard as the fans can be on Pique, we're still not criticizing him as often as he is criticizing other people..only in the last week he criticized Pep, Tito, Tata, the fans, Real Madrid and the press..and still found the time to train, play a poker tournament and act as Barca president.

He isn't at his best far from that actually but whole team isn't playing the way it used to.We make way to much silly mistakes in the middle,we loose threw ball way easier than we used to and exept Messi and maybe Neymar none of our attackers seem to know how to create or complete a chance properly. The result of this is that we get counter attacked easily and in combination with our weak full backs leaves the center backs exposed.

"Personally, I am in a good shape despite the fact that the way we play is very demanding for the CBs."
Pique, formerly known as a slave of tiki-taka, now a slave of Tata Martino