Good midfield is not just about posession, it's about creating chances for forwards. And our main creator is not any of our mids, but Messi. I suggest to watch matches against Malaga for example to see how completely sterile can be our offense if he is neutralized. And Real ran all over our midfield in both matches last season.
Ivan Rakitić
- Thread starter Barcaman
- Start date
Good midfield is not just about posession, it's about creating chances for forwards. And our main creator is not any of our mids, but Messi. I suggest to watch matches against Malaga for example to see how completely sterile can be our offense if he is neutralized. And Real ran all over our midfield in both matches last season.
Barcilliant
Senior Member
Add Turan and a rapidly improving Rafinha to the mix and we should have another good season barring bad luck or injuries.
serghei
Senior Member
If our midfield is crap, how come Iniesta and Rakitic were the best players in the CL final?Our midfield is top 3 in the world.
Busquets, Iniesta, Rakitic, Mascherano, Arda Turan, Rafinha. Weak... now I've heard it all.
F
Flavia
Guest
Our midfield is top 3 in the world.
Busquets, Iniesta, Rakitic, Mascherano, Arda Turan, Rafinha. Weak... now I've heard it all.
There's a huge troll face after that post...
serghei
Senior Member
lessthanjake
New member
Xavi is my favorite midfielder of all time, but...
I don't want to be rude, but I am not sure whether I would want a prime Xavi and a prime Iniesta in our team today.
Even Rijkaard hasn't won a CL with small midfielders but with some combination of strength and skills with Edmilson, Motta, Van Bommel as strong players and Xavi, Deco, Iniesta as more skillful players.
(Remember, Lucho's Barca is very similar to Rijkaard's Barca in a lot of ways...)
In Pep's era when Tiki-Taka was on it's prime, we were trashing teams with shortpassing and with short players.
It is hard to tell whether only those players aged or the opponent's have figured out our tricks and those small/technical midfielders stopped working.
I want to say: Xavi was awesome, but I am not too sure whether we need a new Xavi today, and especially whether we need a new Xavi-Iniesta copy in the current era of football.
Again, I don't think that we would be as good as last Season even with 26 years old Xavi+Iniesta.
Xavi can't defend like Rakitic, Xavi can't bring that kind of a balance, Xavi can't run as much as Ivan, imo.
Also, with Xavi and Iniesta, we would again play a stupid and sterile possession game for 90 Minutes.
So, Xavi was a God.
But I don't want another Xavi today, personally.
Prime Xavi was better than a prime Rakitic, but I would pick Rakitic for the current team and for the current era.
Also, applying the same logic, if Kroos looks more like Xavi than Rakitic, so what?
We don't need a new Xavi.
We need one RAKITIC, he is the best player for the current system.
Luft, I don't mean anything bad, I know that you love Raki, this is just my view on whether we need a new Xavi in the current era of football.
First of all, as a factual matter, Xavi consistently ran more than anyone else on the pitch. Rakitic has a similarly elite work rate, but he's not better in that regard. Xavi covered insane amounts of ground.
Second, I think you're perhaps right that Rakitic fits current Barca more than a prime Xavi would. But if Barca had a prime Xavi, the tactics would almost certainly be different. So Barca would be different, and Xavi would fit the system. And, given that prime Xavi is a far superior player to Rakitic (no knock on Rakitic at all; it's just that prime Xavi was godly), I have to assume Barca would be better off for it.
God Serena
New member
Our midfield these days is extremely weak. It is utter crap. Probably the weakest out of all top teams in Europe. Even Chelsea's midfield is better. In fact, Man Utd's midfield is also comfortably better, never mind Bayern/Madrid midfields. The midfield cannot hold possession at ALL. Due to this utter crap midfield, other teams regularly out possess us and dominate control of the game.......
Even with the trollface at the bottom you still got some people to bite.
I'm impressed.
Vegeta
New member
Xavi is my favorite midfielder of all time, but...
I don't want to be rude, but I am not sure whether I would want a prime Xavi and a prime Iniesta in our team today.
Even Rijkaard hasn't won a CL with small midfielders but with some combination of strength and skills with Edmilson, Motta, Van Bommel as strong players and Xavi, Deco, Iniesta as more skillful players.
(Remember, Lucho's Barca is very similar to Rijkaard's Barca in a lot of ways...)
In Pep's era when Tiki-Taka was on it's prime, we were trashing teams with shortpassing and with short players.
It is hard to tell whether only those players aged or the opponent's have figured out our tricks and those small/technical midfielders stopped working.
I want to say: Xavi was awesome, but I am not too sure whether we need a new Xavi today, and especially whether we need a new Xavi-Iniesta copy in the current era of football.
Again, I don't think that we would be as good as last Season even with 26 years old Xavi+Iniesta.
Xavi can't defend like Rakitic, Xavi can't bring that kind of a balance, Xavi can't run as much as Ivan, imo.
Also, with Xavi and Iniesta, we would again play a stupid and sterile possession game for 90 Minutes.
So, Xavi was a God.
But I don't want another Xavi today, personally.
Prime Xavi was better than a prime Rakitic, but I would pick Rakitic for the current team and for the current era.
Also, applying the same logic, if Kroos looks more like Xavi than Rakitic, so what?
We don't need a new Xavi.
We need one RAKITIC, he is the best player for the current system.
Luft, I don't mean anything bad, I know that you love Raki, this is just my view on whether we need a new Xavi in the current era of football.
I think this is an interesting theory.
BBZ8800
Senior Member
I agree with you here.
But unlike most of our fans, I don't think "too romantically" about Pep's Barca.
More or less, 80-90% of fans here think that Pep's Barca is the best thing that ever existed in football and that our style back then is the best formation/tactics/style ever seen in football's history.
I love Pep and our style back then, but imo, again, that worked because it was a perfect moment in football's history when no one knew how to defend against Tiki-Taka.
Once when Tiki-Taka was figured out, we couldn't win CL trophies even with still almost prime Xavi, Busi, Iniesta and Messi. (Ok, we didn't have Pep anymore, but still..)
Anyway, my point was:
-- Rijkaard's Barca from 2006:
-- a strong Cdm (Edmilson, Motta, Marquez)+ one small/technical Cm (Xavi/Deco) + one extremely physically strong midfielder (Van Bommel/Motta)
-- so, 2 strong guys + weak guy worked back then
-- in 2005, when we lost to Chelsea, we had 3 small midfielders because of a lot of injuries
-- against Chelsea we played with Gerard (Barca's B coach), Xavi and Deco
-- and imo, that was the same old crappy story as always=2-3 small midfielders were more or less EASILY trashed by biggest teams in Europe (and that tactics worked only during Pep, and imo, NEVER before him and will neither work ever again)
So, this is how 3 weaker midfielders played before Pep, but also, the same story was after Pep/after a prime of Tiki-Taka:
-- the same old story imo (I am often posting this video, that was the most painful night for me as a Barca fan ever):
-- 2nd leg, CL 1/8, we won 2:1 in the first match
-- we were on paper the best team in Europe in that moment, when Ronnie-Etoo magic started to rule the world:
-- Pep's era:
-- we survived suddenly with physically weaker midfielders like Busi-Xavi-Iniesta
-- after 3-4 years when Tiki-Taka was on it's prime, short midfielders again weren't good enough for CL trophies
-- and now suddenly, in the first Season when we moved from Xavi-Iniesta, we have again won a CL
-- I don't think that it is a coincidence
I also wanted to say that a lot of our fans from this forum became fans during Pep's era, so they have slightly too romantic views on Pep's era and they still believe that this was the best team ever.
For me, Rijkaard's team from 2006' or Lucho's from 2015' weren't too much behind.
And I don't look at Pep's team as the only way how Barca should play.
In fact again, my opinion, in our last 3 winning eras (2006, 2009-2011, 2015) in 2 times out of 3, Rijkaard and Lucho used more or less exactly the same system (those 2 Barca's are very, very similar).
So, my opinion is, that except in Pep's era during golden Tiki-Taka days, the BEST formation for us is a formation where we combine our insane technique with some muscles from players like Edmilson, Motta, Van Bommel, or Rakitic today.
This is why I think that current Rakitic and his height (183 cms) and some muscles are better in a combination with Iniesta, then any prime Xavi-Iniesta combination.
Xavi-Iniesta worked (imo) ONLY until teams figured out how to defend against Tiki-Taka.
After that, Tiki-Taka became quite predictable, one dimensional and somewhat easy to defend.
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lessthanjake
New member
I think you make some valid points, but there's a few random things I'd like to mention/point out.
- You said: "Once when Tiki-Taka was figured out, we couldn't win CL trophies even with still almost prime Xavi, Busi, Iniesta and Messi. (Ok, we didn't have Pep anymore, but still..)." I think that's a little bit ignoring some other factors. We didn't really have Messi when we lost to Bayern in 2013. It probably wouldn't have made a difference given how outlandish the scoreline ended up being, but Messi was injured for one leg and did not play in the other. And, in 2014, we had a Messi that was significantly lower-level than he has been in any other recent year. And Xavi was outside of his prime by that point anyways. I agree that teams figured out tiki-taka a little bit (and I'd add 2012 as something of an example of that too, I suppose). But we weren't really in a great position to win the CL in 2013 or 2014, because Messi was nowhere near his best at the business end of the CL either season.
- You mentioned the loss to Chelsea in 2004-2005. But I'm not sure you're giving that season's Chelsea its due credit. They were REALLY good. This is a team that had 29 wins, 8 draws, and 1 loss in the Premier League that season. That's 95 points, which is the highest total in the history of the EPL (and probably the best in English football history, but they've had different length seasons and 2 points for a win for decades, so it would take me a while to figure that out). They followed that up with 91 points the next season, the 2nd highest number of points per match (Man U once got 92 points in 42 matches) in EPL history. I think it's a little hard to say we were definitely better than them. And we had managed to finish 2nd in our group (which is how we got stuck playing Chelsea in the first round to begin with). I hear you that our loss came in a match where we happened to play with 3 small midfielders, but I think we also just were perhaps not quite as good as them (or at least not really better). Remember, while we beat them the next season, they suffered from a fairly early red card in the leg at Stamford Bridge, which changes everything. I guess what I'm saying is that Rijkaard's Barca was amazing, but so was Mourinho's Chelsea. In retrospect I don't think it was a big upset to lose an extremely close tie to them.
- You mention "short" midfielders. Busquets isn't actually short though. He's not that physically imposing, which I guess is your broader point, but he's not short.
- And in 2009, Yaya Toure was the first-choice DM for most of the season. He gave way to Busquets in the CL after Marquez went down with an injury so Yaya filled in at CB. But we did actually have a physical force in the midfield for most of the 2009 campaign. 2011 was the only season we really succeeded without it (I guess that further bolsters your point).
Anyways, some of that is just nitpicking. Overall, I agree with you that we could use some physicality in the midfield. And while I prefer watching Pep's Barca, I actually think that last season's Barca might be harder to beat. One thing that I think is insane is that we won every single CL KO stage by at least 2 goals, and won every single CdR stage by at least 2 goals. No one really came close to us. Even in 2010-2011, we were very lucky to get past Arsenal in the CL. Even though we thoroughly outplayed them, they won the first leg, and were going to go through until Van Persie got a red card that he really didn't deserve. And that was a big problem with Pep's Barca. You could thoroughly outplay a team and still not necessarily win. We got through there, but 2012 Chelsea (and, to a lesser extent, 2010 Inter) were good examples of that taking us down.
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No it's not coincidence. But it has very little to do with improved midfield, more with the fact that we had one of the best attacks in history of football. You say short midfielders were not enough for CL trophies after few years. You are forgetting the fact that our attack and defense were more to blame than our "weak" midfield. We had just Messi, Villa burned out after one season, Pedro was always average, Sanchez the same (for us) plus some young guys like Cuenca and Tello. So our attack bacame such weakness, that we started to play Cesc as False 9. That's the reason we bought Neymar after all. And our defense after Puyol's play declined with age, became even worse liability.
So IMO the success of this season had more to do with our improved defense (best in La Liga) and Trident, not more physical midfield. Put Xaviniesta in their prime behind Trident and than you could compare.
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