Totalbarca: Can Jordi Masip be the long-term replacement for Valdés?
Víctor Valdés is about to leave FC Barcelona after over 20 years serving the Catalan club. He made it very clear that no one can stop him from leaving; it’s a decision set in stone.
But who will replace maybe the best goalkeeper in the history of the club? Who will take on what could be the most difficult goalkeeping job in the world?
Pepe Reina, Marc-André ter Stegen, Thibaut Courtois? Who will be the new Barça keeper? It’s a question hard to answer. It’s one of the most difficult jobs that exist and the one who eventually takes it on might not even make it.
However I believe that the goalkeeper taking Víctor Valdés’ place between the goalposts at Camp Nou next season will not be his long-term replacement.
If Barça in the future are going to continue being the Barça with its unique style, the Barça we have seen for over 30 years, the Barça that has existed since Laureno Ruiz took down the sign saying “turn around if you are here to offer a Juvenil player that is shorter than 1.80m”; then the long-term replacement for Víctor Valdés has to come from the club’s own backyard.
There are a few in the youth-teams who have such potential. Josep Fabrice Ondoa is the keeper dubbed the best goalkeeping talent at La Masia since Valdés. The Cameroonian that came to the club through Samuel Eto’o’s initiatives in 2009 is the one that most people have talked about. The Juvenil A keeper is without a doubt a potential replacement that I can see in the first team a few years from now.
Ondoa
Ondoa one of the greatest goalkeeper prospects at La Masia
But there is another one I personally didn’t pay much attention to before. But one who lately has opened mine and many others eyes with his excellent performances. One who at times feels like a copy of Victor Valdés, one who might even be better with his feet.
Let me present Barça B goalkeeper Jordi Masip (24).
Jordi Masip was not supposed to be a goalkeeper. The only reason he ended up in goal was because no one else wanted to. Jordi is short and does not posses the body of a goalkeeper. But after jumping into the goal a few times at practice he started to like it a lot and decided to stay in his new position.
Jordi was born in Sabadell, a small city just outside of Barcelona in 1989. He’s as Catalan as it gets. As most kids in the area he grew up a Barça fan and tried his luck doing try-outs for his favorite club. Jordi however made the try-outs as an outfield player as he had yet to discover his passion for the goalkeeping position.
The young Masip was successful, was offered a spot at the club but decided to reject it. “I was young and I said no, I didn’t yet know what I wanted” Jordi has later explained to BarçaTV.
Later he moved to Mercantil, where he would spend a major part of his youth years. It was there Jordi Masip became a goalkeeper. “I finally became a goalkeeper because we were lacking goalkeepers in the training and in the end I really started liking it”, he explained years later.
At cadet level,age 15, Masip would finally join FC Barcelona. But now as a goalkeeper.
Masip, bottom left, joined Barça at age 15
Masip, bottom left, joined Barça at age 15
After promotion through the youth levels at Barça, he was loaned out in 2009, aged 19, to fourth division U.E Vilajuiga. There he played 24 games for the side and when he returned, it was as third keeper for the club B-team; behind Oier Olazába and Rubén Miño.
Jordi has been with the Barça B team ever since, now playing his fourth season for the side. Over the last couple of years Barcelona B has been rotating it’s goalkeepers; no single keeper has the undisputed number one spot. It’s been done for different reasons; to allow all keepers to develop their game and unique tactical reasons being the main ones.
However lately Jordi Masip has come to impress his coach Eusebio so much that the rotation system has been put on hold. It’s been simply impossible for Eusebio to bench his goalie after such performances.
While this season the Barça first team keeper Víctor Valdés has left the Camp Nou crowed in open-mouthed awe, Jordi Masip has been doing the same at the Mini Estadi.
“Valdés is my mirror, the most complete goalkeeper Barça can have”, words expressed by Masip in an interview with BarçaTV.
Masip tries to follow in Valdés footsteps
Masip tries to follow in Valdés footsteps
And maybe Masip is more and more becoming the reflection of his role model. Starting out playing the sport as an outfield player has given Masip an advantage at being a Barça keeper, a position where one’s footwork has to be on another level compared to other clubs. Jordi Masip’s footwork is, to say the least, on that level.
On the pitch he is so calm with the ball at his feet while under pressure that it’s hard to imagine that he knows he is the last man with an open goal behind him. His passes are pinpoint, he could just as easily have been a midfielder.
Jordi Masip is so good technically that Carles Busquets, the Barça first team goalkeeping coach back in 2011 when Masip was third choice in the B-team, once passionately told reporters that Masip’s technique was so good it was “perfection”.
Masip stands out because of his intelligence, his judgment to know when to use his feet and act as just another outfield player. In this regard he reminds a lot of Víctor Valdés.
However it’s not just with his feet that Jordi shines. He has great reflexes, and again like Valdés, is impressive at one-on-one situations.
But Jordi Masip has a flaw impossible to fix: he is short. Standing at only 1.8 meters, that will always be a handicap in aerial situations. However many keepers around the six-foot mark have had very successful careers.
Jordi Masip feel no pressure with the ball at his feet
Jordi Masip feel no pressure with the ball at his feet
There are many similarities between Valdés and Masip. Both are keepers who have worked hard to get where they are; who’ve never taken their spot for granted.
As a kid Valdés didn’t want to be a keeper, dreaming of playing as an outfield player. Masip didn’t have plans either to be a keeper, starting in the outfield before fate made him a goalkeeper.
This meant both men at a young age used their feet more than their hands, which made them exactly the kind of keeper FC Barcelona wants.
Jordi Masip doesn’t need to adapt to the Barça way of playing; he’s lived it for nearly a decade. Profile wise, he is exactly the keeper Barça seek with Víctor leaving the nest.
To be a Barça goalkeeper is arduous and for someone coming from afar, even more so. To understand that, all one has to do is look at the ten years between Andoni Zubizarreta vacating the posts in 1994 and Víctor Valdés filling them in 2004. In that decade the club had 13 different goalkeepers and only won two leagues and two cup titles.
Víctor Valdés has now been between the posts for nearly ten years, in which the club have won twenty titles.
Is Jordi Masip the replacement? I don’t know. But I know that Jordi Masip has the potential to maybe become the long-term replacement for Víctor Valdés.
If he keeps playing at the level he has this season, then I would not be surprised to see Jordi Masip at the Camp Nou in a few years time.
End Article.
Is he really that good?
