Luis Enrique: "Montoya leaving? Won't discuss that in public. I'll talk with him, with Zubizarreta, and we'll see what CAS decides."
I think everyone in the club is confident the ban will be reduced. Just my impression. But they also thought fifa would never go ahead and ban us.
You can replace the bolded part with STUPID.
Just remember with what squad Simeone won La Liga and came 1 minute close to Champions League.
Motivation is everything.
Scholes is 100% right.
Motivation is the thing that makes you play near your best or at least want to play near your best. That's big. All great managers shine at motivating their squads. The rest, the managers that can't do it, are the ones that fail.
I'm more worried about the decrease in goals scored. With Messi, Neymar and Suarez, these numbers better go up.
They won't go up unless we up the passing speed a couple of notches. We must have the slowest build-up and the slowest transition defence-attack from all top teams in Europe. I predict PSG will make us suffer even on Camp Nou.
Messi's form alone makes a huge difference. The way he played against Sevilla and APOEL he used to play every single game not long ago (even without the hattricks) and Barca looked like old school Barca. For some reason he has lost that consistency though.
The problem is that he is being absent when it counts most. That should indicate not only a problem in consistency, but also a problem in committing to that extra effort you give when the opponent makes it hard for you. He doesn't show that. Messi is much easier to mark than Ronaldo is, and that's not all down to how teams defend against him, but also because he shows little ambition these days. The motivation part affects him too, the same as Iniesta, Busquets or others.
Bottom line is we have problems inside the team for a long time, and a coach that doesn't have neither the spine to adress them, nor the knowledge to fix them. I didn't understand why the board didn't want to make changes in 2012 in the squad, after we finished 8 points behind Real Madrid or something. That's the moment the rupture appeared and that was the best moment to stop that rupture from affecting the team on the long run. The board incompetence and lack of action at the right time fucked us. It was a clear case of incompetence at the top of the club.
Instead of prolonging a dominant period, the best in the clubs history, we ended it prematurely and allowed Real Madrid to take over. Because of this idiotic management, I feel Barca has been more Madrid-like this last years than Madrid itself.