Luis Enrique

[BBZ8800]

My dear BBZ,

I understand where you're coming from regarding Tiki-taka, but I think you're making a category mistake of confusing strategy (tiki-taka) with tactics (contingent adjustments based on opposition strength, weather, time of day, pitch condition, opposition tactical shape, player form, player fatigue, individual roles, amount of pressure or lack thereof, depth of defensive line, and much more).

For me 'tiki-taka' can never die because it is not a tactic. It is a strategy, always involving triangular passing lanes, continuous (non-stop) off-the-ball movement, one-touch passing, high technical players, and the continuous dragging and pulling of the opponent's tactical shape by applying and switching areas of pressure (both defensive pressure, and offensive/spearhead pressure).

'Tiki-taka' is an abstract concept regarding the fundamental philosophy of a team. Of course, this philosophy may be at odds with a defensive, counterattacking strategy. But within a defensive, counterattacking strategy, there are still infinite tactical variations.

All the best.

English is not my language and I can easily make mistakes regarding formation, tactics, playing style, philosophy, strategy etc.
For someone who is good in English, those are 5 different things, while some of us throw it simply in the same basket.

Anyway, this is your 2nd post in a few days with the same point, you are aiming at logical rules, actual meaning of some words etc, and you are right.
But you are missing the point to some extent.

Unwritten rules of debating/posting on internet say that when one person starts with:
1. personal remarks
2. posts about spelling, meaning of phrases and similar
3. posting how: a person 1 was wrong in another topic, (to diminish his value) so his opinion shouldn't be taken seriously in this topic
4. posts about logical rules and similar without saying too much about an actual point of the quoted post
5. going offtopic away from the original debate whenever possible
-- usually means: that a person 2 ran out of arguments and now is trying with these kind of answers.

In shortest, yes, Tiki-Taka, no matter how you call it (strategy, playing style, tactics) was dead or getting easy to neutralize and this is why we needed to move on from it.
And, no, you can't compare Bravo at City and Mats at Barca. Bravo from Barca was way better than Mats from Barca.

Anyway, regardless of your post, this is something else which I wanted to say regarding age of our team and motivation:
No of CL titles for a team in 2009, before that final:
Valdes 1
Puyol 1
Messi 1
Iniesta 1
Xavi 1
Etoo 1
Sylvinho 1
= total 7 titles for 11 starters

Number of CL titles for our current starting 11:
Mats 1
Alba 1
Pique 3
Masch 2
Roberto 1
Busi 3
Rakitic 1
Iniesta 4
Messi 4
Luis 1
Neymar 1
= total=22

22 CL titles for our starters compared to 7 titles in 2009.
Also, today we have 0 players in our starting 11 who have never won a CL.

In 2006, we had 10 starters without a CL titles: Valdes, Gio, Puyol, Marquez, Oleguer, Edmilson, Van Bommel, Ronaldinho, Etoo, Guily (all except Deco).
In 2009, we had 4 starters without CL titles: Pique, Busi, Yaya, Henry
In 2011, we had 4 starters without CL titles: Masch, Abidal, Pedro, Villa
In 2015, we had 5+1 starters without CL titles: Bravo/Mats, Alba, Rakitic, Luis Suarez, Neymar
In 2016/17, we have 0 starters without CL titles...

2006 final, 4 starters younger than 26: Valdes 24, Etoo 25, Ronaldinho 26, Oleguer 26 (we had young 22 years old Iniesta and 19 years old Messi playing huge roles also)
2009 final, 5 starters younger than 26: Busi 21, Messi 22, Pique 22, Iniesta 25, Yaya 26
2011 final, 4 starters younger than 26: Busi 23, Messi 24, Pique 24, Pedro 24
2015 final, 3 starters younger than 26: Mats 23, Neymar 23, Alba 26
2016/17 team, 3 starters younger than 26: Mats 24, Roberto 25 (in 2 Months), Neymar 25 (in 2 Months)

So, our current team compared with winning teams from 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2015:
1. has the highest amount of CL titles won (22), compared to 2009 (7 titles) and 2006 (1 title, Deco)
2. oldest team on average
3. lowest number of starters younger than 26, probably since 90s till today
4. not a single starter who hasn't won at least 1 CL title (this never happened in our history)
5. for the first time in a long period, we don't have a single good youngster aged 18-19-20-21-22 who is either a starter or knocking at our doors, like Messi (19) and Iniesta (22) in 2006, or Busi (21), Messi (22), Pique (22) in 2009.

Our best current bets from younger players are Denis and Gomes

On so many levels, our current team is way older than all of our former teams, less motivated than former teams (due to age of players, number of years already in a club and too many titles won), we have less younger players and almost zero young potentials (except Alena).
Plus, we had some horrible transfers in the last 2-3 summers. Our worst transfers since Gaspart's era in early 2000.

A lot of factors are pointing fingers at: an inevitable fall and the end of the current core of players is coming.

 

[FlaFCB]

I remember, back in the crisis in the treble season, that Xavi supposedly talked with licho and the players. Maybe he was the one behind the team finding a good system to play. It all ended a bit after he left.

 

[jamrock]

His 3 year cycle is coming to an end, it's just a shame it's seems to be coming to a flaming one, let's hope he can pull a Madrid and win the CL with iffy play.

 

[Richard.H]

His 3 year cycle is coming to an end, it's just a shame it's seems to be coming to a flaming one, let's hope he can pull a Madrid and win the CL with iffy play.

We don't have RM's luck. I don't think we have ever won a trophy playing crappy football

 

[i_bleed_blaugrana]

I remember, back in the crisis in the treble season, that Xavi supposedly talked with licho and the players. Maybe he was the one behind the team finding a good system to play. It all ended a bit after he left.

Precisely why he needs to be the next man in our dugout after Lucho. I really won't support sacking Lucho until Xavi is ready to coach, even if we by some miracle were able to get Jorge either next season or the season after.

I don't even know why people are comparing Gomes to Xavi in the first place. Like trying to compare a knife against a hammer on what destroys something better, both do so but in completely different ways.

Both Xavi and Iniesta were standout players even before Pep. I remember early when I was a lot younger, in 2007 I was obsessed with Ronnie and would get pissed when Iniesta would start on the LW over Ronnie only to be amazed at some of the dazzling dribbling runs he would go on. Honestly though, while they aren't as good, I see similar flashes in Rafa and Denis that lead me to believe they can at least be close to Iniesta's level in the future and obviously, Alena clearly is demonstrating that sort of potential too.

Honestly though, with the players we currently have, playing at their expected level, is still insanely hard to beat. Our overall strategy (Good post earlier [MENTION=20728]NorthernVictory[/MENTION], people don't make the distinction between tactics and strategy) isn't that different from the past. This reasonably is why Lucho has worked here so far and the differences we see from him and Pep's Barça is essentially tactical variations. The problem we are facing now is that both the players aren't playing at their expected level and Lucho hasn't adjusted his tactical variations enough this season. Between those two things, that's more than anything why we struggle. This isn't some ugly failure where we need a fire sale, we are simply underperforming. If we were at our best and we were getting these results, then I'd get wanting a fire sale but this isn't the case.

 

[i_bleed_blaugrana]

With Lucho in particular though, I'm a bit frustrated with him tactically right now and he seems to be getting complacent as well. The first season, it was clear he didn't put as much value in midfield domination because he made us more lethal up top and more solid at the back to where we didn't need as much MF control. It worked fine and dandy that season and I was okay with it as long as he made progress in addressing that weakness later on.

What's concerning is that now not only has no progress been made on making the MF play better but our defense now looks weaker than it has ever been under Lucho (granted this is 85% due to the Dani void). 2nd season you could arguably say MSN got stronger while MF and D remained the same but with less depth. This is his biggest and most legitmate criticism and why, although he is a solid coach who deserves more credit than he gets, we might need someone else in about two years.

 

[Dan1983]

It's time for us to move away from the 4-3-3, given how Luis wants his team to be organized on the field and try a 4-2-3-1.

By doing this, he will her Messi to play in the middle, which is where he rightfully should be playing, while still keeping the natural with and compactness within the team.

Only thing we will need is a RF and RB, next season to implement this formation correctly, because right now the imbalance in the team is coming from the players over compensating for the weakness on the rightside.

I agree totally with this. Would love us to freshen things up by a change of formation.

 

[Messi983]

I don't think it makes much sense to compare our current young midfielders to Xavi and/or Iniesta at their age. Of course, it's good for a discussion but Barça and football in general (much of that is Barça's "fault" too) changed a lot over the last decade. I also don't think it's really important if Xavi was worldclass at 22, 25 or 28 years so I won't go into that. Different people have different criteria for world class. Does it mean a player is top 3/5, top 10 or top 20 at his position? I usually use top 10 when talking about world class players but of course there are more CMs who could fit into that than let's say RBs or LBs. And of course some of those rankings are subjective. There are players who all people consider world class but there are also one who people rate very different. So in general I believe a term world class is a bit overused and overrated here.


Some Q&A...

Were Xavi and Iniesta better players at 23 than Denis, Gomes or Rafinha are today? From what I've seen yes.

Were they better at 26 or 28 than they were at 23? Also yes.

Will Denis, Gomes or Rafinha be better in 3 or 5 years than they are today? We don't know but most likely they will be if not for some serious injuries that would hamper their careers (Rafinha already had one last season that stalled his development).

Will they develop enough to still be at Barça as our starters or at least backups (that will be harder to do because they would probably be sold or leave on their own rather than stay on our bench for that long)? We don't know that yet.

So it's fair to say there are some question marks about younger midfielders (I didn't even mention Alena who probably has the most potential from that group but is at the age when most players careers can go "right" or "wrong" way based on multiple factors) as much as their current and potential abilities in the future? Yes. They've all shown flashes of their potential that can make us hope but are still very inconsistent and not ready to fully replace legendary player like Iniesta yet. Which should be understandable.

I can get the logic behind comparing Gomes or Denis with Xavi when he was 23 although as said above I don't think it make much sense. But what I don't like is that some fans keep comparing our 22,23 years aged midfielders with Xavi and Iniesta during their peak years in Pep's team. I'm not singling out anyone here on this forum but I've seen those comparisions around the internet. Most of those people probably started to follow Barça in 2008-10 period when we made millions of new fans and »fans« around the world, so I guess that's understandable from their standpoint because they didn't follow younger Xavi or Iniesta. It's also understandable if we think one of them will probably replace Iniesta in few years but I still think it's unfair to made those comparisions.

First, because most players are better at 28 than at 23 (and while most players start to decline when they hit 30 there are special players like Iniesta who is still among the best midfielders in the world at 32 eventhough his role has changed and he's not as good as he was 4 years ago) because of natural progression and more experience. And second, because they are different type of players. You can't expect players with different characteristics to play the same way. I absolutely hate mediots (media idiots) who compare every kid that shows some talent to football legends. They bring unneded pressure on those kids and it's just stupid in my opinion. There were thousands of "new Maradonas" before Messi finally reached and surpassed his level. There were tens or hundreds of La Masia midfielders dubbed as "new Pep" when they were 14 or 16 and we don't even know where most of those players are today. Now people compare youngsters to Messi, Xavi and Iniesta but I don't like that. Let Gomes be the best Gomes he can become and not try to make Iniesta out of him, because we'll fail at that. The same for Denis, Rafinha, Alena,… Also, when signing new midfielders, try looking for someone who is good enough (or has potential to be) and fit into our system not trying to find another Xavi, that some people are still so desperately looking for. We won't find him. I totally agree with [MENTION=16942]BBZ8800[/MENTION] post a few pages back when he said tiki-taka as we've know it is dead. It died with Xavi and Iniesta getting old. We were lucky to enjoy it for so long, now it's time for trying to adapt the system to strength of the players we currently have. Lucho has done that great in second half of 2014/15 season and for most of last season. Now it's time for him to again make some tweaks to his formations (we don't need a revolution) so we'll have more chances to be successful again. I believe he can do that. It would be great to see that in El Clasico.

Another thing I'd like to mention. Both Xavi and Iniesta had a privilege to be in Barça system for years before they even made it to first team. They knew the club inside-out, they knew system, they learned how to handle pressure playing for Barça (that mental factor is usually the one that finally make or break players careers here). Of course, they wouldn't be what they are today without great talent and a lot of hard work but coming through La Masia made a lot of things easier for them. Fans are usually much more patient with homegrown players than expensive signings and we can see evidence of that in almost every thread on this forum.

I understand and agree with that but I also believe that players like Gomes and Denis (if we don't count his season at Barça B) who didn't have advantage to play for our younger teams so they could adapt to first team quicker deserve more time before we give up on them. Most »outsiders« need a season to adapt to Barça. Of course some of our recent signings adapted quicker but they were also bought to the club when they were older and more experienced. I'm not saying any of our younger midfielder is guaranteed to still be here in 3 or 4 years. I hope at least one or two of them will be because that would mean they are good enough and we'll save some money for other positions that will need to be reinforced. But what I strongly believe is that every signing we made this summer deserve more than just 4 months to prove their quality. Except for Umtiti, who adapted suprisingly quickly and who most people already think is good enough to be part of our present and future (I love him too and hope he'll stay here 8 or 10 years but nothing is given in football; for all we know Denis and/or Gomes could be here longer than him), all other newcomers just need more time. Especially considering the fact that others around them, who have been with team for years and should therefore perform better and make adaptation period for new signings easier are not in their best form this season as well.

 

[khaled_a_d]

Precisely why he needs to be the next man in our dugout after Lucho. I really won't support sacking Lucho until Xavi is ready to coach, even if we by some miracle were able to get Jorge either next season or the season after.

That won't happen,Xavi won't coach the team b4 2019 at least.
He still has 1 more season in his contract and afterward he himself admitted he want to start working with B team,so even it is 1 year in B team it won't be b4 2019. most likely 2020 or 2021
I hope Lucho will stay couple of more seasons,but even as one of his biggest supporters I don't see him staying that long

 

[DonAK]

That won't happen,Xavi won't coach the team b4 2019 at least.
He still has 1 more season in his contract and afterward he himself admitted he want to start working with B team,so even it is 1 year in B team it won't be b4 2019. most likely 2020 or 2021
I hope Lucho will stay couple of more seasons,but even as one of his biggest supporters I don't see him staying that long

Even if he continues with the same tactics? We're under immense pressure going into the game tomorrow, and while you may argue that we've been in this position before, we have not played as badly as this for quite some time. And that is despite Real Madrid and Atletico underperforming too.

Lucho is basically doing a Benitez right now. He need to change ASAP.

 

[Devils]

Like I said before, despite all his flaws, I still really like Lucho and hope he turns this season around.

I cannot and will not accept a hammering from Real tomorrow. If we get embarrassed then Lucho has to take full responsibility even if that means losing his job.

 

[jamrock]

Xavi should become coach when Alena and Kaptoum hopefully start to show real promise at the highest level.

 

[Richard.H]

LOL at all the people who so desperately want Xavi to be the coach. Did you guys forget how stubborn he is? He only knows Tiki- Taka and refuses to play any other type of football. I recall a few times where he made ridiculous statements after a loss. I recall during the Chelsea loss of 2012 he said something along the lines of "we may have lost, but we dominated possession and had more passes." Also during the Tata years, he was very unhappy with how much counter attacking football we played.

He is an amazing player and one of the best mids in the history of the game, but not sure how he will do as a coach. Tiki-taka has been figured out by most teams now. No way we can go back to playing Pep type football unless we get another golden La Masia generation.

 

[khaled_a_d]

Even if he continues with the same tactics? We're under immense pressure going into the game tomorrow, and while you may argue that we've been in this position before, we have not played as badly as this for quite some time. And that is despite Real Madrid and Atletico underperforming too.

Lucho is basically doing a Benitez right now. He need to change ASAP.

I am a sort of pro-coach and think he is the most important piece of the puzzle tbh. People are spoiled with 3 of our best coaches (and some stability) in our history in the past 14 seasons. We won't be always as lucky.I still remember years of trying to find "Mr right" b4 Rijkaard.
If a successful good coach(which I believe Lucho is ) want to continue with the club after one bad season ( that in case season ended badly) he fully deserves the benefit of the doubt for me. You end believing too much in the whole "cycle" thing you end up firing Ancelotti for Benitez.
Unless it is a complete downfall or losing the dressing room I would always support him staying.
And right now I think the top 2 candidates to replace him will Valverde & Eusebio,both are good coaches but I am not sure they will be better handling the egos in the team,I have less trust in those next in the line (Unzue,Sampaoli & Marcelino) because this team always succeeded with coaches who were star players who understand how to deal with best players in the world (Lucho,Pep,Rijkaard & Crujif were all successful player,2 club legends and 2 football legends)

 

[George_Costanza]

I am a pro coach and think he is the most important piece of the puzzle tbh. People are spoiled with 3 of our best coaches (and some stability) in our history in the past 14 seasons. We won't be always as lucky.I still remember years of trying to find "Mr right" b4 Rijkaard.
If a successful good coach(which I believe Lucho is ) want to continue with the club after one bad season ( that in case season ended badly) he fully deserves the benefit of the doubt for me. You end believing too much in the whole "cycle" thing you end up firing Ancelotti for Benitez.
Unless it is a complete downfall or losing the dressing room I would always support him staying.
And right now I think the top 2 candidates to replace him will Valverde & Eusebio,both are good coaches but I am not sure they will be better handling the egos in the team,I have less trust in those next in the line (Unzue,Sampaoli & Marcelino) because this team always succeeded with coaches who were star players who understand how to deal with best players in the world (Lucho,Pep,Rijkaard & Crujif were all successful player,2 club legends and 2 football legends)

We were blessed with the golden generation since Rijkaard and having a coach that can take full advantage of this La Masia generation was and still very important since we might not be lucky to have such players. So, one or two bad seasons is considered a disaster and an opportunity loss. Why Barca didn’t gave another chance to Tata? He was really close to win titles and if he had players like Suarez, Raki, Bravo etc. he could have won. You can lose titles but playing bad tactics/football the whole season is not acceptable especially knowing Messi and his generation are aging,