Dongou is great but there is so much competition for the front three right now, its going to be hard for him to find his place here I'm afraid as of right now, especially when Suarez comes back.
I've always been a fan of Dongou and his omission wasn't a slight against his potential. I think if Pedro left, it would free up a lot of space to allow a steady stream of youth players to rotate in for certain matches. With only Messi, Neymar and Suarez being the "big name" players, especially in low risk games, you can play 2 of the three and rotate one of our young forwards up as a wildcard so to say.
So for instance, if we are facing a bus team, a more physical and direct front three of say Messi-Dongou-Suarez would give teams like Atleti and Chelsea a lot to think about with aerial threats, and two explosive players who can shoot from distance outside cutting in. On the other hand, in more open, high intensity games, players who are clever with their link-up play and movement are what we need so we switch to say Munir-Messi-Neymar.
All of this is of course speculative but by constantly tweaking the personnel with the variety of attacking options at our disposal now and matching players that suit certain situations, we will regain a key component of what makes our brand of football work which is its unpredictability.
I'll tell you what, I could go on and on about how much better this team looks under Lucho. He is making all the right moves and decisions and most importantly, he understands how to utilize the bench that he has and shows the ability to improvise his tactics and his personnel according to what the match needs, in some instances better than Pep.
In other words though about Dongou, realistically unless Messi moves his position, only one youth player really has a shot to have a breakout season this year and right now it looks like its Munir.
