Nelson Semedo

[Danic]

the moment he reached the corner of opponents box and back passed to halfway line to pique is when i realized he hasn't improved at all from last season..

oh and messi telling him where to go again sealed the deal.

Dunno if you actually watched the game or if u are just clueless.
The problem was there was no one to play with on the RW or the majority of the tiime. The same goes for Roberto in 2nd half. Usually he is pretty active in the offense but yesterday nothing.
And why? Cause there was absolutly no movement. I said it in the chat yesterday. The poorest guy was the one with the ball.
I dont say he played well yesterday but some of you are just moaning like they dont even watched the game or understand what was going on.

 

[soul24rage]

semedo should only be played when the game is open. when facing a parked bus like yesterday, he's useless in attacking but great against counters.

 

[BBZ8800]

Dunno if you actually watched the game or if u are just clueless.
The problem was there was no one to play with on the RW or the majority of the tiime. The same goes for Roberto in 2nd half. Usually he is pretty active in the offense but yesterday nothing.
And why? Cause there was absolutly no movement. I said it in the chat yesterday. The poorest guy was the one with the ball.
I dont say he played well yesterday but some of you are just moaning like they dont even watched the game or understand what was going on.

Yet, when Roberto plays as a Rb, he is able to get involved in build up all the time since he understands our movement and mechanisms.
And he doesn't need to play backpasses all the time.

Or, Dani Alves played with Pique, Busquets, Rakitic, Messi around him.
With your logic: Messi doesn't move, Rakitic doesn't move.
Yet, Alves was always making wonders.

So, yes, our team is moving less.
But that can't be an excuse for everything.
Something is just off with Semedo.

Remember, we are paying the price now.
Semedo had only 64 senior matches in his career before Barca.

His senior experience is not good enough.
He obviously skipped some levels in his development.
Veterans like Henry needed a lot of time to adapt to our system.
It is quite hard to expect that from Semedo with poor senior football experience and who, as a person seems quite scared and without any confidence currently.

In the last few matches, he started to remind me on LB Strinic from Croatia during World cup knockout matches:
His body language says: I am scared and low on confidence.
When he gets the ball, he is scared and clueless.
Teammates are mad at him.
Even when he had a throw in around the 20thor 30th minute, he needed like 30 seconds to throw the ball back in.
He was so scared not to make a mistake.

So, he will face a battle with his confidence and with an understanding of our system.
I don't have too much faith that he will make it at any of these two.

 

[Danic]

Our team was moving less then ever yesterday.
It wasnt just semedo whoh didnt know where to play and backpasses. This happened all the time yesterday with any player.
Even Jordi Alba wasnt that effective yesterday.
In first half there plenty o moments where Semedo wanted to start a run but wasnt recognized. Dunno i the other players dont have trust in him or whats the problem.

Btw Messi didnt move in first half. The only one moving was Dembele and he was playing on the left. And i absolutly dont know what
Alves has to do with it. There our playing style was completely different and Messi was more agile at this time.

And last but not least roberto didnt build up anything yesterday as RB. And why? As i said before. It seemed no one wanted to play RW yesterday. So what should our RBs do. Run down the line all on their own??

I have the feeling Semedo would link up way better with Dembele. Messi seems to harm him in some way. You could see this easily at the beginning when Messi played RW for about 20 minutes.

 

[clemente]

Semedo already showed that he can linkup well with Dembele, crazy to me that some are trying to write off this guy, he is so technical and just from his body feints you can tell that he is intelligent. I think he has no trust from his teammates, like Roberto in 16/17 season, and the language barrier.

 

[Nothanks]

bringing up jordi alba as if he played a bad game to justify semedo's cowardly performance
jordi alba ran behind defences chased through balls and atleast got shots on target / provided decent crosses that caused headaches to alaves

we were lucky if semedo even faced goal / box he instantly retreated like a bitch and gave it to the superior player in sergi roberto to do his job.

we had both sergi and semedo on the right on first half, second half the offense barely suffered despite taking one out for coutinho who mostly stuck on the left.. that says something about semedo's lack of presense in final third, if anything it made it simpler for the professionals like messi who didn't need to babysit the mentally impaired and tell his shitty teammate when to run/act

this isn't argentina it's kinda shocking to see how much messi needs to guide semedo with such basic instructions

 

[Danic]

Alba btw had the most active guy on his side in the first half to play with. And semedo tried to make a run a few times at the beginning but dont receive a single ball.
But ofc u didnt see this.

The rest is just bitching blabla which show me dont really read my post or just dont understand it...

 

[jairzinho]

I'm going to be the devil's advocate here. Did Semedo really have a bad game or did he just stick out like a sore thumb in the whole tippy tappy, play it safe safe, short passing game that we have grown accustomed to. Posession and tippy-tappy is great, it's pleasing on the eyes, but it has to be balanced sometimes with incisive, penetrative or risky passing. Just looked at the game again, and i'm convinced that he was not as bad as people says he was. Judging from some of the comments you'd think he was the worst player on the field. I think you guys would do well to look at the game again. There were a number of times in the first half where he made some really good runs into spaces as an option for a direct pass. However, no one seemed to pick him up. There was also a couple timeswhere he attempted a 1-2 pass with Sergi, but instead of Bob laying off the ball into space for Semedo to beat his man with pace, he recycles the possesion back to Messi to continue the tippy tappy all over again whilst hoping for Messi to create something. Bob of course excels at the short passing.

But then this is probably what is wanted. Or else, why would you allow Messi to drop deep and do that? It's obvious that when Messi drops deep he is passed to no matter what.

The 'problem' here doesn't lie solely with Semedo but with our philosphy. It's one of the reasons why we are so slow, predictable and lethargic at times in buildup. The constant tippy tappying and recycling of possesion even when players make a run or where a player like Semedo can utilize his speed in space, a safer short pass is preferred. Alba aswell made some really good runs but not all of them were recognized. Hell even Bob himself put himself into some good positions but who's going to make that pass, when we can tippy tappy and tap dance our way around the field? I would add aswell, that Dembele and Semedo could have combined on the right, the same way Dembele dragged the Alaves rb out of position, opening up a channel for Alba to run in behind. Having said that i like both Bob and Semedo, they both bring something different to the table but to say that Semedo was bad is idiocy at best.

 

[Tekkers]

had a great game. should've benched roberto

 

[God Serena]

Reading this thread fills me with such joy. I remember a time when the mere thought of Roberto being in such a proven position on the team compared to some shiny new toy would be blasphemy.

 

[jairzinho]

These are just one of the many examples i'm talking about. Pique plays a crossfield pass to Alba who goes for the 1-2 with Dembele. Dembele doesn't have the presence of mind to make the pass, yes it's risky but he just doesn't even attempt it. The space looks narrow but in the other angles Alba is in behind because he can more than make that pass. Second example Semedo goes for one of many 1-2's with Sergi. What does Bob do?. He doesn't attempt the lay off when Semedo has the drop on his marker and is in behind with his speed. I basically lost count with the amount of opportunities like these but the safer tippy tappy and recycling pass was chosen instead of the riskier more incisive pass. In both and other instances, even if the ball is lost there is cover with Rakitic in the first example and Busquets in second to cut out the counter.

Not sure if anyone cares to comment on Sergi playing in the same zone occupied by Semedo at times. It was confusing. The lack of clarity of approach on that side was weird.You had Sergi, Semedo and sometimes Messi drifting into and out of that space. With Dembele and Alba the 'union' or whatever you want to call it was more fluid. Dembele would drag the Alaves right back out of position or force him to come inside, allowing Alba all sorts of crazy space on that channel. What i'm saying is we didn't replicate that on the right, it was more of a short passing back and forth thing on that side which i would argue is where Sergi trumps Semedo.

 

[Danic]

Thanks finally someone with some knowledge not randomly putting out some bitchy sentences.
Thats exactly what im telling all the time.
There is a video on youtube "semedo vs alves". There are scenes from semedo playing for benfica and afterwards for barca. I highly recommend it and u should not focus only on semedo but also on the teammates surrounding him.
Then u get another glimpse of the whole problem we have under valverde...
In the end semedos maybe not made for our new turtle posession style...

 

[jairzinho]

Just pointing something out really quick. Look at these other two examples of the type of approach we should be making more often. I'm not saying that short passing and relentless ball circulation isn't good. What i'm saying is that there are many opportunities where a direct approach in transitions can be useful. So it should really be a blend of the two as opposed to the short and tippy tapping all the time. As a matter of fact, we've grown so accustomed to the short passsing game that even when there are obvious spaces where we can exploit on quick breaks, either we aren't looking for it or just prefer to play the safe short pass or wait for Messi to come deep and start a 'play'.


So in the example, Raki has recognized the high line and spots Messi who immediately makes a run in behind. Kind of like the assist he got from Banega in the world cup. This is what i'd like to see more of. In the other example, Busquets has two options, if he really wants to, but he isn't looking for it because his first inclination is the short pass. Both Dembele and Messi have come narrow meaning that there are loads of space in the wide areas for Semedo and Alba to wreak all kinds of havoc with their speed. What does he do? He makes the short pass. The usual slow, methodical, tippy tappy pass. The gif ends with Semedo readying into a full sprint but Busquets doesn't do fuck all. Yes it's true Busi was being pressed, but with a more direct approach he's looking to make that pass as soon as he gets it. All in the inclination. We're more inclined to play the shorter passes.

 

[henias]

Semedo isnt a problem, it's more of a slow monotonous buildup that really stifles him. Same with Dembele. It's always best they play together as they can be more direct together with it.

 

[.blitzer]

This happened several times against Alavés and Sevilla. It's annoying the lack of risk taking with Semedo. Just make use of his speed and throw him some long passes.