Vitor Roque (loaned to Real Betis)

[Messi983]

Can't work when club has no patience and expect immediate return from kids who are clearly not ready yet.

If we would have signed Vini we would give up on him after a season or two. Madrid waited for him to develop into what he is today.

 

[Barcaman]

Can't work when club has no patience and expect immediate return from kids who are clearly not ready yet.

If we would have signed Vini we would give up on him after a season or two. Madrid waited for him to develop into what he is today.

You are making no sense. Barca is the club that played with most players from their youth teams in their first 11 consistently in last 25 years. There is patience.

Neymar is probably only one young player in 40 years that succeeded here that was bought straight from SA.

 

[Gazzznigga]

You don't see his off the ball movement, work rate, hunger for the goal? Or are those not qualities that you rate in strikers?

People here are way too focused on either player's technique or their physical traits. Which I can understand because those are pretty easy to spot. But for me mental aspect is just as if not more important. Especially with strikers who live for and off the goals.

For me main question is does a striker have a goal instinct? I don't care if he scores wondergoals or scrappy goals (as some would describe Vitor's goal today). A goal is a goal. Goals win you games. And good goalscorers are rare and usually expensive. You have forwards who do a lot of good things for the team but will never be clinical in front of the goal. Morata is a good example. And then you have someone like Haaland who people often complain about his lack of technical abilities and involvement in the game but you know he guarantee you 30-40 goals every season. Who is more valuable or who would you prefer to have in your team?

As long as he will score (and I believe he will) then I can live with a few bad controls or misplaced passes every game. Suarez had plenty of those too also in his prime years and won't even talk about the last season or two when he was basically killing every attack but then scored a banger or two. I want strikers who can score and don't care if they will have fancy dribblings or high passing percentage. Same as I want CBs who can do their primary job which is defending. I know being good on the ball is important here but I don't care if a CB is the best passer in the world if he can't actually defend.

I'm not saying Roque will be the next Haaland. But I do believe he has natural instincts (that I've not seen in many players of his age) and hunger for goals that likes of Suarez and Eto'o also had. I'm sure he will score a lot of goals for a team that will find the right way to utilise him.

In his first few games I've also seen complaints from usual suspects that he's "slow". Probably based on watching his highlights from Brazilian league without taking into account state of the pitches there that slows the games down (besides physical style of play and lot of fouls that prevent game flows to develop as well) and him playing in a defensive minded team without having much support. But those comments have quickly died after people saw he actually has decent speed. He clearly doesn't have Dembele's explosiveness (not many players do tbf) but he doesn't need it as a striker. It's not his game to get the ball at halfway line and run towards the goal past 4 defenders, it's to receive it close to or inside the penalty box and finish off the chances.

At this point he's a poacher with smart movement and work rate so he will get into scoring positions. It's up to his team to create him chances. He probably won't create much on his own but I'm sure he'll annoy a lot of defenders with pressing. Shame that Isco is out but Lo Celso (when he's up to speed), Fornals, Abde and Ruibal could deliver him some balls.

Only people who expected he would be an entertainer like R10 or Ney can be disappointed with Roque. But those people have never watched him in Brazil. He was never that profile and never will be. He's more of your typical Uruguayan striker who plays with determination, intensity and sometimes even anger than a technically sound Brazilian striker of the past. Things have changed in Brazil too and they are producing more Raphinhas and Roques today than Ronaldinhos or Romarios.

I believe that despite some tehnical shortcomings (that are not as bad as people make them out to be though and can also still be improved at his age) he has mental makeup to develop into a very good to potentially great striker of the future. He obviously needs time and patience that he would never get here (I didn't expect our fan base to be patient but at least hoped club would have a better plan) but hopefully will at Betis and then at the next big club he'll join in a few years. And you can be sure at some point he'll come and bite Laporta in the ass, maybe already this season. And I for one will be happy for him to get revenge for terrible treatment he had in his short time here.

Word!!! Good points

 

[xXKonan]

Vitor seems smart enough to understand where to go to develop.

Marc Guiu on the other hand, what a dumbass.

 

[Messi983]

You are making no sense. Barca is the club that played with most players from their youth teams in their first 11 consistently in last 25 years. There is patience.

Neymar is probably only one young player in 40 years that succeeded here that was bought straight from SA.

Araujo was also bought from SA but he got time to develop in BA. Probably the only player over last 6-7 years who had natural progression and wasn't forced into the first team at extremely young age.

This forcing of youngsters is also detrimental to other kids. Fans have become spoiled and lost touch with reality. They believe if a player at 19 is not regularly playing for the first team then he'll never make it here. Fermin's emergence should help to change that perspective a bit (and also perception that loans don't work) but hard to do that when we still have two 17 yo kids starting.

I also should be more clear. We usually don't have much patience for foreign/non La Masia talents. Maybe scouting is bad and they are not good enough, maybe they don't fit well or there are other reasons. But they rarely get more than a season or two before we give up on them. And that's not enough time for relatively unproven kids coming from South America.

Neymar was by far the best player in Brazil and needed time to adapt his first season. And he was 21 when he joined us, not 18. Or even a world class player like Henry in his prime years struggled in first months. You could imagine that adaptation period is even longer for teenagers who move to another continent and must adapt to another culture/learn new languge before they can start integration into the team.

And besides that they are still developing as players. No player is a finished product at 18 or 19. If the club had enough believe to buy a player in first place then he should also be given enough time to develop into what they expected him to when he was bought. It's hard to do that in a year or two and impossible in 6 months.

 

[Windhook]

Both of you are in the right, @Messi983 @Barcaman.

The club is patient with its own youth product nowadays, clearly due to the financial burden. Otherwise it would have been a repeat of the 2010s when La Masia's motto was "fugget about it" playing with Messi and Suarez.

On Vitor expectations were high, he was hyped for six months before arrival. It's a trait with many Brazilian players even in minor leagues across Europe - they adapt slowly. Sometimes it takes a year, if I give the example of Ludogorets Razgrad. It's one of the reasons Brazilian football is struggling currently, the youth system is not in step with the modern game. I don't want to speculate, but two managers deemed him a reserve and it's bad business if you send a 30m signing to Barca B.

 

[ZenI]

Giving up so easily on 40 milion players can only happen at Barça
If you give so much for him you do your best to suck the most you possibly could from all his talents
Espc if he's 18 years old

Because we should have never gave in on him in the first place and 40M is ridiculous for what he "offers". You guys can continue speculate in how many more months he needs on Spain or Betis or whatever - the matter of the fact is his technique sucks and that has 0 to do with how many months more he plays because it should be in his "spine" already. Xavi didn't play him and Flick didn't want him either - it was/is a massive fuck up. And oh my fucking god he needs to stop with the tiger-bullshit, it's cringe overload. Pray for a dussin tap-ins this season and so we can ship him asap for almost what we gave. Because he sure as hell will never play a second more for us...

 

[MontenegrinCuler]

Because we should have never gave in on him in the first place and 40M is ridiculous for what he "offers". You guys can continue speculate in how many more months he needs on Spain or Betis or whatever - the matter of the fact is his technique sucks and that has 0 to do with how many months more he plays because it should be in his "spine" already. Xavi didn't play him and Flick didn't want him either - it was/is a massive fuck up. And oh my fucking god he needs to stop with the tiger-bullshit, it's cringe overload. Pray for a dussin tap-ins this season and so we can ship him asap for almost what we gave. Because he sure as hell will never play a second more for us...

Should not have given 40M for him, agreed. But we have, so there's nothing we can do about it other than trying to get the most out of those money.

Also, he would not be the first striker to suck at technique but make success as a footballer. A shiton of legendary strikers were terrible in linkup play and their technique was utter shit, especially at the very start of their careers after which slight improvement usually comes. But what matters for you as a striker is to score goals, and pretty much everything else is a side quest. Roque can score goals - his finishing, positioning, pressing, off the ball movement are not his weaknesses.

To say that his adaptation at Spain should be over is an insanely weird statement tbh. It usually takes them a whole season and in some cases even more to adapt, idk why to expect Roque to be done after 2 matches he played for Betis coupled with some garbage minutes for Barça.

 

[Barcaman]

As I previously said, I don't think he would make it here but he did deserve to play more. Torres was a disaster mostly and he got to play often.

Was je treated unfairly? Maybe. Should he have played more? 100%

 

[Andresito]

Guess he'll score 10-12 Liga goals or so.

 

[Loki]

I just hope he scores enough for someone offering Barca 30m next summer and this story has finally an end and barca can use the money in a better way. He's not that bad and has some talent, but nothing indicates he's good enough to cover the striker position for many years to come. Could be wrong in the end, but I don't see the absolute world class potential.

 

[ZenI]

I just hope he scores enough for someone offering Barca 30m next summer and this story has finally an end and barca can use the money in a better way. He's not that bad and has some talent, but nothing indicates he's good enough to cover the striker position for many years to come. Could be wrong in the end, but I don't see the absolute world class potential.

I hardly see Spain class potential, let's just hope for a bunch of tap-ins and maybe some PL club will throw some cash our way so we can close this chapter.