I have wrote a few times how in these 50:50 matches between strong but even teams in a CL, World cup and Euros, majority of matches are decided by goals after corners, penaldos, free kicks, headers after crosses, some goals from outside of a box, Gk's mistakes... and very rarely lately by "classical" footballing goals from a nice action and a finishing with feet.
Goals from 1/4s of a World cup:
1. France: Varane, a header after a set piece
2. France: Griezmann: long shot+Gk's mistake
3. Belgium: a header after a corner
4. Belgium: De Bruyne, a counter and a goal from the edge of a box
5. Brasil: a header
6. England: a header after a corner
7. England: a header after a cross
8. Russia: long range shot
9. Croatia: Kramaric, a header
10. Croatia: a header after a corner
11. Russia: a header after a set piece
11 goals in total:
5 headers after corners/set pieces (France, Belgium, England, Croatia, Russia)
3 headers from an open play (Kramaric, Delle Ali, Renato)
3 long range shots from the outside of a box (Cheryshev, Griezmann, De Bruyne)
0 goals in Barca's style, through the middle, inside of a box, against a parked bus
Ok, the sample is small.
But guys, try to remember RM's matches in semis and finals of a CL lately:
penaldos, headers after corners, headers after crosses.
Atletico's goals:
headers after corners, headers after crosses, counters
I am not saying that possession football and attacking through the middle is dead, but everything points in the last few years that winning teams are:
teams who play counters
fast (and somewhat physical) teams
teams who can score headers after corners
teams who can score headers after crosses
Again, more or less, Barca doesn't have any of those.
To some extent, maybe this is a reason why we played:
2012: Chelsea:Barca 1:0
2013: Bayern:Barca 4:0
2014: Atletico:Barca 1:0
2016: Atletico:Barca 2:0
2017: Juventus:Barca 3:0
2018: Juventus:Barca 3:0
** Not a single goal scored
Also, Messi scored only on 1 match in the last 13 matches of CL's quarters, semis and finals in the last few years.
So, our only weapons in a CL are: pass the ball to Messi and play on the ground through the middle.
Yet, big European teams are neutralizing Messi quite easily, and then we are out of any options.
So, NOT only that we will need other attacking options besides Messi, we will also need DIFFERENT attacking options besides: passing the ball around the box till death and trying to break big European clubs through the middle with shortpasses.
That doesn't mean that we should turn into Stoke, though.
But Barca's CL failures in a CL in recent years and poor success of other possession based NT teams are pointing to some conclusions about needing to adapt some other weapons also.
Also, this stat from World cup 1/4s with 0 goals with feet from inside of a box and with 8 headers out of 11 goals is quite interesting.
My theory is that is starting to be extremely hard to score "classical" goals with feet in key CL/World cup matches.
Defenses are good and the buses are strong.
It is extremely hard to break the opponents from the middle, on the edge of a box.
And currently, there is way more room for scoring after corners and after crosses.
Again, we don't need to turn into a crossing team.
But scoring through the ground became a tough problem for all teams lately.
And it will be even harder when we won't have Messi (imagine our team passing the ball around the box and trying to break only through the middle, and NOT having Messi in the team anymore to finish those chances, ouch).
