BBZ8800
Senior Member
Ah, of course.
It's not as if we need to play hoofball or a totally opposite type of football.
I am just dumbing things down, because in a BarcaWorld (look at Xavi, for example), they think that there is nothing wrong with what we simply call Barca DNA or what people actually want: Pep's Barca football.
As times go by, I think that this simple formula will prove right over time:
1. Pep's Barca football can work at 100% ONLY if you have:
1) Pep, the best coach in the world for that style
2) Xavi-Iniesta as brains of that midfield and especially Xavi as a player, Mr TikiTaka himself
3) prime GOAT Messi to solve every possible problem and to elevate Pep-Xavi-Iniesta-Barca DNA to insane levels
Let's check what happens when you remove some of the components:
1) if you remove Pep, you are left with Xavi-Iniesta-Messi = you get let's say Tito's or Tata's Barca
2) if you remove Xavi and Iniesta = you get Barca DNA without midfield, let's say Lucho's or Setien's Barca
3) if you remove Messi = you get a current Spanish NT , good possession, not efficient for the big things
4) if you remove Xavi-Iniesta-Messi but keep Pep = you get City. Nice but nowhere as good as Pep's Barca with Xavi-Messi
So, not a single team after 2012 managed to copy Pep's Barca because every team lacked 1 or 3 key ingredients.
And now we have a current Barca:
1) we have Xavi instead of Pep, for whom I have a hunch that he will be like Arthur compared to Xavi the player
2) we don't have Messi to save the ass of Barca DNA
3) we don't have Xavi-Iniesta
4) other teams have took the best parts of our football and mixed them with new elements like physicality and more directness
What will happen with Barca:
1) we can try to copy Pep's style (which will never work without all ingredients)
2) or we can move to something new
But since the Barca community is weird, they will always ask one more attempt of going back to a good old days, for example:
1. when Van Gaal was winning, it was good for some time, but then he was fired because we wanted BOTH wins and playing Barca DNA style.
After sacking him, we didn't play neither nice nor we won titles, but oh well, we needed to try to go back to Cruijff's football because it creates so much dopamine in Barca's fans and they are willing to risk and ruin everything for a chance of returning to that drug-football.
So, imo, even if we'll move to let's say Klopp's football, 2 things will happen:
1) we will either way with it and we'll never win anything
2) or we'll win for 2-3 years but then fans, board, media will ask for: ok, but let's go back to our Cruijff/Pep's days, this type of football is not for us
And then, we'll always go back to chasing Pep's shadows with a few possible scenarios:
1) a coach sucks, the answer = let's hire a better coach, this coach is not good enough for our Barca DNA (let's say Setien)
2) if a coach is good (let's say Xavi), we'll say = ok, the coach is good, the system is fine, we just need better players to execute it, no coach can work with average players.
Then we'll buy better players and we still won't win anything and we'll reply = it's not the system, it's the players. We still need slightly better players (just like Pep at City: it's never Pep's or system's fault. It is always the players fault, bad forwards, ineffective attackers, individual mistakes from defenders etc. The same as with Spanish NT: it's never the system. They play nice, the system is fine: it's only the players, bad forwards, they just need slightly better players to get on top again).
So, in short, the next decade of following Barca will be an internal loop of:
1. if we try something new = people won't like and they'll ask for going back to roots (to Barca DNA)
2. and about Barca DNA, people will never say that Barca DNA is the problem. It will always be either a bad coach or bad players. And we'll always ask for just one more attempt with: a better coach and a slightly better players.
Pep's football will be the best and the worst thing which has happened to Barca.
Now let's test this pattern on Xavi.
