Xavi Hernández

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jairzinho

jairzinho

Senior Member
BBZ8800 said:
About Busi and Pique, without Pique we will probably be the same or better.
About Busi, I am sceptical.

For example, when we had Rakitic and when he played as a pivot, we won some physical presence and MAYBE slightly better defense.
But we lost a link between a goalkeeper, defenders and midfield.
Even though I was Raki's fan, it was clear even to me that our team is downgraded in linkup against better teams when Raki played instead of Busi.

Imo, our players are so shit that they struggle to get the ball out of our half for years.
Fullbacks can't do anything, defenders can't do it.
Busi can do it.
Frenkie can do it, but he avoids the first barrier of opponents and then hits into the second block with running straight into them.

Without Busi, I can see our team being totally pressed and just hoofing the ball upfield all the time with zero connection between the lines.

For our style to work, we had Busi, Xavi and Iniesta.
All 3 of them were the type of players who would ASK FOR THE BALL and then make some build with smart movement and reading of the game and with a good connection with other two midfielders.
Now, majority of people here think that Frenkie is a good player, but he is shit in doing what Busi does.
Frenkie runs like a braindead person towards the opponents and then makes some stupid random nonsense pass to a teammate, without too much purpose and planning.
Gavi is fighting and running around, but doesn't have creative-TikiTaka skills of Busi-Xavi-Iniesta.
Nico is some weird player who sucks as a pivot but can make some things around the box. But in general, he sucks in what Busi and friends were doing in buildup.
And there's Pedri, the best out of the bunch, but who is also known as Lord of Hide and seek, miles away from Busi-Xavi-Iniesta build up-link up level, even though he is closest to them out of this bunch.

In a midfield with Pedri, Frenkie, Gavi, Nico, I fear that we will have some random passes without too much sense and planning.
Their profiles are just weird as fck and a bad combination.
Also, imagine a pressing on us:
Mats has the ball:
Araujo is scared and can't do anything with the ball.
Mingueza/Dest are bad.
Eric can do something.
Alba is dumb and useless without Messi.
So, Eric can pass the ball only to Busi.
Without Busi, Frenkie will have to create in every single action and he sucks at that.
And even if we somehow avoid press, then you have Nico, Gavi (and Pedri) which brings us more or less the same chaos as in the last 5 matches.

I know that people's brains always need hope and some scapegoats which indicate = things will get better.
And Busi now sounds as a scapegoat = as in = we will finally be better without him.
But, imo, nothing will get better without Busi.
The same as with Messi. A lot of us (me included) wanted Messi out. But now we are like 10 times worse without him and we see that he was Barca.
I have some fears that the same will happen without Busi. That we will lose even the little sense and logic in our midfield once when he leaves.

People want to see Barca DNA, Barca's football etc but these 4 midfielders are so weird and such a bad fit together for our classical style.
Xavi wants to play that style, purists want that style, yet those 4 together are a horrible fit for it.
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You make it sound like Busquets is indispensable which in some ways is understandable because he is good at bringing the ball out from the back and linking up play. The problem for me though is he is a physical liability. A weakling and a weak link. He also seems to have lost the will and hunger to fight, which as captain is totally unacceptable. If you look at his body language during games, he exudes zero charisma or anything of that sort. He doesn't have the leadership capability of a Van Dijk, Henderson, a Ramos etc. He is not a fighter. To be honest, if we are serious about the rebuild, this should Busi's last season with the club. If Xavi is worth his salt he will figure things out with what he has and whatever signings he is given.
 
iniestaGOAT

iniestaGOAT

Senior Member
BarcaOG said:
i dont think he was a genuinely 'bad' person. he had a lot of demons and problems--and bad influences too. he lived a complicated life. 'he was a piece of shit' doesnt quite capture that.
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I mean if he was actually a rapist then piece of shit does capture that
 
MTL_Barca

MTL_Barca

Well-known member
Busi is 32, already playing like 42, and has shown time and time again that he's liability in games where it's about defending and intensity. Is this something we can build our future midfield on?

We won't magically play amazing without Busquets, and it's not like he absolutely has to go. But i don't see how it can ever be good for us to keep worshipping him as a clear starter considering the level of play he brought to our recent disaster games.

There is a serious lack of competition in the squad.
 
BBZ8800

BBZ8800

Senior Member
jairzinho said:
You make it sound like Busquets is indispensable which in some ways is understandable because he is good at bringing the ball out from the back and linking up play. The problem for me though is he is a physical liability. A weakling and a weak link. He also seems to have lost the will and hunger to fight, which as captain is totally unacceptable. If you look at his body language during games, he exudes zero charisma or anything of that sort. He doesn't have the leadership capability of a Van Dijk, Henderson, a Ramos etc. He is not a fighter. To be honest, if we are serious about the rebuild, this should Busi's last season with the club. If Xavi is worth his salt he will figure things out with what he has and whatever signings he is given.
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If you would have asked me this question 10 years ago, I would surely say: get rid of Busi, we can't be worse.
But in the last few years, probably NOT A SINGLE PLAYER/coach was better than the guy from Pep's era or from 2015's team.

1. we had Lucho. He was shit in 2016 and 2017, he got lost and people wanted him out.
We got Valerde.
90% of fans hated him.
People said: I'll drink on the day when he leaves. Nobody could be worse than him.
We signed Setien.
He was far worse than him.
Then we said: get rid of Setien, nobody can be as bad as him.
We got Koeman.
He was even worse.
Then people said: get rid of Koeman, he is clueless, hire Xavi, we will fly.
And we are flying. Just like Titanic.

2. we had Suarez.
He sucks, he is slow, he doesn't run, he is killing our attacks.
They said: buy anyone else, no one can be worse than him, our team is suffering too much because of his walking.
We signed Griezmann. He was far worse than Suarez as a striker, inspite of his running.
Also, we added Prinze, Braithwaite and Aguero.

3. about Griezmann, he was bad, people said: get rid of him, he is useless.
Today, without him, we are beyond horrible.

4. we had Raki.
People said: he sucks, he is slow, he is the biggest cancer of a team and he is pulling our team.
We will fly when he leaves.
We bought Arthur.
He sucked like no one else. Rakitic looked like Maradona compared to him-
We signed Frenkie. He is the savior of football, they said. A perfect Barca DNA player for the next 15 years. We will dominate the world for 10 years with Frenkie and Arthur.
Yet in 2024, Arthur will play for Genova and Frenkie will be a benchwarmer at Tottenham.

5. After Mascherano, we tried with Umtiti, Lenglet, Araujo, Mina, Marlon, Eric.
Till now, no one is close to Mascherano.

6. Wer had Alves. He is slow, they said.
We tried with Montoya, Roberto, Vidal, Semedo, Dest, Mingueza.
They all sucked.
Also, to some extent, you could say that each new guy was worse than the previous one.

7. Bravo. He sucks. Let's give Mats a chance and we are set for the next 10 years.
Yet, Mats is shit.
But no matter how shit he is, when we played his reserves with a motio "no one can be worse than him", it turned out that = Cillessen and Neto are actually way worse than him.

8. granny Iniesta. He was too old and liability.
We changed him for new Iniesta Denis and a 165m guy Coutinho.
They all sucked.

9. Neymar downgraded for Dembele, Malcom, Deulofeu, Trincao, Yusuf... my head hurts already.

When you look back, basically, in the last 6-7 years, every single decision was bad and every single new player was bad and worst than the previous one (except maybe Pedri).
There are 2 options:
1. either we are doing everything wrong
2. or, imo more likely = we hit the insane jackpot with GOAT Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Busi and even Alves. And we won't have players of that level for the next 100 years.
About Busi, regardless of how slow he is, he is the only player who is pulling some strings in our team.
Remove him:
1. and Frenkie is a just a cog. A guy who is good in a well oil machine. But he is not a guy who will lead your team and turn your team INTO a well oil machine.
2. Gavi, the same. He looks like a guy who play well around Messi, Iniesta, Busi, Xavi, Pedro, Alves. But put him in a weaker team where he is supposed to be one of key players and he'll suck and just run around.
3. Nico, imo, a level of quality for the 17th placed La Liga team.
4. Pedri, the best out of a bunch, but again a sideshow player who is good in a well oil machine and with other guys who lead the team. But he is now a guy WHO will lead your team if the team is bad.

Once again, I'll write a story from Rijkaard's days when he explained in 2004/05 when we won the title after 6 years that they wanted to build a team of captains, leaders but also of winners.
1. they bought Ronaldinho, a World cup winner and a future Ballon D Or
2. Etoo was also a leader and a winner. Cameroonian captain
3. Deco has just won a CL with a crappy Porto as their best player
4. Guily has just played a CL final against Porto, and he was a captain of CL finalists Monaco
5. Edmilson, iirc, was a captain of Lyon and Brazil
6. Marquez, a captain of Mexico
7. Larsson, an ultimate winner and a leader. Was he a captain of Celtic (I am not sure)
8. later they signed Van Bommel who later turned into a captain of Bayern Munchen
After Oliver Kahn retired in 2008, Van Bommel was selected as captain, becoming the club's FIRST EVER non-German captain.
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And then, look at our current team and signings: Frenkie, Dembele, Nico, Pedri, Riki, Dest.
A team of loosers and side-show guys who need "someone else" to take the responsibility.

But hey, they are short, technical and have Barca's DNA :pep:

All in all, you know my opinion that the club is going in a horrible, horrible direction.
They totally lost logic, brains and went too much with a full retard Barca DNA short-technical route paired with an illusion that we are better than everyone else and that we will dominate for decades based on La Masia and rondos.

So, not that I rate Busi highly, but imo, our other players are so ridiculously bad that without Busi our team will reach new levels of bad, chaos and zero sense in midfield.
Frenkie will aimlessly run and make stupid passes.
Gavi will run around with the ball (since we won't have any control) make fouls.
Nico will run around the box and leave holes behind him.
Pedri will probably hide and wait for someone else to take control.
Riki will run around without any positional purpose.

So, do you know that feeling while watching our games lately when you ask yourself: could we be any worse than this?
Imo, the answer is: yes. Just wait until we drop Busi.

New levels of deep blue see incoming for exploration:
Titanic-e1630453763407.jpg
 
BBZ8800

BBZ8800

Senior Member
messi2140 said:
You answered the question yourself.

Issue isn't letting go of those players and managers , but who we are replacing them with.
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1. we don't have money for good players
2. we won't have money for good players anytime soon
3. good players won't come here
4. La Masia is dry
5. La Masia is ruined due to Pep's success and with going full retard onto short, technical, soulless players
6. our scouting department is stuck in 1982'
7. our sporting directors are all former players, because, you know: Barca DNA, and if executed properly nothing can beat our system. Plus delusion that we still the best and we need to keep on doing what we are doing, because our way is the best, lol
8. 80 years old socios who don't follow modern football and who probably think that guys like Riki could be the next Xavi
9. Catalonia vs Spain politics which is clouding our judgement and forcing us to buy tons of shitty Catalan players, in order to keep our pride and DNA and in the end you get a bunch of Alenas, Puigs, Nicos and similar.
If our goal and our pride is to be the 15th on the table, than young Catalans are the way to go.

So, Busi sucks, but indicates that his subs will be good players.
I doubt that his subs would even be midtable La Liga level one day at all.

So, you know the story:
titanic-2.ashx
 
messi2140

messi2140

6racies Xavi
I'm talking back when we had actually money under Bartomeu and he decided to spend more than 500M on Coutinho , Dembele , Arda , Griezmann etc..
 
BBZ8800

BBZ8800

Senior Member
messi2140 said:
I'm talking back when we had actually money under Bartomeu and he decided to spend more than 500M on Coutinho , Dembele , Arda , Griezmann etc..
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Those were bad decisions.
But it is not as if anything else worked our for us lately.

1. if we bought 150m guys = they failed (Cou, Dembele, Griezmann, 90m Frenkie)
2. if we bought 10-40m guys like Gomes, Arda, Paco, Lenglet, Aleix Vidal, Denis, Digne, Malcom, Mina, Arthur, Semedo, Dest, Braithwaite = none of them turned into anything special. More or less, majority of them weren't good enough even for a squad level of any top5 CL team
3. La Masia = 95% of gems are of Getafe level

Whatever we did, nothing worked out.
 
DonAK

DonAK

President of FC Barcelona
BBZ8800 said:
Those were bad decisions.
But it is not as if anything else worked our for us lately.

1. if we bought 150m guys = they failed
2. if we bought 10-40m guys like Gomes, Arda, Paco, Lenglet, Aleix Vidal, Denis, Digne, Malcom, Mina, Arthur, Semedo, Dest = none of them turned into anything special. More or less, majority of them weren't good enough even for a squad level of any top5 CL team
3. La Masia = 95% of gems are of Getafe level

Whatever we did, nothing worked out.
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We got our money back for Gomes, Paco, Digne, Malcom, Mina and Semedo tbf. So even if they flopped we didn't lose a tonne of money on them.

Meanwhile spending 400m on Dembele, Coutinho and Griezmann is gonna net us 50m from Atletico and that might honestly be it :lol:
 
messi2140

messi2140

6racies Xavi
BBZ8800 said:
Those were bad decisions.
But it is not as if anything else worked our for us lately.

1. if we bought 150m guys = they failed (Cou, Dembele, Griezmann, 90m Frenkie)
2. if we bought 10-40m guys like Gomes, Arda, Paco, Lenglet, Aleix Vidal, Denis, Digne, Malcom, Mina, Arthur, Semedo, Dest, Braithwaite = none of them turned into anything special. More or less, majority of them weren't good enough even for a squad level of any top5 CL team
3. La Masia = 95% of gems are of Getafe level

Whatever we did, nothing worked out.
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That's because number 7 in your previous post is a great point and something I fully agree with is a big issue at our club.
 
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