Xavi Hernández

[khaled_a_d]

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

Nah, that is unfair.
Bayern actually paid like 20M for 1 year of Coutinho so it is 70M

 

[DonAK]

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.

I don't mind a former player being the SD if he has a proven track record.

Someone like Overmars would have been interesting for us, but he renewed with Ajax. Not sure he'd come here anyway now that we got Jordi Cruyff the mastermind of Maccabi Haifa or some shit being the de-factor SD.

 

[Gari]

The contract and amortization of any player is 5 years. Coutinho and Dembele were bought with Neymar's money. Their contracts are expiring. With them everything is over, the end. Griezmann is a different story, he was bought with his own money, but he was sold. The Barcelona disaster is an exaggeration, it was publicly talked about and Tebas: The problem was and is in salaries, in Bavaria it is now less. Xavi has stopped the possible arrival of Pogba to Bar?a. He was adamantly opposed to the operation. And Enrique did not prevent Gomes from arriving. It all depends on the coach.

 

[khaled_a_d]

The contract and amortization of any player is 5 years. Coutinho and Dembele were bought with Neymar's money. Their contracts are expiring. With them everything is over, the end. Griezmann is a different story, he was bought with his own money, but he was sold. The Barcelona disaster is an exaggeration, it was publicly talked about and Tebas: The problem was and is in salaries, in Bavaria it is now less.

If you are telling a player that you will pay 100M+ for him, you should expect him to ask for massive salaries.

If you pay them massive salaries, you own stars expect massive increase in salaries too.

I mean most of our players has their contracts ends in 2023 anyway, so it isn't like Coutinho isn't bigger problem than Busquets

 

[BBZ8800]

Soulless like Gavi? Short like Nico?
https://twitter.com/30GAVI/status/1470661801436233730

You don't live in the real world, sweetheart. At least get the facts straight.

Do you know what is average?
That means if you have 10 players and 9 are soulless, then majority of your players are soulless.

The same as how Busi being tall and weak is not a proof that height doesn't help.
Or how short and strong Kante is not a proof how height is irrelevant.

So, yes:
1. majority of our players are short, weak and slow
2. majority of our players are soulless with vanilla choirboy zero fighting personality

 

[mc_lovin]

Do you know what is average?
That means if you have 10 players and 9 are soulless, then majority of your players are soulless.

The same as how Busi being tall and weak is not a proof that height doesn't help.
Or how short and strong Kante is not a proof how height is irrelevant.

So, yes:
1. majority of our players are short, weak and slow
2. majority of our players are soulless with vanilla choirboy zero fighting personality

You crunched the numbers yourself?

And for other clubs as well? How is it going at Real with their youth? United? Which club sets a positive example for you? Bonus points if it is with anger, passion, hate, violence and mentality obviously.

 

[BBZ8800]

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

I agree that Coutinho, Dembele and Griezmann were the biggest flops due to the amount of money invested, wages, money gained from their sales and their impact on a field.

But Malcom, Paco, Denis and all of these guys were also flops.
Why?

Because we invested money in them.
We invested training and time in them.
They got a lot of time and chances.
That means that we sacrified some results in order to wait for them to learn our tactics and mechanisms.
And then we figured out after 2 years that they won't be good enough, we sold them and bought the new bunch of players and tried the same scenario.
Buy, try, sell.
But while doing that, due to all these Malcoms, Semedos, Gomeses, Denises and similar = we never managed to find good subs for Busi and Pique because all of our attempts were really bad.

Let's be honest:
1. did we buy Semedo and Malcom for 40m only to resell them for 40m in a year or two?
2. or we bought them in a hope that they'll turn into starters or good squad players whom we'll be able to use for several years?
For example, look at Dest today: have we bought him just to resell him in two years?
or have we bought him in a hope that we have found a new longterm RB solution?
What will happen now if we'll sell Des? We are back to 40 year old Alves and Roberto. Or Mingueza who is not a RB.
And then in a summer we'll look for some new RB again.
So, even if we resell Dest for the same amount which we paid for him, he is a failure.
He was bought with a hope of turning into a longterm starter, yet he will be sold 18-24 Months later because he is not good enough even for a midtable level of Barcelona.

So, when you sum it all, again:
1. our 100-150m transfers failed
2. our 40-50m transfers failed
3. none out of 10-20m transfers turned into a gem (except Pedri)
4. not too much happened from La Masia

So, basically, in the last 7 years (after 2014 summer), whatever we tried transfers and planning wise = failed.

 

[BBZ8800]

You crunched the numbers yourself?

And for other clubs as well? How is it going at Real with their youth? United? Which club sets a positive example for you? Bonus points if it is with anger, passion, hate, violence and mentality obviously.

Real is not good with youths, but they don't boast how their YD is the best in the world, magical, better than the rest, special and how they don't buy superstars = they produce them.
What a shitty and cheap lying propaganda.

I always said that La Masia isn't any better than a YD from United, Juve, Real, Bayern.
We were lucky in one moment, just like Man Utd in 90s and that's it.
Otherwise, it is average like all YDs of other clubs.

And tactics built about relying on YD is extremely risky and naive.
This is why smart clubs like:
-- Real = are buying 100s of superstars from all over the world (even youths)
-- Bayern = is having their whole country as their football/YD slaves
-- Psg = has all the world as their slaves with their oil money

Yet, we don't have slaves anymore. We have Nico and Riki

 

[Luftstalag14]

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:

BBZ, I'd like you to clarify on 4,5,6 and 9 please.

What do you mean La Masia is dry? Have you followed or watched the various levels of the cantera teams enough to reach that conclusion? I know I haven't.

Soulless players? Like Gavi? What is the definition of "soulless" here?

What exactly about our scouting department?

Buying a ton of shitty Catalan players? Like who? Who was the last Catalan player we bought? Pedri is not Catalan (Canary Islander). Nico is not Catalan (Galician). Gavi is not Catalan (Andalusian, the most Spaniard of all Spaniards).

 

[mc_lovin]

Real is not good with youths, but they don't boast how their YD is the best in the world, magical, better than the rest, special and how they don't buy superstars = they produce them.
What a shitty and cheap lying propaganda.

I always said that La Masia isn't any better than a YD from United, Juve, Real, Bayern.
We were lucky in one moment, just like Man Utd in 90s and that's it.
Otherwise, it is average like all YDs of other clubs.

And tactics built about relying on YD is extremely risky and naive.
This is why smart clubs like:
-- Real = are buying 100s of superstars from all over the world (even youths)
-- Bayern = is having their whole country as their football/YD slaves
-- Psg = has all the world as their slaves with their oil money

Yet, we don't have slaves anymore. We have Nico and Riki

Man, your timing is just off. At worst La Masia produced three good squad players while nothing else at the club seems to work.

 

[Luftstalag14]

Real is not good with youths, but they don't boast how their YD is the best in the world, magical, better than the rest, special and how they don't buy superstars = they produce them.
What a shitty and cheap lying propaganda.

I always said that La Masia isn't any better than a YD from United, Juve, Real, Bayern.
We were lucky in one moment, just like Man Utd in 90s and that's it.
Otherwise, it is average like all YDs of other clubs.

And tactics built about relying on YD is extremely risky and naive.
This is why smart clubs like:
-- Real = are buying 100s of superstars from all over the world (even youths)
-- Bayern = is having their whole country as their football/YD slaves
-- Psg = has all the world as their slaves with their oil money

Yet, we don't have slaves anymore. We have Nico and Riki

I don't think we are boasting that our youth is the best in the world or better than the rest, not at all, all they are saying is Barca youth are trained and ingrained with the so-called Barca philosophy, style of play or DNA or whatever, whether you like it or not. Nobody here has claimed superiority and said that we produce superstars here, the reason why Laporta and others have increasingly mentioned La Masia lately is because we don't have money to buy big time players so we have to explore within.

Our is not necessarily better or worse than the other clubs' but at this time when we are short on money, there are no other options.

 

[mc_lovin]

I don't think we are boasting that our youth is the best in the world or better than the rest, not at all, all they are saying is Barca youth are trained and ingrained with the so-called Barca philosophy, style of play or DNA or whatever, whether you like it or not. Nobody here has claimed superiority and said that we produce superstars here, the reason why Laporta and others have increasingly mentioned La Masia lately is because we don't have money to buy big time players so we have to explore within.

Our is not necessarily better or worse than the other clubs' but at this time when we are short on money, there are no other options.

Fucking hell, we are better than other clubs (in youth development) if our current generation succeeds. It's still a long way to go, but the talent is there... unlike ~5 years ago. It would be absolutely incredible actually.

 

[Luftstalag14]

Fucking hell, we are better than other clubs (in youth development) if our current generation succeeds. It's still a long way to go, but the talent is there... unlike ~5 years ago. It would be absolutely incredible actually.

I don't think we can claim that, and that is a big IF. We are giving more time to youth players than most other clubs, yes, which has more to do with our constraints than on their own merits (Gavi is a different case), in my opinion.

Plus, we are not following the other clubs' youth and academies as we do ours, can't say we are better. I know it is a superficial yardstick but nevertheless one after all, our performance in this last UEFA Youth League was abysmal, only won 1 game and was eliminated from the group stage.

 

[BarcaOG]

i wish our players had BBZ's writing stamina on the field


this man can pump out essays like its nothing

 

[ajnotkeith]

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.

You are all about physicality but think Busquets is a good thing for this club, an aging player who is maybe the worst physically out of any player in Barca A, B or Juvenil?

'Hoofing long balls' is exactly what a lot of good teams do these days. You oppose the Barca DNA hubris and the Pep tiki taka style but at the same time talk about how we can't string passes together without Busquets and that long ball is bad.

The way we modernise is precisely to get rid of these slow, weak possession players who aren't even good in possession, who are only built to perform in one system with 80% of the ball. We will lose the midfield battle plenty over the next season and a player like Busquets will not help with that.