Having travelled with and sat and stood among the couple of thousand-odd Barca fans at last night’s Champions League semi-final away match tie between their team and Bayern Munich, it is hard not to share in the feeling of desolation provoked by its outcome.
The majority of these visiting fans in the huge impressive Allianz Arena stadium were in their twenties, part of a generation that has grown up finding in the success of their club and the respect for it worldwide one of the few genuinely positive aspects of a life overshadowed by debt and unemployment, and yet fuelled with a passion for Catalan identity they express waving independence flags and shouting unprintable verbal abuse at Jose Mourinho and Real Madrid.
They were joined in Munich by a smaller contingent of middle-aged and largely middle-class cules (Barca fans) who have followed the club in bad times as well as good times but for whom last night’s match caused, similarly, profound shock, no doubt adding to the general sense of political and social uncertainty provoked by Catalunya’s tortuously ill-defined road map to independence.
This was not defeat, at the hands of Bayern, suffered through poor referee decisions or fluke opposition goals. This was a comprehensive thrashing by a team that on the night showed themselves superior across positions and in every aspect of the game. For those with longer memories, there was a sense of having been there before-back in 1994, when Johan Cruyff’s ‘Dream Team’ were beaten by a similar score line by AC Milan in the Champions League final in Athens.
Certainly there is a sense today, as there was then , that, barring a miracle in the second-leg at the Nou Camp, and despite on track to win the Spanish league, FC Barcelona may have reached the end of an era of unrivalled international supremacy- a feeling, if the truth be told that been growing in the world of football ever since Barca won its last champions league trophy in May 2011 although-let us not forget –it was Barca who helped world champions Spain win the European championship for the second time in two consecutive tournaments in 2012.
And yet while Barca ‘s dream of a third Wembley final may effectively be over for now, I do not believe that the club is entering an extended period in the European doldrums similar to that which it suffered during and long after the Di Stefano years of the 1950’s . Nor for that matter do I believe that the era of Spanish football –whether at club or national team level-generally is at an end.
Barca urgently needs some important repair work-rather than simple fine tuning- but it is not an irrevocably broken team of beyond sell-by dates. It can still count on players of world class star qualitythe likes of Iniesta, Busquets, Xavi, Jordi Alba, and Pedro- that on better days will deliver. Its key component, Lionel Messi, is not a player that has peaked. It would be absurd to consider his lacklustre performance last night as anything other than largely the consequence of a mistaken decision to have him played not fully fit against an opponent of the calibre of Bayern Munich.
That said Barca can no longer afford to be Messi-dependent when the chips are down. It is desperately in need of an attacking player-other than Messi and not Villa or Alexis– that can be relied upon to be sufficiently versatile to suit Barca’s style and to score with consistency in top European games against tough well organised opponents. That killer streak-and by that I mean effective, accurate goal scoring- seems so often lacking in Barca’s patient build up play and occasional counter-attacking forays. But I don’t think Barca needs to change its style. It need to reorganise and strengthen itself in a way that the style does not become an end in itself but the effective conduit for a more effective attacking as well as defensive options. It has young some young talent that has come up through the youth team, who have shown this ability, but this should not stop Barca going for some transfers, both buying and selling players.
And it needs a manager capable of imposing a collective ethos on Barca that all players, not least Messi can adhere to, while retaining the sufficient tactical flexibility and element of surprise to confuse, outmanoeuvre and ultimately defeat the opposition. Here I fear one comes to the heart of the matter for it necessitates generating a public debate around an issue which has thus far been far been avoided by FC Barcelona for perfectly legitimate reasons of human decency and respect: the question of Tito Villanova’s health and the extent to which this may be impacting on his ability to face up to the challenges of the job.
Amidst the powerfully regimented mass support of the Bayern fans for their team last night, and faced with the tactical and strategic precision of the German champions , Tito cut a particularly forlorn figure on the touchline as he watched the dispirited shambles of his own players, seemingly unable to put it right, and leaving Barca fans obsessively hoping that Mourinho’s Real Madrid doesn’t end up getting to Wembley and winning.
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