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Just a decade ago, when Barcelona were flying high and were the champions of Europe, it looked like they could hardly put a foot wrong. The team was brimming with talent and there seemed to be no stopping them.
However, at the start of this new decade the Cules look anything but comfortable. Barcelona are still in the UEFA Champions League fight but it's been a rather forgettable season for them. The sheer number of issues that have cropped up around the team this season is alarming.
Barcelona will need to change a lot things if they are to get back to the top, where they belong. Let's analyze 5 of the biggest mistakes that Barcelona committed this season.
#5 Sacking Ernesto Valverde
While the fans were certainly divided on Ernesto Valverde and his pragmatic approach towards football, in hindsight, sacking him halfway through the season when Barcelona were leading the league seems like a horrendous decision especially if you look at what transpired after that.
Valverde was sacked on the back of Barcelona's loss to Atletico Madrid in the semi-finals of the Spanish Super Cup. It was for the first time in 17 years that Barcelona had sacked a manager halfway through the season and it didn't work out in their favour.
Quique Setien, a proponent of possession-based football, failed to deliver the goods and Barcelona hardly ever played the attack-minded game that the 61-year-old was expected to bring. Valverde's Barcelona side might not have been very easy on the eye but they still used to get their job done.
#4 No cohesion between Barcelona board and players
This is a cause of growing concern to fans as the Barcelona board and the players seem to be operating at different wavelengths. It turned quite ugly this season as Eric Abidal, the Barcelona sporting director, and Lionel Messi locked horns in a public spat.
It started after Eric Abidal, in defending his decision to sack Ernesto Valverde in an interview, claimed that the Barcelona players weren't satisfied nor worked hard under the former manager. The players perceived the comment to be in bad taste as work ethic is not something that's taken lightly about when it comes to professional footballers.
Lionel Messi immediately took to Instagram and asked Abidal to name the players and asked for the club's management to take responsibility for its decisions. Josep Maria Bartomeu stepped in and calmed the waters but it remains an ugly chapter in a forgettable season.
The club has become dysfunctional and the lack of cohesion between the management and the players is disheartening to see.
#3 Barcelona's awful transfer activity
Barcelona have hardly put a foot right in the transfer window over the past few seasons. None of their big-money acquisitions have even come close to justifying their price tags. Ousmane Dembele, Antoine Griezmann and Coutinho are all being counted as transfer failures and together, they cost more than €400 million.
Frenkie De Jong is perhaps their only big money signing that seems to have worked out. Griezmann, Martin Braithwaite, Junior Firpo have all been misfires and Barcelona continue to fail in building a decent team around arguably the greatest player on the planet right now.
They are running out of company on the profligacy front in Europe with almost every other top side in the continent bolstering their scouting and recruitment departments. Even Manchester United, infamous for their wastefulness, have got their act together. Barcelona, however, have not moved on.
#2 Arthur-Pjanic swap deal
This is an extension of the last point but it would be cruel to tag Pjanic an awful signing. However, if you look at the backdrop of the signing, the deal simply makes no sense. Arthur Melo is a 24-year-old central midfielder in the mould of Xavi and Iniesta.
Pjanic is 30-years-old and it makes no sense for Barcelona to have sold a young and promising midfield maestro for an ageing veteran. Pjanic is an excellent player, no doubt. However, the bigger problems at Barcelona suggest that there must be something else at play.
Arthur feels like he has been mistreated by the club and that the transfer deal was sanctioned to balance their books. If that's the case, then it is just awful management.
#1 Over reliance on ageing players
That brings us to the next point. Barcelona have an ageing squad and given the way their recruitment has been going over the past few years, this could be a hurdle too big for the Cules to cross.
Luis Suarez, Gerard Pique and Arturo Vidal are all 33-years-old now. Rakitic and Busquets are both 32. Alba is 31 and Griezmann is 29. Almost all of Barcelona's main players are over the age of 26. The influence of their veterans is waning with age and even Messi is 33 now though he doesn't really show it.
Also Read - Lionel Messi Net Worth
They cannot go on forever and Barcelona have to undertake a big clearing-out project to address the issue. They will find it hard to replace the likes of Busquets, Alba, Vidal etc. in the current landscape in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
