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Suffice it to say, it’s 2:30 and I’m beyond thinking up similes. I just can’t think of any.
Of course, this Barcelona team – whether you love them, hate them or simply don’t care – more than deserve that respect. They’ve earned the right to be treated as a standard for victory and excellence, and that results in the sense of shock you experience when they lose, along with the elation that always creeps in when an underdog triumphs. It’s happened earlier, when Celtic and AC Milan magnificently held them at bay.
Of course, this was no underdog victory. Bayern Munich are one of the world’s most fearsome teams at the moment, cutting apart hapless opponents with all the laser-sharp precision and efficiency stereotypical of the German team. Gone are the uncertain, self-doubting Teutons of the last decade. Their attacks are devastatingly ruthless, their defence is literally impregnable, and the midfield owns the pitch for the entire 90 minutes.
After a barren first half where they lazily soaked up whatever Barcelona could throw at them, the Bayern engine kicked into life and roared forward. The Panzers that are Bastian Schweinsteiger and Thomas Muller had, between them, negated Xavi Hernandez and Sergio Busquets all night; now they simply bypassed them and steam-rolled ahead, turrets blazing. A swift exchange of passes later, Arjen Robben was storming down the right; a curler into the net and Bayern had drawn first blood on enemy territory. 1-0 on the night, 5-0 on aggregate.
Whatever slender, far-away hopes any Barca fans still had were put to rest a short while later by Franck Ribery. Bayern’s scar-faced warrior and winger extraordinaire combines a Drogba-like physicality with the tenacity of a terrier, sniffing out gaps where and when he can. Yesterday night, he channelized the ghost of a younger Ryan Giggs, combining speed with an able footballing brain to terrorise Dani Alves; and while jumping to clear a Ribery cross into the box, Gerard Pique channelized the ghost of Javier Mascherano to high-dink the ball into his own net. A few minutes later, another excellent Ribery lob met the able head of Thomas Muller and found safe refuge at the back of the Barcelona net. I would like to say game, set and match, but it was never even game on in the first place.
Did Barca miss Messi? One-man team or not?
The term ‘one-man team’ is often bandied about these days to describe any team overly reliant on one player. It’s at once laughable and foolish – at that level, there may be supermen, but no team can afford to have passengers and every player has his own important role to fulfil. But of late, increasingly confident voices have declared Barca as a one-trick pony, with Messi being the hind-leg jiggle in question.
Recent performances seem to bear this out – Barcelona depend on Messi to score most of their goals. Their system is now entirely designed around providing him the ball, and their full-backs bomb forwards exclusively to cross to him. He came off the bench to inspire a draw against Paris St. Germain at home that saved the tie (not to mention face) whilst clearly unfit. Yet, a team that has reached the Champions League semi-finals for 7 of the last 8 seasons cannot have been dependent on a single ace.
So, what exactly is the answer? Are Barca over-reliant on Messi or not? As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Barcelona are a world-class team even without Messi – let this be said once and for all by a viewer who is not a Barca fan. But there are several other world-class teams – Bayern, Real Madrid, Manchester United to name a few. Messi, however, gives them that cutting edge you need to beat other teams at that level. With him, they go from ‘world-class’ to ‘world-beating’. With an unfit Messi, they failed to win five of their six knockout matches, struggled in a relatively easy group and ultimately crashed and burned against Bayern. Possibly the most unconvincing progress of any semi-finalist in Champions League history. With him fit, they might not have creamed the tournament. But definitely not lost 7-0.
Why are Barcelona so predictable all of a sudden?
In 2008 (when Guardiola took over), Barca fielded a robustly multi-ethnic team – Ronaldinho and Deco in midfield, the tough Yaya Toure patrolling territory behind them; and the deadly duo of Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto’o upfront. Messi was a right-winger who would cut in to shoot with his favoured left foot.
Within two years, the team was purged – Eto’o was cast out, his replacement Zlatan Ibrahimovic was loaned out, and Henry was sold. Their replacements were Spaniards – Pedro and David Villa. While I’m not doubting Villa’s pedigree (World Cup top-scorer and all that), his arrival further depleted Barca’s depth and variety. Toure’s sale around the same time effectively put a stamp on this; the player who inherited his mantle the next season, Cesc Fabregas, is another Catalan.
Crucially, Messi was now played through the centre and he was both creator and scorer – the focal point of all their attacks. Gone was the traditional striker-dependent system. The era of the false nine was well and truly established at Barca, with Messi as its reigning deity. But the physical toughness and aerial ability that supplemented tiki-taka to such devastating effect in 2009 was now lost.
The slow Latinisation of Barcelona (I would have said Catalanisation, were it not for Alves, Villa and of course Messi) has eroded the multicultural variety put in place by Frank Rijkaard and Louis van Gaal. Barcelona earlier played as most teams do; Guardiola succeeded in taking them to another level by crafting a style that was unique to Barca. But in doing so, he made it hard for them to readjust when needed – in a team full of players with similar minds and physicalities, there is no Plan B, because they haven’t needed one for a long time.
In an era where Europe’s biggest teams have made it their business to locate and target Barcelona’s weaknesses, the imperilled legacy of Guardiola has finally caught up with the team his successor inherited – little depth, no variety. It manifests in some painfully simple questions – How do you defend corners when your team has an average height of 5’6’’, too short by any footballing yardstick? How do you out-muscle a team from London whose attributes – defensive solidity, robust physicality and speedy counter-attacks – hit all your weak points at one go?
Of course, for a team that is walking the league and still makes the semifinals at all the tournaments it plays in, this may seem a rather ridiculous and redundant discussion. Why change something that has moved from 90% efficiency to about 80%? Another answer is that Barcelona’s players are clearly overworked, maybe even burnt-out and disinterested. The key midfield trio of Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets, the engine that drives the team, has played nearly every first-team match for five years. With every possible title won and re-won, there is the clear question of whether motivation has run dry. It’s a problem that most managers on earth would die to have – how to keep a champion team up there – but at present, it’s like watching a large dragon die of ennui.
Of course, Barcelona would still be a great team even if they were to drop maybe one title every season. Or maybe exit at the quarters instead of the last 4.
It just wouldn’t be the Barcelona we know.
