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This is the How it really stings. That Barcelona, a very good team that nevertheless suffers from several glaring shortcomings, lost in the Champions League semifinal against Liverpool, one of the two best teams of this season in Europe and probably the best equipped to solve The particular problems of this diabolically complicated tournament poses, is not worth the trouble of tearing off too many Barça jerseys. But How Barcelona lost, leaving a 3-0 lead in the first leg with a 4-0 surrender during the away match, spoiling a golden opportunity to capitalize on one of Lionel's remaining years remaining Messi near its peak, made the defeat Tuesday The most painful losses that this generation of players and supporters of Barca have probably suffered.
That Liverpool is the stronger of the two teams seems, in retrospect, obvious. On paper, the composition of the teams of both teams is fairly balanced, and you can argue that each team has a slight advantage. However, in its context, Liverpool has always had a considerable advantage over Barcelona. This is mainly a reflection of the heroic work that manager Jürgen Klopp has done to make the Reds team the ideal Kloppian.
Liverpool has compensated for its questionable lack of players far superior to those of Barcelona – and missing two essential cogs of Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino in the semi-final of the semifinal – with a style of play that perfectly matches the talents available. and who is particularly powerful in tournament play. As Cristiano Ronaldo's Real Madrid has shown in recent seasons, as shown by last summer's World Cup, playoff football is now dominated by those who dominate transitions and can choke off teams. possession of balloon with intense physical pressure. Liverpool is pious in transition and likes nothing more than sending waves of demolition balls to demolish the pretty possession castles that their opponents are looking to build. Barcelona are the opposite.
If Liverpool is a real team, where the sum is greater than its parts, Barcelona is an ill-fitting set of individuals whose talents, shortcomings and individual preferences make it extremely difficult to get the best away from everyone at the same time. time – especially against the types of teams that usually make deep innings in the Champions League. The greatest strengths of Liverpool are precisely the greatest weaknesses of Barcelona: the formidable rapids of the Reds against the BlaugranaSlow and isolated defense; the army of Pool Boys presses against pressure-sensitive possession players from Barça; Liverpool's strong and fast defense against the old and slow attackers of Barça. That's why Liverpool is the best team, why she easily beat Barcelona on both legs and why the passage from Liverpool to the final of the Champions League should not, on paper, have surprised everyone.
But again, this is the How it's very painful and there is no easy answer to that.
The first impulse after a historic victory in the size that Liverpool has just given Barcelona is to tackle. But looking for someone to blame is a bad way to understand what happened on Tuesday and, more importantly, what happened in Barcelona to make the loss possible.
There are of course specific reasons why Barcelona has not protected its lead by 3-0. The easiest person to blame is the manager Ernesto Valverde. Barça could have chosen one of two paths leading to success on Tuesday: 1) attacking Liverpool for the equalizer, or 2) playing a defensive game in the hope of preventing the Reds from scoring three times. Valverde has not fully committed to it.
Starting with Philippe Coutinho and Sergi Roberto, Valverde set up a formation with two defensive liabilities, both of which were regularly burned in the first leg, which would imply an intention to attack. But keeping midfielder Arthur on the sidelines to start the match, and in particular by exchanging Nélson Semedo against Coutinho as their first substitution, Barça had already lost three goals and was waiting for the match after Liverpool already scored the fourth goal. Valverde clearly gave priority to defense before the attacks, precisely at the worst moments. For a coach who has long been accused of conservatism based on fear, after a season in which the hopes of the Barça Champions League ended in the same humiliating and conservative way, Valverde's mistakes were overwhelming.
Nevertheless, it is wrong to say that the exit of the Champions League of Barcelona was really the fault of Valverde. Although Liverpool looked powerful, the first 45 minutes of the second leg were more or less in line with Barça's plan. Liverpool scored only one goal and conceded a handful of chances that, if big players like Messi or Suárez or Coutinho had finished, one of them would have completely changed the content of the match.
Barcelona has never been well Tuesday, Liverpool has completely dictated the terms of the game, from the first to the last minute, but Barcelona still has only two or three friendly rebounds. pretty good to advance in the final. To erase all the tremendous work accomplished by Valverde over the last two seasons, this delirious team has been transformed into a team that has won two La Liga titles and where it has come close to the thought of a focused triptych. on the results, even if, in the light of this week's defeat and that of the Roma, it might be better for Valverde to retire at the end of the season.
Regardless of Valverde's questionable culpability for defeat in Liverpool and the even more inexplicable Roma that preceded him, the real reasons Barcelona did not win the Champions League this season and the four seasons since their last success in the tournament are more fundamental. Barcelona simply lacks quality and consistency in their team so that success in the Champions League is considered mandatory. It is no coincidence that the first really great team Barcelona has played this season has unveiled each of its faults. It is no coincidence that Barcelona has recently suffered several defeats, including a 4-0 defeat of PSG, 3-0 against Juventus, 3-0 against Roma and 4-0 at Anfield. In Barça's last seven playoff draws dating back to the eighth-finals of the 2016-17 season, Barcelona have conceded 15 times, scored twice and accumulated the record of four defeats, two draws and a single victory.
This defensive fragility and this impotence offensive away from home can not be the case of a team that hopes to win the Champions League, and these deficiencies are much deeper than any decision of a single formation. The core of this Barcelona team is still the same as the one that won the European Cup in 2015. The pieces lost by Barça since this success – Xavi, Iniesta, Neymar, Dani Alves – have been replaced by players quite inferior. Most of the remaining pieces – Messi, Pique, Suarez, Busquets, Alba, Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Roberto – have aged, have become slower, less dynamic, less able to cope with the specifics of the final phase of the Champions League.
The best Barcelonese of the time Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique had real difference makers at almost all the positions on the field, players of such formidable skill that their opponents did not know who would kill them or how to fight them. Stop. . Barcelona in the post-Neymar era relies almost exclusively on Messi, relying on him to get the team out of all its difficulties, without necessarily presenting him the platform he needs to fully exploit his magic. always powerful. -The extent of the blotter.
So yes, Valverde probably should have started Semedo at Coutinho, and he certainly should have brought in Malcom earlier, and the threat of a sparer Suárez (who scored only two (!!) goals at the UCL over the last two sprints behind the Liverpool defenders would certainly have certainly generated too many opportunities for Liverpool to keep Barcelona out of the goal board for 90 minutes, and Jordi Alba should have been smarter than giving the ball off the worst possible times to establish those two crucial goals for Liverpool, but blaming Valverde for making bad substitute choices, or Suárez for not being so sporty at 29, or Alba's collapse under pressure while his teammates did not offer him any relief valve, lacks the forest for the trees.
No coach has been able to take the Barcelona roster in its current composition and make it a team that, rightly, could have considered this season a European cup or recession. No possible starting lineup of available Barça players would have made Barça better than Liverpool as a team. No sensible decision on the part of every Barcelona player would have changed the fact that they were outmatched against Liverpool and that they had the fair and equitable result after their defeat.
In other words, the solution to Barcelona's problems does not lie entirely or even primarily in the dismissal of Valverde and in the appointment of a stronger, more courageous and "more cruyffist" director. Unless Barcelona wants to make tough decisions to get out of the aging legend that has orchestrated its greatest recent successes – an incredibly difficult proposition, especially as a result of the even greater success of La Liga, driven by Messi -, the # The team will only grow more and more vulnerable in the biggest games against the best teams, will only keep watching slide more and more of its previously unmatched reserves of world-class talent, will not support that more sorrow in their unfortunate attempts to capture the trophy again, they are more desperate to raise.
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