Barcelona Blues: The Descent from Greatness

Hassan Chamas

This photo is nothing new. Rather, it just seems as a flash in the minds of football fans all over the world, and especially in Spain. With FC Barcelona winning the impressive La Liga and Champions League double back in 2006, many predicted that European football had entered the age of Catalan dominance. Ironically, it’s Real Madrid, Barcelona’s eternal rivals, that won the league title last season, and with them being on top of the table this season too, they are certainly looking good for making it two-in-a-row.

It was this time last year (or a bit before), that Real Madrid started to mastermind a league comeback, a plot that eventually saw them dethrone Barcelona as league leaders in the final fixture of last season. Rome (or in this case Barcelona) watched helplessly as it saw its football empire crumble in the last few games of last season.

Barcelona’s poor league form was clearly visible for most part of this campaign, with them being, most of the time second best to Real Madrid. And even though they are still in the Champions League, with a foot in the semi-finals with a win over German club Schalke last Tuesday, something is clearly wrong. And not even the most die-hard fans of Barcelona can deny it. There’s something missing in the club.

"This team is used to defending results, like when we won the Champions League. Even this year, in the cup, against difficult teams like Sevilla, we did the same. But now things have changed, and we have entered a crisis". That’s what Barcelona technical director Txiki Bergiristain was quoted as saying to the press, following the embarrassing defeat to strugglers Real Betis in La Liga, who overcame a two-goal deficit to eventually clinch a crucial 3-2 win over coach Frank Rijkaard’s side.

The “Fantastic Four” not so fantastic

One of the major pieces of transfer news that has shocked the football world, although it was expected to happen at any instant after the 2006 Champions league final that pitted eventual winners Barcelona against Arsenal, was the transfer of Arsenal emblem Thierry Henry to Barcelona. As soon as Henry’s feet stepped on Spanish soil, the media was quick to label Barcelona as having the best attack in the world, which consisted of Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto’o, Lionel Messi, and the arriving Henry (thus the group were given the nickname of “Los Quatro Fantasticos”). These four stars were in addition to the promising duo of Giovanni Dos Santos (photo) and Bojan Krkic.

With the latter two starlets nowhere near guaranteed a first team place, eyebrows were quickly raised towards the possibility of having all four attackers on the pitch at the same time, let alone their ability to play in Frank Rijkaard’s’ 4-3-3 formation. At first, the argument going around was that the competition was going to be between Henry and Eto’o for the position of the central striker in the attacking trio.

But pretty soon attention turned to Barca’s so called “black sheep”, who is none other than Ronaldinho himself. For most of the previous seasons, Barcelona were working on making Ronaldinho the “face” of their football club, much like AC Milan are doing with Kaka, with Milan legend and club captain Paolo Maldini due to retire at the end of this season. Now, Ronaldinho is almost at the heart of all of Barcelona’s problems. The Brazilian’s season has been a total disaster; hammered with rumours of late partying (we all remember the famous party at the end of last year that also involved Real Madrid duo Robinho and Baptista, and them supposedly ordering forty condoms be brought to their hotel room), to lying to his football club about an injury, one that the club doctors discovered to be “inexistent”.

This led Barcelona’s board of directors to seriously ponder on what to do with Dinho, as he has clearly lost the enthusiasm to play and fight for the Blaugrana shirt. All of these problems have led to the exclusion of Ronaldinho from Barcelona’s starting XI, and very often his name was not even present in the list of players for matches, where he had to settle for watching his team from the sidelines.

Another player that hasn’t had the best of seasons is new signing Thierry Henry. Truth be told, Henry is an extraordinary player that any team would love to have. But his first season in Spain is proving to be somewhat of a disappointment. He went on from being the leader of Arsenal, to being just another player for Barcelona. There’s no more Henry is Arsenal. Rather, it’s Henry and a bunch of other superstars of equal caliber for Barcelona. And that didn’t help Henry, who was accustomed to being the leader of his team for so long. On a personal note, with him divorcing his wife and being apart from his daughter, Henry is struggling to find happiness off the field in Barcelona. On the pitch, he was never-and will never be, for that matter-deployed in his preferred position as the lone striker, and was very often played out of position on the left wing (Ronaldinho’s lost position), or had to watch from the bench as Andres Iniesta filled in with great success. Consequence: Henry has scored only 7 goals in 24 league matches so far, which is hardly anything to cheer about, considering his minimum of 20 goals per season in the English Premier League.

This leaves wonder kid Lionel Messi. It is no secret that whenever Messi is on form, Barcelona are steam-rolling their opponents. But injuries have also partially ruined the Argentinean’s season, with him missing the infamous loss to Real Madrid at Camp Nou on December 23^rd of last year, a match that critics say could have gone Barca’s way had Messi displayed his magic in that match.

But Barcelona’s turn of events is by no definition the attacker’s fault. Even though they hold La Liga’s best defensive record, their back line was visibly shaken and insecure at numerous times, and on many occasions custodian Victor Valdes had to be his side’s hero in order to prevent them from a loss. Let’s take their recent match against Real Betis as an example. Even though he conceded three goals on that night, Valdes was one of Barcelona’s best players, making numerous stops (including a penalty save) to keep his team’s chances of winning alive. As for the men in front of him, they were awful, and were relentlessly outplayed by the Betis attack. Even though Zambrotta had a “good” match, he has never found the form he displayed in the 2006 World Cup, and was nowhere near his best. As for Thuram and Abidal, the Frenchmen were simply, and have been all too often, the weakest link of this Barcelona side. Thuram had a horrible game, and he is now a mirage of the defender that used to terrify strikers in Serie A with Juventus. As for former Lyon-man Abidal, he just could not cope with Odonkor’s quickness along the right flank.

Hope still present

To say that Barcelona have had a disastrous season would seem a bit too much, and too early, for that matter. Even though they sit now in 3^rd place in the table, seven points behind Real Madrid, the league season is pretty much still alive as we have seen the top teams drop many points over the last few weeks. And although the league title looks like it is Madrid’s to lose, Barcelona must never stop fighting on that front.

Realistically, Barcelona’s best chance of success is the Champions league, and with one foot in the semis after a shy 1-0 away win to Schalke , they are on the correct track. And even though he looks to be heading out of the Camp Nou door anyway (if you believe the rumours), winning some silverware is the only way Frank Rijkaard can save himself from getting sacked. The answer is by no means a revolution at Barcelona, as Johan Cruyff has numerously mentioned on several occasions, but a change of mentality. Their squad of 25 is more than capable of being in contention for every competition they are in, but they just need the correct approach to each game.

Whatever Barcelona end up winning this season, one thing is clear: It is evident that a “certain” superstar is no longer welcome in the team, and with a vast array of possible suitors standing in line to sign him (for far less than his €125M buy-out clause), he will have all the chances in the world to relaunch his club career.