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We thought Barcelona, the team who had won everything, would continue to haunt Europe’s elite. That Spain’s World Cup and Euro Cup winning players and, of course, the great Lionel Messi would be unstoppable for years to come.
Yet Bayern Munich destroyed Barcelona 4-0 at Allianz arena and Chelsea, Celtic, Milan and Real Madrid have decimated Barcelona of late.
The match against Deportivo saw Barca winning 5-4 away with a sensational hat trick by Messi, earlier this season buut that match was the beginning of Barca’s downfall.
Conceding goals became their hobby and the worst match of the season, besides the recent 0-4 loss to Bayern, came against Real Madrid, who defeated them 3-1 at Camp Nou, knocking them out of the Copa Del Rey.
So why did Barcelona become prone to concede goals and lose away from home? The answer is obvious. The governance of a good manager was missing and so was the best of Blaugrana’s last line.
Young Jordi Alba tried his best and came out on top most of the times but Gerard Pique and Javier Mascherano were ordinary throughout the season. Daniel Alves was rumored to leave the club and lacked focus in some games.
Victor Valdes simply lost it. The great goalkeeper, other than making good one-on-one saves, was exposed. Teams came and robbed Barcelona.
Celtic troubled them at Camp Nou for 90 minutes until Alba scored in the stoppage time. AC Milan got two past them in San Siro. Paris Saint-Germain were knocked out by Barcelona but refused to lose in 180 minutes, sadly losing on away goals.
The season was all about Lionel Messi, who is currently Europe’s top scorer with 57 goals (43 in the league).
The squad lacked depth and the second top scorer for Barcelona this season, Cesc Fabregas, hasn’t touched 20 goals. If Messi was to leave the team, they would have difficulty getting past teams like Valencia, Atletico Madrid and Malaga or Real Sociedad in their own league.
The responsibility of guiding a great team rests in the hand of management and a side like Barcelona, without the services of Pep Guardiola, had a lot of problems is Europe. Tito Vilanova couldn’t frame proper tactics and Europe became a bad place to play football.
From Celtic to Bayern Munich, teams enjoyed scoring past Barcelona. Real Madrid gave Barcelona a taste of its own medicine at Camp Nou in the second leg of Copa Del Rey, taming them 3-1. Bayern decimated them 4-0 some days ago, reminding them their time at top is over.
The solution? Barcelona needs strong defenders, better improvised playmakers and a world class goal keeper. They need Pep back but, as it’s impossible, the former things should be taken into consideration only.
The Catalans will end this season with the league title and Messi might end up receiving his fifth straight Ballon d’Or but in order to become the best in the world once again, they need to reconstruct their team.
For now, Barcelona is a quality team capable of producing titles but incapable of beating teams like Real Madrid, Bayern Munich or even Juventus.
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