Even before Pep it was Louis Van Gaal with his (hilarious, yet true) "nunca positivo, siempre negativo" press conference years earlier.

As did Cruyff's endgame.

great, say the same thing as xavi dit. lmao

@@Omnomsam True!

First of all wtf is this essay… go touch some grass… secondly Barca’s playing style is fine we just need confidence and fight in the team

brother don’t listen to this guy, i agree with almost all points you made and it’s good that you voice this!

I agree with your evaluations about this season but I have major disagreements about how you characterize Xavi, Valverde, and Setien (1) Xaviball is NOT a typical or archaic form of Tiki-taka. It is an evolved form of it, and pretty good one at that. The problem isn't with the style, just look at last season. He won la liga (by 10+ pts), won the supercopa (beating RM 3-1 in the process), and we had a historically great defense. I will concede that a big part of that defense was Ter Stegen and Busquets, HOWEVER, the scheme that Xavi made, along with the work of our back 4 was a major part as well. The reason we got knocked out of champions league was because of 4 main reasons IMO: (A) MAJOR injuries to our back four, (B) A condensed champions league group stage in preparation for the WC (this exacerbated the effects of injuries), (C) we were in the group of death with inter (who made it to the final) and bayern (who gave City a run for their money), and (D) horrible calls by the refs (ex. the dumfries handball denied against inter, and the dembele penalty denied against bayern). I give Xavi less of a pass for loss to man utd in Europa league, but an injury to pedri (our foremost creative midfielder) makes it a bit more understandable. I agree that the loss of Busquets, ter stegen, and gavi have contributed to the lackluster defensive performances that we've seen this season. HOWEVER, another big reason for our poor form is just simply poor finishing. Its not a particularly satisfying reason but its nonetheless true. A coaches job offensively is to facilitate chance creation. Finishing those chances is up to the players. Barca have one of the HIGHEST xG values in Europe, but we massively under perform it. Lewandowski, Ferran, and Raphinha are just failing to finish chances that they should be finishing. No coach in the world can fix this. (2) Setien's tenure was doomed from the start. The man took over midseason for Valverde, during the middle of the COVID pandemic. The senior players in the team would NOT listen to Setien or his coaching staff. Infamously there was a rebellion in the team against him. He zero time or opportunity to even implement a coherent footballing philosophy. The failures of his tenure were not because of "tiki-taka" philosophy. I personally feel bad for Setien because he was handed a flaming pile of garbage and told to make gold. The Bayern collapse was just the exclamation point at the end of a horrible couple of years at Barca. (3) Valverde's tenure was HORRIBLE. Watching his team play was horrendous. Even as we won games, I stopped watching because of how dogshit the play was. I am not someone who holds to the standard of "perfect tiki-taka excellence". I really liked the team under Enrique, despite their departure from usual tiki-taka. All Valverde's plan boiled down to was: Step 1 - Give the ball to Messi, Step 2 - Pray. Messi DRAGGED that team to la liga victories in spite of Valverde's complete incompetence. The team stopped playing like a team, instead opting to let Messi try and do everything. He rode Messi the entire time, creating a toxic culture where "all passes lead to Messi". It worked in La liga, because RM was weak and there was no competition. In the champions league, all the inadequacies were exposed. Those consecutive Champions League COLLAPSES (Roma, Liverpool) were down to his inadequacies as a manager. The excuses I have for Xavi's and Setien's failures do NOT exist for Valverde. Valverde's over-reliance on Messi was NOT a virtue, it was a vice, and I have ZERO regrets about booting that bum from the job. If we should scrap our core barcelona identity in favor of more practical approach, would you be in favor of a manager like Mourinho coming in? If winning the league means we have to stoop to football terrorism, then I would rather not win the league tbh. As barca fans we can and should strive for more than that. That style and dominance during the Pep Era is the reason I became a barca fan, and I would hope that we can continue that style at least in some form. I totally agree with you about the fanbase having zero patience. Along with that, they have memories of goldfish. I am under the impression that most people who talk about barca don't even watch the fucking games, considering how trash most of the online discourse around barca is. The truth is that as fans and laypeople we don't know enough about football or tactics to even mount substantive critiques of coaches. The best we can do is gesture vaguely at certain aspects of the game without any real knowledge. Coaches in general have played and studied football all of their lives in high stakes professional settings. In lieu of any real analysis, football fans grasp at the only thing they can turn their frustrations at: the coach. This is ultimately why coaches get treated unfairly across the board. Specifically at barca, there is a standard and style of play that is expected along with winning. The result is that winning with style leads to greater bragging rights, but losing with style gives no credit. Winning without style also garners no credit. Real Madrid have no such standard of play, so when they edge out last second wins after playing like shit for 80 mins, their fans celebrate rather criticize their team.

@@anoojnathan7902 Great analysis brother. But I'd like to address some points. You referred to Xavi-ball as an evolved form of tiki-taka and I agree. My point about not accepting an evolution was not about Xavi but about some of our toxic media and fan pages that unfavourably compare Xavi-ball with prime Barca Pep-ball without considering the context. Even Xavi had previously said that comparisons with Pep were weighing him down. Xavi's system was great last season. All the players contributed to the success. But I specially highlighted the role of Ter Stegen, Busquets and the defence since we won so many league matches with 1-0 margins last season. You are absolutely correct when you point out that our strikers are misfiring. I was referring to this and individual defensive errors when I was saying that individual errors are hurting us. But I'm glad that you further elaborated. You are spot on about Setien being handed a poisoned chalice and him not having control of the dressing room. Maybe that's why Barca needs a coach whom the players will respect and blindly follow. This is not only limited to Barca. All top teams require managers with strong personalities who can manage the big egos. It's a big reason why David Moyes failed after Sir Alex Ferguson at Man United. Rio Ferdinand has openly said how Moyes wasn't yet ready for the job. Contrast this with Real Madrid and Zidane. He won 3 champions league and 2 league titles there not only because of world class players. He commanded a certain degree of respect from the players owing to his legendary status as a player. The players were more willing to put their faith in him. This factor also helped Pep Guardiola and Xavi when they took the managerial job at Barca. Regarding Valverde, I have a different opinion. While I completely agree that he bears responsibility for the Roma collapse, I feel that the players aren't criticized enough for the Liverpool one. There was a sense of arrogance before the match and once Barca started conceding, the players seemed to have lost confidence. Suarez later admitted that the Roma collapse came into their minds. The manager does bear responsibility for this but ultimately, he's not the one playing on the pitch. I also feel that our Champions league woes, beginning in Juventus, started the moment we pulled off the remontada against PSG. This gave a false sense of security and cockiness that we could pull off anything. Real Madrid manage to turn around matches not just because they believe in themselves but also because they give their all until the last minute. Now let's address the footballing style at present. If Barca had huge sums of cash to bring in quality players, I'd be demanding silky, smooth football. But the reality is that we have a limited pool of players to buy or pick from. This is why Xavi should be appreciated for what he managed to achieve last season. I'm not advocating for a park-the-bus style that Mourinho popularized. What I'm saying is that we might have to find a spot between silky and pragmatic football to win titles and improve our finances. Success breeds success at clubs and at this point in time, we cannot afford to be trophyless. When a club fails to win a major title for a long time, a culture of accepting second best can set in like at Man United. Mourinho described it as football heritage. If we manage to consistently win and improve our economic side, then we should demand opera quality football. Mourinho would not be a good fit at Barca. I'm thinking about someone in the vein of Carlo Ancelotti. This approach may help in the short term. But if we don't wish to accept boring football, then we must have the patience for a long term project. Talking about the online toxicity surrounding Barca, most of these fan pages get more engagement when they talk trash about the coach and the club. Just look at the pages and KZfaq channels of fans from Arsenal and Manchester United. They thrive when the club is losing. The pressure at Barca is different from any other club. I envy Man City fans; they have managed to keep hold of an era defining manager like Pep Guardiola for 8 seasons.

He didn't really watch any of the tournaments

Especially Afcon @@akunwanneprosper7016

wdym bro! this channel is bot free..

Why do you want to or care about being first? Serious question

You're first in our eyes.

What’s the point for bots posting on here, I don’t get it

69 likes

Because they're bots, that's how.

In 2019, Madagascar had almost the same population as Iceland, the country that had its own insane run in Euro 2016, but somehow reached the quarterfinals after being group winners ahead of Nigeria and beating DR Congo on penalties.

Maybe getting a budget of 3.5m with 9 injured players and having no cdm with the expectations of treble affected the team 😮

Because it's more than a club, it has a whole identity behind it, and taken to the extremes, it will devour you.

@@RuiLuz every club has an identity, what do you mean?

​@@joostverra9130 by identity it means the Catalan freedom. The fans on internet effect the decisions of a football club but it's still nothing compared to local fans. Barca fans already downplayed the ability of Pep and Enquire so it's obvious they'll get mad over a trophyless season after winning super cup and league last year

@@utkarshbarca So you mean to say, they lost their identity as "Underdogs"; I mean, under the Franco Regime, Real Madrid was the favoured Club and Barca and to crawl to the top. Now they view it as thier "birth right" to be on top; or to put it in other words, they became toxic.

​@@DaroriDerEinzigewhat nonsense are you spewing?

I like South Africa’s flag more.

🇦🇴🇿🇦

Malawi 🇲🇼

Didn’t beat sociedad 😂😂 Vaffanculo…

Yeah, right now, they look very tough to beat. But let's see what will happen on the 4th.

@@Jg-jg6jb It's the opposite, Real Sociedad couldn't beat Inter's B team

Lol