On the improvements from Pep’s to Tito’s Barca

Barca have just finished the first half of their season, with an astounding 18-1-0 record. Someone asked what had changed between last year’s struggles and this year’s utter dominance. Here were a couple thoughts I had:

• Jordi Alba has helped supplement or substitute for a declining Dani Alves. He’s ridiculously good, has enough speed and stamina to cover an entire wing by himself – which allows us to play Iniesta on the left rather than a true winger.
• Increased verticality. Barca still keep possession, but look for a forward pass far more frequently and quickly. Much of what Barca lacked last season was a final touch, too often we just passed around the box – verticality seems to be a direct response to that, and has made us a goalscoring machine. The consequence is a vulnerable defense, but Busquets has taken on much of the burden and is one of the best performers this season. Xavi has also started to help out more defensively. The two of them combine to let us keep possession.
• Pique has returned to form, and Puyol has returned from injury (for now). We desperately missed our reliable CBs at the end of last season and the beginning of this one.
• Fabregas has been incredible, combination of his individual improvement and the change in system. The increased verticality suits him very well, but he’s also learned to play a deeper midfield role – previously the problem had been that he liked to play in a False 9-ish space with Messi. Now he’s incredibly versatile – he can play with Xavi, go out left to combine with Iniesta (which he did repeatedly today), or combines well with Messi.
• Xavi is playing amazingly despite his age, working hard, scoring goals, and generally kicking ass.
• Adriano is also having the season of his life, 6 goals.
• Quite simply, Iniesta and Messi are both having the best years of their lives. When you have two of the best three players in the world performing at the top of their game, you’re gonna do well.
• Hunger. This year Barca has what Madrid had last season, a will to win no matter what that stems largely from last season’s failures. Early in the fall, we won a lot, but won unconvincingly – we conceded goals and always had to come back to score late winners, but the team never doubted and always came up with a way. The flip side is a sort of humility – even when we’re winning comfortably, they want to score more goals, they won’t sit on their laurels. There was one game where we were 5-0 up in the 90th minute, and Pique charged out of the back at full sprint to lead a ridiculous counterattack with Messi and Pedro that nearly ended in a sixth goal. We never saw that last season.

Okay, this didn’t end up being that short. Basically, Tito’s Barca is versatile and hungry. They lost last season, and they were told that was because they were too predictable, they couldn’t adapt. Well this year they’ve adapted: they simply have too many weapons for opponents to handle, and a willingness to use them. A multitude of formations – tiki-taka, wing play, low crosses into the box, long balls over the top, false wingers, false 9s. A multitude of top-notch, in-form, hardworking players: Pique, Adriano, Alba, Busquets, Cesc, Xavi, Iniesta, and Messi are all having maybe their best seasons ever. Finally, we have depth, which we lacked last season, and have always lacked, really: Montoya and Alves are both fantastic subs, Song is coming along, Thiago is amazing, Mascherano is a highly competent third-choice CB, Tello, Alexis, Pedro, and Villa are all competing for one or two wing spots. The second string, if you can call them that, are all fantastic players – more importantly, they are playing as such, despite infrequent playtime, which allows for more squad rotation as the season gets tougher.

Here’s hoping the team continues to perform at this incredible level. If they do, other teams don’t stand a chance.

Two short pieces

I wrote these for an application to Totalbarca. If they seem a little random, it’s because they were exercises assigned to me, not subject material I picked. But they turned out pretty well, i thought!

On Jordi Roura and Vilanova, following Valladolid

After Sunday’s 3-1 victory over Valladolid, Jordi Roura stood at the microphone in place of the ailing Tito Vilanova for the post-match press conference.  Interestingly, Roura’s situation parallels Vilanova’s own journey this year—like Roura, Tito was asked to step up from assistant to head coach in troubling circumstances, following Pep Guardiola’s resignation in April.

Tito has handled his debut season with aplomb and humility, deflecting the inevitable comparisons and playing down his record-breaking start to the season.  Most remarkably, despite the uncertainty surrounding the club in the wake of the departure of the most successful coach in Barcelona’s history, Tito has consistently kept the team’s focus on training, preparing for the next game, always moving forward.

Like Vilanova, Roura has stepped up to the challenge, winning his first match comfortably and humbly—as he remarked, “Just another game.”  The team continued as they have done all season, and despite a brief moment of concern when Valladolid pulled a goal back at 2-1, the players stayed focused and got the result.

Reflecting on the start to the season, Roura emphasized the overwhelming positives: “We closed out the year on an extraordinary athletic level, and, if we include the good news on Vilanova, then we certainly have cause to be happy…the year could not have gone better.”  Roura described the team’s joyful reaction at hearing of Vilanova’s hospital release following surgery, conveying an optimism that is emblematic of the reinvigorated spirit Tito Vilanova has brought to Barcelona this season.  Anims Tito.

Match preview for UCL Round of 16 against Milan

On February 20, Barcelona will travel to the San Siro to play AC Milan in the first leg of the Champions League Round of 16.  This will be a familiar matchup, as the two clubs met four times last season, in the group stage and the quarter-finals.  In those meetings, Barcelona drew twice, won twice, and advanced to the semi-final, but it was far closer than many expected.  Led by superstars Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, supported by wily veterans Clarence Seedorf and Alessandro Nesta, Milan sat deep, defended well, and counterattacked with long balls over the Barcelona backline.

But all four of those players have since departed the San Siro, forcing Milan to adapt its playing style as well as its lineup.  Milan has suffered in their absence, falling to seventh in the Serie A and advancing in the CL with an unconvincing eight points.  However, after defeating Juventus in late November, Milan went on a four-game winning streak domestically, and Massimiliano Allegri seems to have abandoned last year’s narrow 4-3-1-2, settling on a wider, more fluid 4-3-3.

Led by 20-year-old phenomenon and league top scorer Stephan El Shaarawy, Milan have cohered and developed into a younger, faster, attacking team.  However, the rest of the attack might be uncertain, as one or both of forwards Robinho and Pato are widely rumored to be departing for Brazil in January.  Captain Riccardo Montolivo, who was instrumental in shutting down Juventus, leads a hard-working, inventive midfield.  Nocerino and Boateng (both goalscorers against Barcelona last season) have performed well going forward, but will likely be called to try to disrupt Barcelona’s playmakers—as Milan’s defense has been their weakest point this season, conceding 26 goals in 18 games.  Ultimately, this free-scoring Barcelona side should prevail, but Milan will offer an exciting matchup.

Thanks for reading, feedback always appreciated!

Barcelona-Bilbao: The Humility and Hunger of Tito’s Barca

Looking at Barca’s easy dominance over the last two weeks, one could have forgiven Tito’s squad for going into the Bilbao game with just a hint of holiday drowsiness and complacency.  Since the limp, stale attacking of the 2-1 defeat to Celtic and the sloppy defending of the 4-2 win over Zaragoza, Barcelona have burst into even more inspired form.  Messi thrashed Zaragoza single-handedly, then went to frozen Moscow and scored a brace in a surprisingly smooth 3-0 win.  Then we went to Levante—the same Levante that cut Ronaldo’s eye and battled Madrid through 90 minutes of pouring rain—only for Andres to put on a jaw-dropping performance, creating three and scoring one in a 4-0 clinic.

11 points clear of our hated rivals.  Tied for the best start in the history of La Liga.  First place clinched in our CL group, through to the next round of Copa del Rey.  Two players nominated for the Ballon D’or, both in the form of their lives, one of them rapidly closing in on yet another goalscoring record that has stood untouched for 40 years.  Next up: Bilbao at the Camp Nou, a fixture we’ve won for the last eight years against a team whose fortunes have fallen dramatically in the past four months.  Knowing that whatever happens, by the end of the night one of two title contenders will have dropped points.  All setup for us to coast to a victory.

With characteristic pragmatism, Tito sent out his first-choice lineup: a four-man midfield featuring arguably the four best passers in the entire world, supplemented by the speedy linkup play of Pedro at his exclamation-mark best and spearheaded by the indescribable Messi.  One might have expected this Barca to pass Athletic into submission, dancing little one-two triangles across the field and baffling the Basques’ brave attempts to man-mark, before eventually deciding it might be time to score a goal or two and walking home victorious.

Instead, the league leaders were as vicious as they’ve been all season.  It started with Pique, a scrappy corner followed by a casual finish.  It also ended with Pique, whose bombing run forward initiated a brutal counterattack: three direct, incisive passes between Pique, Messi, and Pedro from the half-way line to the 6-yard box, followed by a cutback to Messi and a looping header over the bar.  The familiar laughing smiles exchanged afterward could not disguise the ferocity of an attack that would not have looked out of place at the Bernabeu last season.

Which is not to say that our beloved blaugrana have begun to play like the merengues.  But what Tito’s Barca seem to share with last season’s champions is an insatiable hunger—the hunger that keeps the players relentlessly pushing towards goal even in the ninetieth minute, be it for the umpteenth comeback of the season or the sixth goal on top of a 5-1 drubbing.  Barca have not forgotten how to play tiki-taka, their consistently incredible possession and passing stats more than prove that.  On Saturday, Xavi and Iniesta contented themselves with a mere 56% of the ball—but they were simply ruthless in their distribution of it.  Each earned himself an assist with a perfect defense-splitting pass, each was unafraid to test the keeper with a shot when given space.  Just another day for Xaviesta, nothing unusual to see here.

Unless you consider that Iniesta has started only seven games this season, often rested in favor of the player thriving most under Tito, Cesc Fabregas—yet Andres continues to adapt, linking up brilliantly with the former Gunner as he did for the fourth goal against Levante.  Or that Xavi is almost 33 years old, and by all accounts should be conserving his energy and playing a calmer, metronomic role in Barcelona’s midfield—and instead runs more than he did all last season, harries opponents for the ball, and shoots from outside the box.  Yet neither of these Spanish legends complains if they are rested.  The team above all else, they say.  If Fabregas is the poster child for Tito’s more direct tactics, Xavi and Iniesta continue to embody the twin traits of this Barca’s character: humility and hunger

Humility and hunger are what have characterized this squad’s transition from Pep to Tito.  Even as new arrivals Cesc and Jordi Alba flourish under the more direct style, Andres and Adriano have reacted to this new-found competition by adapting, upping their game and developing incredible chemistry with the new boys.  Older players like Xavi and Villa might have found themselves confused and alienated as the rules for Tito’s midfielders and wingers have subtly changed, but instead they have approached their new roles with the determination of young bucks and the professionalism of veterans.  And it is humility and hunger that have allowed the most admired team in world football with the most successful start in Liga history to keep pushing for a goal 90 minutes into a well-won game.

So this holiday season, what do you get for the team that has everything? The team that has won every trophy there is to win, and still receives adoring accolades from opponents and critics on the rare occasions that they lose?  The team that lost the league last season for the first time in four years, yet now watches bemused as their hated rivals flounder in third place?  The team that despite an injury list littered with defenders remains undefeated in La Liga?

Listen to any post-match press conference, and Tito will tell you, in his quiet, professorial manner: just three more points, please.