“This is very hard.” The phrase of Marc-André Ter Stegen well symbolizes how he lives Barça these days. With pain. And where. And it is in the well. A well whose bottom has probably not been seen yet. Juve's 0-3, a continuation of Lisbon 2-8 against Bayern, 4-0 in Liverpool, 3-0 in Rome …, is the best evidence that this Barça is a very injured team. Football and psychologically. In an endless valley. Barça was not healed in the Champions League despite the triumphs in Kiev and Budapest. On the contrary, it reconfirmed the bad feelings of Cadiz. As a club, it is experiencing a very delicate economic and institutional situation. As a team, it's like Area 51, in the middle of nowhere.
The sporting situation of Barça is very delicate. Second in the Champions League, now a coconut awaits him in the second round. Maybe that's the least of it. LaLiga, with four defeats in ten games, is virtually lost. Furthermore, it does not even seem clear that Barça will be among the top four, which would shake the economic foundations of the club … But if you put the scalpel, the matter goes to more. Koeman, respected figure upon arrival, finds no answers to this permanent team earthquake. Despite the fact that, apparently, in his analyzes he has diagnosed the problems of the team, the players do not respond to him. And the chicken coop begins to shake. To the point that, As SER Catalunya announced on Tuesday, some players already reproach him for a lack of flexibility in the system.
There are leaks, information and performance, everywhere. Y misfortunes, such as the injuries of Piqué and Ansu Fati, which are not just any two casualties on a symbolic level. Piqué is one of the few leaders that Barça had left on the pitch. A cowardly team, with little blood. Except in days where it was absolutely blocked as in AnfieldPiqué is one of the few who has raised his voice on the pitch and who has wanted to lift the spirits of the troops when Barça has done badly. Ansu was the new illusion of the barcelonismo. The new smile. The push and the goal. The image of the Barça of the future. That has also been lost by Barça.
Without leaders on the pitch, without Koeman finding answers, on the pitch everything ends again in Messi, who will end 2020 with half the goals he scored in 2019. Messi's career deserves a reverential respect that, however, should not hide an insurmountable debate, which is whether it conditions the team too much and is minimizing teammates who, when he is not around, perform better. But that Messi is not the one from five years ago should be overcome. The question that the player must face is that of the possibility of readapting to continue being useful and a winner in the coming years. It doesn't seem easy either. Messi intervened 100 times in the game against Juventus, a good explanation of what Barça became. 77 good passes, 23 losses, seven shots on goal. Messicentrismo no longer wins games, but neither does anyone rebel. And nobody tries to get Messi to transform himself to continue being important at Barça. Maybe he doesn't want it either because the decision has already been made.
And there is more. Players who should be capital in the renewal of Barça, like De Jong (which deserves a separate chapter), Lenglet or Griezmann have not made the leap in quality. And even the reliable ones, like Ter Stegen, begin to fail. Doubts come from the young people (Mingueza, Araújo, Dest, Trincao), from the signings (Pjanic) and of players without the necessary hierarchy to be at Barça (Braithwaite, Junior) or those who have already passed the time, such as Umtiti.
All this, in the middle of a power vacuum. With the president of the management committee announcing that the players will not get paid in January. With the candidates saying with small mouths that they want Messi to continue, but specifying that not at any price. Not to mention what they slip behind the scenes. With those same aspirants without finishing believing in Koeman. Not in the template. He is so stuck in the well at Barça that catharsis can be imagined one day closer. It is the only optimistic way to look at a leaky club. “Very hard”, as Ter Stegen says.