Barça fans left 2021 with some hope. After years of slow decline to the end of the Messi era in a traumatic way this summer, the appearance of players such as homegrown players Nico or Gavi; or Abde himself, signed by Ramon Planes this summer, and the arrival of Xavi with the promise of a new Barça to recover the positional game has lit a flame of hope. The partner even seems willing to forgive that Madrid is an ocean of points if steps are taken in the right direction.
The Barça that comes in 2022 sounds good. To begin with, and in an unexpected way, there are players settled in the first team who at the beginning of the course were unknown to the general public like Nico Gavi or Abde, and even Ferran Jutglà. They were not counted on and they have appeared in the culé imagination to the point that, as Xavi acknowledges, they are the ones who are making the difference and are supporting the team. But Barça needed additions and, in the absence of knowing how they will avoid the tight financial control of LaLiga, the signing of Ferran Torres will take Barça to another dimension. The marches of Messi and Griezmann, the Luuk de Jong fiasco, the withdrawal of Kun Agüero and the injuries of Ansu and Braithwaite left Barça’s attack naked. The incorporation of Ferran Torres is not only key on a quantitative level. At the club they expect him to become one of the team leaders in the coming years and in the flag of a new generation together with Pedri and Ansu.
Because those are the other two big names that await Barça in 2022. The Golden Boy, Pedri, He is almost ready to return after having to stop several times in the last part of the year due to his muscular problems, a victim of the excesses of the past year. Ansu also counts the days to reappear in the first days of January. Seeing Pedri, Gavi, Nico, Ansu or Ferran Torres together in an eleven, with sacred cows like Ter Stegen, Piqué, De Jong or Busquets, is cause for optimism at the club, which hopes to definitively straighten its course in the first months of 2022 and, win titles or not, appear at the beginning of the 2022-23 course with the making of a competitive team capable of fighting again for everything.
The photo of the squad improves and, on the bench, hopes are pinned on Xavi, who has had a start with lights and shadows, but who has an ally in the time that they are going to give him and thanks to whom he will have the possibility of implementing that positional game that, he assures, has lost Barça. For this, it has a great advantage. His team is full of young players who are spontaneous and have the right attitude to learn. And, despite having complaints about how the club has been moving away from the line and the historical DNA, it does not stop having a squad full of players raised in La Masia, be they veterans (Piqué, Alba, Busquets, Sergi Roberto) or the aforementioned young people, plus a group of players who are not properly raised in the Barça quarry but who have time to learn all the concepts: Araújo, Abde, Jutglà …
In addition to Ferran and Daniel Alves, who will play a different role from that of the Valencian and who will give some football time and, above all, will fill the dressing room with a winning character, Barça hopes to make some more incorporation in the winter market. One of the most urgent is the one on the right side. Araújo is playing urgently in that hybrid position, and Alves, at 38 years of age, is no longer a defensive guarantee and may suffer up band, down band, at the intensity levels that Xavi asks for. Moroccan Noussair Mazraoui is the top choice if talks between Barça and Ajax for a trade with Dest go down. The first photo of Barça 2022, therefore, allows the member to be relatively optimistic: more players, more talent, more adaptation. Reconstruction is underway. Or so it seems.