4 - Ronald Araújo

Temptation

Well-known member
Bit hard to make a top3 CB list when teams play with 2 or 3 starting each.

World class for me broadly means a player who is good enough to compete at the top levels of the sport in his position. There can be as many as 100 or as many as 1 in any given position, it depends what the depth of talent is there and what the difference is between the best players. If there are 20 or so roughly even ability CBs, for example, applying an arbitrary top 3 or top5 ranking wouldnt represent that well.
A World Class player should be a rare commodity by definition. Firstly, let's forget all the bias and try to assess this:


Your definition just makes it way too easy to be world class. You are making the phrase sound too ordinary. It should be ridiculously tough to be a proper World class player.


To be world class, you should be able to get into a hypothetical World 11 team's full, extended squad. A full squad has 6 CBs.


There should be 6/7 CBs in the world class category at any given time.


If you include 10 players from one position, that would mean there are around 100 World Class players overall in the world currently, which is laughable and extremely underwhelming. I'll never be comfortable calling the likes of Gabriel Jesus and Marcus Rashford world class.


Be reasonable and name 6 or 7 CBs you consider World Class. The rest are sub-world class/quality players just below that elite list. Mean no disrespect to them whatsoever.
 

topt

Senior Member
We can't also judge him on one tackle.

If we can get for free decent CB, I would sell Araujo just because of money.

Selling Araujo for 85-90mil and getting Nico Williams and lets say Zubimendi/Kimmich for combined fee of 100mil is not worst thing ( I don't like this CDMs hut they are only we are linked with).

I think getting CB is much easier then finding CDM and LW.
where do you guys get this numbers, he he
 

Fati_Future_BallonDor

Well-known member
Araujo is not prime Virgil but a very good defender, his performance in first leg was excellent. He needs more calmness but if we sell him we will have a big hole in our defence, dont think we will find an another good CB quickly. A good DM + Cubarsi + Araujo sounds very promising :thinking:
 

jamrock

Senior Member
A World Class player should be a rare commodity by definition. Firstly, let's forget all the bias and try to assess this:


Your definition just makes it way too easy to be world class. You are making the phrase sound too ordinary. It should be ridiculously tough to be a proper World class player.


To be world class, you should be able to get into a hypothetical World 11 team's full, extended squad. A full squad has 6 CBs.


There should be 6/7 CBs in the world class category at any given time.


If you include 10 players from one position, that would mean there are around 100 World Class players overall in the world currently, which is laughable and extremely underwhelming. I'll never be comfortable calling the likes of Gabriel Jesus and Marcus Rashford world class.


Be reasonable and name 6 or 7 CBs you consider World Class. The rest are sub-world class/quality players just below that elite list. Mean no disrespect to them whatsoever.c

Considering you have roughly 2000, players in the top 5 leagues in the world, if 100 is world class that's 0.5% of those players, extend it out to even more leagues considering how popular football is,we get into a even more ridiculous #.

So 100 sounds like a lot, but it's not.

#maths.
 

behindbrowneyes

Well-known member
He made a mistake and the referee gratefully took the opportunity to weaken Barca.
Of course, in hindsight Araujo should have let him run and MAtS would have had a decent chance to stop them from scoring.

It hurts since this one scene has changed the whole game in PSG's direction but we shouldn’t sell him for one mistake when Barca didn't make the QF for years. I'm still sure Barca would be in the Semis if it wasn't for that red card, but that's football.
 

serghei

Senior Member
Bit hard to make a top3 CB list when teams play with 2 or 3 starting each.

World class for me broadly means a player who is good enough to compete at the top levels of the sport in his position. There can be as many as 100 or as many as 1 in any given position, it depends what the depth of talent is there and what the difference is between the best players. If there are 20 or so roughly even ability CBs, for example, applying an arbitrary top 3 or top5 ranking wouldnt represent that well.

A player that is flop of the match in the biggest game of his club in the last 2-3 years can't be world class at the moment. In the future, if he learns from it, yeah, he can, need to wait and see.

Araujo is like Gabriel Magalhaes. Can be great in time, but a lot to improve until he gets to the level of likes of Van Dijk, rudiger and 3-4 others. Makes errors the best CBs simply don't make.
 
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L3v1s

Active member
Love you, Ronald, but what you did is unforgivable. It cost us the easiest Champions League ever.
I agree that his red card is the main reason we lost this tie, but the easiest Champions League was in 2019. If the wheelchair snake scored that chance in the first leg against Liverpool, we would've played fucking Tottenham in the final. This year it wasnt easy at all to win it considering our shit football that we played for half a year, especially against the likes of City. We also lost the last 3 clasicos against Real(two of them being hard spankings) so I wouldn't be confident on a Clasico final either.
 

serghei

Senior Member
Bit hard to make a top3 CB list when teams play with 2 or 3 starting each.

World class for me broadly means a player who is good enough to compete at the top levels of the sport in his position. There can be as many as 100 or as many as 1 in any given position, it depends what the depth of talent is there and what the difference is between the best players. If there are 20 or so roughly even ability CBs, for example, applying an arbitrary top 3 or top5 ranking wouldnt represent that well.

If you mean CB pairs, Rudiger - Militao easily. 2 top class CBs.
 

Loki

Well-known member
Love you, Ronald, but what you did is unforgivable. It cost us the easiest Champions League ever.
Don't forget the money. The club missed out on a huge payday going into the final + hyped fans buying overpriced kits.
It wasn't the easiest CL ever and I doubt we would have won the final, neither against Bayern, nor against Madrid. But I agree, this error is unforgivable. Araujo is not some talent, he is 25 years old with ton of experience. His mind had to be stronger in this situation than his impulse to be the hero once again. I really hope he learned out of it. If not, it's better to sell him. It doesn't matter how good he is, if he'll be a risk in such games going forward.
 

serghei

Senior Member
We will see what he cost us depending on how soon we get this close to a CL final. It can be next season, or it can be in 2032.
 

serghei

Senior Member
One thing is for sure, the posters that easily forgive this error are the same ones that say our squad is great already and jump at the manager's throat with every chance they get.

When it was time for the key players of this squad to prove themselves and their quality AT THIS MOMENT, they fell on their bum.
 

jamrock

Senior Member
If you mean CB pairs, Rudiger - Militao easily. 2 top class CBs.
You do understand rudiger can't get on the field when Alaba is fit though right? And he was a a clown at the world cup.

Sometimes we get too caught in the moment.

What Araujo did in the first leg matches or exceeds what rudiger did from a defending prospective against city.
 

DonAK

President of FC Barcelona
Just have to be smarter on the ball as most teams are going to cut off passing lanes to Cubarsi and our CDM and make him play that pass.
Just keep it simple. He's just not that guy even if he'll play a great pass here and there.
 

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