Luis Enrique

F

FlaFCB

Guest
I would be careful though with twitter quotes like that. I checked the conference just now and it's not as bad as it seems.

I saw the video too. It's summarized there, he also praised Pique "the player", but he shouldn't had done it. The same way he didn't criticize aduriz.
 

Barcaman

Administrator
Staff member
This is also one of the hardest 1st half schedules we've ever had since I've started watching Barca. In those conditions we payed a great price for those wasted points to Alaves and Malaga. And then add all the bad luck and the possibly corrupt referees and you get pur current situation. And the clasico which we should have won. Not all of it is down to our poor form and Lucho.

I blame Lucho for going overboard with rotations too early which costed us valuable points, points that we absolutely needed considering the schedule.

Last season we had much tougher first part of the season.
 

serghei

Senior Member
Last season we had much tougher first part of the season.

Don't think so. We didn't play away to Villareal, we didn't play away to Sociedad, we didn't play on Mestalla. All 3 tough away games that we lost 7/9 points in, but in the 2nd part of the season (2-2, 1-1, 0-1). The derby with Madrid is not important where it takes place. If anything, Madrid has more problems on Bernabeu against us, than on Camp Nou, if we look at recent years.
 

Raketa10

Senior Member
Don't think so. We didn't play away to Villareal, we didn't play away to Sociedad, we didn't play on Mestalla. All 3 tough away games that we lost 7/9 points in, but in the 2nd part of the season (2-2, 1-1, 0-1). The derby with Madrid is not important where it takes place. If anything, Madrid has more problems on Bernabeu against us, than on Camp Nou, if we look at recent years.

Since Mestalla is real fortres this year :lol:
 

Neymessi

Active member
"He won". No, he didn't. The team did, and honestly, it wasn't because of him. Licho is a good fitness coach, but he is bad tactically. And the worst point for me isn't a possible trophyless season, but seeing this team, that on paper should be good, playing so badly. Same mistakes done every week. Everything Barça always took pride in, out the window and the new "no midfield" tactic.

He had time and money to sign players, spent a lot, and we now have arda, gomes, denis, paco, vidal. I don't care about atletico, only Barça. What they do, or don't, don't really interest me. And sure, ups and downs are part of football, but playing this badly for a year isn't something to overlook. We almost lost the league last season, after being 10 points clear. We were bailed on individual brilliance, not team play. If we were at least playing somewhat well, and not getting the results, I wouldn't be this mad.

If you read my post again you will see I said he wasn't the main reason. But then how did we play so good under him in certain periods? Why didn't we sack him when we were winning the treble coz he wasn't the reason for it? It just happens in football and hence the atletico example who have no change in coach,players,tactics etc but are way worse than usual.

How do we know the next coach will not go through bad phases like these? We won a treble and a double consecutively with lucho. No fucking way he gets the sack this season and that too when the season isn't even over yet. That would be classless as fuck and rightly so and I would never be able to criticise RM for their classlessness.

Suarez has been shit, neymar has been shit, midfield has been shit, our signing have been shit and I can safely say tactics alone aren't the reason. We had to be really really bad for a year which we simply weren't that would have made sense for him to step down.

Even after all this I would say yes to sacking enrique given that the next coach would definitely improve us. How can anyone be sure the next guy is that good? You can throw around names like get him, get that but it will always be extremely risky and not a good enough reason for lucho with such an amazing tenure to step down.
 

serghei

Senior Member
I agree [MENTION=16494]Neymessi[/MENTION], very good post. Except that I wouldn't fire Lucho until I am absolutely sure he doesn't have what it takes to fix what's missing now. To me, Lucho really proved me wrong in 2014-15, and people can say whatever they want to take away his credit, the thing is most of us wanted him fired that season after some bumpy several months and he and the team brought us back to being the best in the world.

We really do neeed to give him full credit now. Even if he takes dumb decisions sometimes, which he clearly does. It's about our image as a club and about sticking with our own people, not only when things are nice and dandy, but in tougher times as well. Last season we were close to lose the title, but we regrouped, and didn't concede a single goal in the last 5-6 games. Even this season there are good signs, since we expected to be beaten by Madrid, and yet we were unlucky not to beat them after we shut them down with relative ease.

We did the same mistake with Alves and now we're paying the price. We should have stuck with him even when he wasn't playing that well, because as it turned out, you never know when world class players can find some motivation again and rise back to the top. It's the same with the team. You never know when they will get the fire back and deliver a Champions League. Maybe this season, why not?

There will soon come a time when as Barcelona fans we'll need to get used to a lower level of football and consider that as the norm. There will be less tragedies when we draw or lose a tough game, and more celebrations when we win. And getting so angry so fast when things are maybe not great, but still a long long way from being terrible, is pretty tiring. Barca fans should learn to be more optimistic imo.
 
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BBZ8800

Senior Member
Of course Lucho is a good manager. That is not even in consideration. He is not a great manager, and that's a different story alltogether.

Madrid has had so many problems as well with their football. Only beat Gijon because an idiot skied his penalty. Barely beat Deportivo at home in the dying seconds, barely took an underserved point in the clasico, again, in the last seconds. Barely beat Bilbao with a late goal after Inaki missed a lot of great chances. Barely beat Celta at home as well. Ended up 2nd in their CL group, and received 3 goals from a CL debutant. The difference is they got the results, and we didn't. But hey, if you think Real is great and we are shit, fine.

I saw them in the clasico, and people said they will beat us badly. Guess what, they couldn't have been happier to get a point.

Serghei, you can't look at football that way, sorry, it is childish.

You can't say that more or less every RM's win is a pure luck, ref's help or idiotism from their opponents, while everything regarding us is a bad luck, only individual mistakes, refs hating on us, tough schedule etc.

Didn't we won against Valencia with a penalty in the 93 minute?
Didn't we save a point against Villareal from a free kick in what 85th or 90th minute etc?
With the same logic which you applied for a RM, we were also lucky with some results and we should had even less points...
I won't say that it evens out 100%, but it does even out at most of the times.
They have luck sometimes, we have luck sometimes, they DO have more help from refs but we know that. You can't whine about that since you know in every season that Barca will have to win 2-4-6 points more than Real if we want to win a title (and avoiding refs to ruin our title).

This has been my entire point and why i bring this case up constantly. Lets judge him after season has ended, if he pulled a rabbit out of the hat once, no one is here to say that he cannot do it again, also that was his first season and for a coach who only had moderate success in Celta Vigo, his position was clearly and for a reason, in danger. He proved all those who wanted his head wrong then, so today he has much stronger position in club.

99% surely he and this team won't do it again.
This team was already dying during Tito and Tata and we experienced a huge momentum/Phoenix moment and I would call it "a last breath of a dying team" in 2nd half of 2014/15 season.
People are often looking at those months as something which can happen again easily or as "something normal".
I have wrote that 100s of times and I will write it over and over until I will be proven wrong by our team (which I probably won't) or until more people will start to agree:
= this team was mentally semi-dead already in 2012 and 2013.
We had one shining moment in 2014/15, but it soon returned "to normal" because again, this team is mentally dead (or very drained).

What is happening currently is what happened to every Barca's team in the past: dream team, Van Gaal's team, Rijkaard's team, Pep's team.
Even though, this is still Pep's team, so we never actually even turned the page like in cases of Cruijff, Van Gaal and Rijkaard.

About why is our team poor currently, I would say that 15% of fault is on poor tactician Lucho, and 15% is on mentally dead players who won too many trophies.

So, let's say roughly that our team is currently playing at 70% of their maximum abilities.
When we'll sack Lucho (which we will eventually), if we'll get an awesome coach, we'll jump to 85% of our abilities, and if a coach will be a true magician (let's say Klopp), he can maybe turn the current team (without new players) even to 90% of their maximum potential.
If we'll get a meh coach, we will be equally as poor as today (let's say at 70-75-80% of our abilities).

What I am trying to say: with a good coach, this team surely can offer "slightly" more than today, but imo, NOT TOO MUCH more.

In order to have a good old Barca, or at least much better Barca than today, we will need:
1. both a good new coach who will raise our play from 70% to 85%
2. but also, we will need an overhaul in core players and lots of sales and buys to get back to a 95% or 100% level (even though it is questionable whether we can ever return to a 100% once we'll be without Messi)

So, I will be boring in upcoming months (more likely years since it will take a few years until we will finally rebuild a team) and again:
1. NO COACH in the world will be able to get 100% from this current semi-dead team
2. in order to get a good old Barca, we will need both a very good or perfect coach, plus a lot of changes in our rooster over the next 1-2-3 years (like: out: Vidal, Arda, Rakitic, Mathieu, Cillessen, Mats, Mascherano, Paco and eventually even Iniesta, maybe Busi, Neymar, Suarez, plus that will require 5-10 new players who will need to be better than guys signed in the last 2 years)
How we will do all that? Well, we will need some guts, bravery and expensive sales (like Neymar, Mats, Rakitic etc) and more luck with new players (we won't need new crappy Brasilians, crappy Arsenal's players or crappy Valencia's players)

Anyway, our fall will be long (imo, we are only at the beginning of our poor era or rebuilding).
Imo, the earliest when we will be able to see bigger changes in coaches, and players is 2018-2019 and later.

As said on other topics, Barto believes in MSN and he probably thinks that nothing is wrong.
So, the options are:
1. Neymar, Suarez and majority of our team will magically start to play awesome again and no changes will be needed, we will be on top of the world again with this team (never gonna happen, or chances are 1-10% at max)
2. Barto will make huge changes regarding key players already this summer (Neymar, Suarez, Rakitic, Arda etc)=it's not gonna happen. Barto will give them at least one more season, until summer 2018 (Neymar and Suarez)
3. the best chance for us: if we'll play horribly in this and next season (very likely), we will see a new coach in a summer of 2017, and then after a poor first 2017/18 season (with these semi-dead core players), in a summer of 2018 we will lose our patience with Neymar/Suarez plus a lot of other older players will finally go

Imo, our fans, be prepared for this current situation to last for at least 1 and half years.
Plus, it will probably get even worse and worse each month, with players getting older, players losing confidence, having more and more pressure from papers and fans, Madrid papers laughing at us, growing speculation in media about sales of majority of players (like Raki's case today, that is only a beginning), plus bad results will make players more and more nervous each new month.

People will say that I am pessimistic as hell, but I just don't see any other way for our era (10 years-winning era from 2005, 2006 till today) and our core-player's era (Iniesta, Busi, Pique, Messi, MSN also) can end differently than this.

Again, it happened EVERY SINGLE TIME in our history after a successful era (Dream team, Van Gaal, Rijkaard, Pep).
Plus, this time it should be even worse, since never in our history we were this successful (the more successful you were, the deeper you will fall after that, imo) and never we had such a huge amount of older and mentally drained players in the team in the same moment. NEVER.

Interesting times are infront of us.
There will be lots of writing here, lots of fighting, lots of cursing and everything.
That's all part of cycles in sport.

So, prepare yourselves :popcom:
 

snowy

New member
... There will soon come a time when as Barcelona fans we'll need to get used to a lower level of football and consider that as the norm. There will be less tragedies when we draw or lose a tough game, and more celebrations when we win. And getting so angry so fast when things are maybe not great, but still a long long way from being terrible, is pretty tiring. Barca fans should learn to be more optimistic imo.

Cool post guys! you know what, as long as our players are having fun in the field and play joga bonito, it's all good with me :friends:
 

LeeRomeno

Active member
Serghei, you can't look at football that way, sorry, it is childish.

You can't say that more or less every RM's win is a pure luck, ref's help or idiotism from their opponents, while everything regarding us is a bad luck, only individual mistakes, refs hating on us, tough schedule etc.

Didn't we won against Valencia with a penalty in the 93 minute?
Didn't we save a point against Villareal from a free kick in what 85th or 90th minute etc?
With the same logic which you applied for a RM, we were also lucky with some results and we should had even less points...
I won't say that it evens out 100%, but it does even out at most of the times.
They have luck sometimes, we have luck sometimes, they DO have more help from refs but we know that. You can't whine about that since you know in every season that Barca will have to win 2-4-6 points more than Real if we want to win a title (and avoiding refs to ruin our title).



99% surely he and this team won't do it again.
This team was already dying during Tito and Tata and we experienced a huge momentum/Phoenix moment and I would call it "a last breath of a dying team" in 2nd half of 2014/15 season.
People are often looking at those months as something which can happen again easily or as "something normal".
I have wrote that 100s of times and I will write it over and over until I will be proven wrong by our team (which I probably won't) or until more people will start to agree:
= this team was mentally semi-dead already in 2012 and 2013.
We had one shining moment in 2014/15, but it soon returned "to normal" because again, this team is mentally dead (or very drained).

What is happening currently is what happened to every Barca's team in the past: dream team, Van Gaal's team, Rijkaard's team, Pep's team.
Even though, this is still Pep's team, so we never actually even turned the page like in cases of Cruijff, Van Gaal and Rijkaard.

About why is our team poor currently, I would say that 15% of fault is on poor tactician Lucho, and 15% is on mentally dead players who won too many trophies.

So, let's say roughly that our team is currently playing at 70% of their maximum abilities.
When we'll sack Lucho (which we will eventually), if we'll get an awesome coach, we'll jump to 85% of our abilities, and if a coach will be a true magician (let's say Klopp), he can maybe turn the current team (without new players) even to 90% of their maximum potential.
If we'll get a meh coach, we will be equally as poor as today (let's say at 70-75-80% of our abilities).

What I am trying to say: with a good coach, this team surely can offer "slightly" more than today, but imo, NOT TOO MUCH more.

In order to have a good old Barca, or at least much better Barca than today, we will need:
1. both a good new coach who will raise our play from 70% to 85%
2. but also, we will need an overhaul in core players and lots of sales and buys to get back to a 95% or 100% level (even though it is questionable whether we can ever return to a 100% once we'll be without Messi)

So, I will be boring in upcoming months (more likely years since it will take a few years until we will finally rebuild a team) and again:
1. NO COACH in the world will be able to get 100% from this current semi-dead team
2. in order to get a good old Barca, we will need both a very good or perfect coach, plus a lot of changes in our rooster over the next 1-2-3 years (like: out: Vidal, Arda, Rakitic, Mathieu, Cillessen, Mats, Mascherano, Paco and eventually even Iniesta, maybe Busi, Neymar, Suarez, plus that will require 5-10 new players who will need to be better than guys signed in the last 2 years)
How we will do all that? Well, we will need some guts, bravery and expensive sales (like Neymar, Mats, Rakitic etc) and more luck with new players (we won't need new crappy Brasilians, crappy Arsenal's players or crappy Valencia's players)

Anyway, our fall will be long (imo, we are only at the beginning of our poor era or rebuilding).
Imo, the earliest when we will be able to see bigger changes in coaches, and players is 2018-2019 and later.

As said on other topics, Barto believes in MSN and he probably thinks that nothing is wrong.
So, the options are:
1. Neymar, Suarez and majority of our team will magically start to play awesome again and no changes will be needed, we will be on top of the world again with this team (never gonna happen, or chances are 1-10% at max)
2. Barto will make huge changes regarding key players already this summer (Neymar, Suarez, Rakitic, Arda etc)=it's not gonna happen. Barto will give them at least one more season, until summer 2018 (Neymar and Suarez)
3. the best chance for us: if we'll play horribly in this and next season (very likely), we will see a new coach in a summer of 2017, and then after a poor first 2017/18 season (with these semi-dead core players), in a summer of 2018 we will lose our patience with Neymar/Suarez plus a lot of other older players will finally go

Imo, our fans, be prepared for this current situation to last for at least 1 and half years.
Plus, it will probably get even worse and worse each month, with players getting older, players losing confidence, having more and more pressure from papers and fans, Madrid papers laughing at us, growing speculation in media about sales of majority of players (like Raki's case today, that is only a beginning), plus bad results will make players more and more nervous each new month.

People will say that I am pessimistic as hell, but I just don't see any other way for our era (10 years-winning era from 2005, 2006 till today) and our core-player's era (Iniesta, Busi, Pique, Messi, MSN also) can end differently than this.

Again, it happened EVERY SINGLE TIME in our history after a successful era (Dream team, Van Gaal, Rijkaard, Pep).
Plus, this time it should be even worse, since never in our history we were this successful (the more successful you were, the deeper you will fall after that, imo) and never we had such a huge amount of older and mentally drained players in the team in the same moment. NEVER.

Interesting times are infront of us.
There will be lots of writing here, lots of fighting, lots of cursing and everything.
That's all part of cycles in sport.

So, prepare yourselves :popcom:

I somewhat agree with the cycles, there have always been cycles and no great team has managed to stay great after extraordinary players have retired/left. I disagree though, that the time is up for us, mainly because the core of the team in Messi is still here and he is not a 34 year old declining Messi, but still at his prime. Majority of the team is at their best footballing age + we got 5 younger and hungry signings this summer + Rafinha who was more or less injured last season. . Sure their merge into squad has not been perhaps as smooth as some expected, but it is definitely a step into bringing freshness to team.
Also our "hunger" has not been there for many games, which is why i definitely think that a kick in the nuts is exactly what we need and its also what was needed 2 years ago vs Sociedad and what happened when lost that game vs Valencia last season. And which is why i hope that all the fuss that has been going on lately will give that extra motivation the players need to finish the year with a strong position.

Once Messi retires though, i am pretty sure our position as the guaranteed top 4 team in Europe will fade away for a while.
 

snowy

New member
Damn BBZ, you should be their mental coach lol

seriously though, it's true that everything works in cycles but there's also micro-cycles to take into account. For instance, about the luck or "lack" of ... which was mentioned. Just looking at the number of shots at goal in the previous matches and failure to convert (often by inches), law of averages would point to greater odds at success for upcoming games. Perso, I'm pretty optimistic but then again, always tend to swing on the bright side of the stream :)

Like you said though, interesting times for sure :barcascarf:
 

khaled_a_d

Senior Member
Messi,Iniesta,Pique are the 3 players who won most in this club. And they are probably the 3 best players in every line of the team. Things go in cycles that is true but I don't agree with this change in motivation.
If anything we have many other problems,we have 10 bench players 8 of them didn't play a single game with the team before 2016,9th is almost done and the 10 was one of the best performers in the bench.
This team has been built on stability since Crujif days, the whole changing the core is the shortest way for self destruction. we have already done a big changes in the team and it is last thing we need to do for now.
We might need few tweeks due to age,and we are suffering from young bench and players who still don't do what is their role in the team or adapting to new system. Making even more change? come on now.
Lucho might go,the coach cycle in this club is 3-4 years tnh and while I hope he gets 3rd year he might himself not be interested in it. But I want to see how it end before it
 

serghei

Senior Member
Serghei, you can't look at football that way, sorry, it is childish.

You can't say that more or less every RM's win is a pure luck, ref's help or idiotism from their opponents, while everything regarding us is a bad luck, only individual mistakes, refs hating on us, tough schedule etc.

Didn't we won against Valencia with a penalty in the 93 minute?
Didn't we save a point against Villareal from a free kick in what 85th or 90th minute etc?
With the same logic which you applied for a RM, we were also lucky with some results and we should had even less points...
I won't say that it evens out 100%, but it does even out at most of the times.
They have luck sometimes, we have luck sometimes, they DO have more help from refs but we know that. You can't whine about that since you know in every season that Barca will have to win 2-4-6 points more than Real if we want to win a title (and avoiding refs to ruin our title).

Not every Madrid win is pure luck, none of it is actually, even though luck played a part in a lot of their games so far. They have had some tough games in which they were very solid. Like against Atletico, winning 3-0 to Simeone is tough. But their standard level of play, I mean the way they play most games, is pretty close to our standard level of play. They just get the results because of better finishing, less ref. mistakes, and a bit more motivation to win than us (it's normal that they are more motivated if we look at their La Liga record lately). Don't tell me they have played much better than us. That's bullshit. This Madrid side is tough, but because of their efficiency in converting 60-70% of the chances they create, not because they play better football.
 
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