14 - Javier Mascherano

Alik

Moderator
He's a perfect English leauge midfielder. But for Barca he's horrible, terrible, awful. Keep disagreeing if you want but I'm the one who's right.

How do you want to compete in midfield against Real Madrid...eh, nevermind.

We've done fine with Masch at DM quite often. He's fine whenever we want to play with a Plan B.

People say he's not good against world class opposition. How often do we play world class opposition?

Singling out Mascherano when neither Iniesta nor Rakitic were good either doesn't make much sense either.
 

KingMessi

SiempreBlaugrana
We've done fine with Masch at DM quite often. He's fine whenever we want to play with a Plan B.

People say he's not good against world class opposition. How often do we play world class opposition?

As long as Mascherano's not put under pressure (like yesterday) he's an adequate replacement for Busquets.
 

Ghostmaster

Danger Ahead
Am I the only one who prefers Mascherano to Busquets? I'm sorry but Busquets, however good he is at moments, has been unreliable for the past few seasons.

Mascherano is easily among the top 3 DMs in the world. And he doesn't even play in that position regularly.

He was immense in the WC.

He is unreliable, we could have conceded 2 goals against city just because his overconfidence and then we played without him in second leg we could have scored 7 goals without his "magical control".
 
L

linetty

Guest
Am I the only one who prefers Mascherano to Busquets? I'm sorry but Busquets, however good he is at moments, has been unreliable for the past few seasons.

Mascherano is easily among the top 3 DMs in the world. And he doesn't even play in that position regularly.

He was immense in the WC.
If you prefer throwing long balls all the time and losing the ball on your own half then fine.
 

DrPepper

New member
Am I the only one who prefers Mascherano to Busquets? I'm sorry but Busquets, however good he is at moments, has been unreliable for the past few seasons.

Mascherano is easily among the top 3 DMs in the world. And he doesn't even play in that position regularly.

He was immense in the WC.

Why do people always bring the World Cup argument into the discussion? Being good there doesn't mean being good at Barca.

http://www.fourfourtwo.com/statszon...er-stats/32644/OVERALL_04#tabs-wrapper-anchor

Even defensively it wasn't a good game from him. 5 attempted tackles, only 1 successful. 20% success rate while Busquets had 100% yesterday.
 

Kerrybai

New member
Am I the only one who prefers Mascherano to Busquets? I'm sorry but Busquets, however good he is at moments, has been unreliable for the past few seasons.

Mascherano is easily among the top 3 DMs in the world. And he doesn't even play in that position regularly.

He was immense in the WC.

No we clearly missed Busquets out there imo. Masch was one of the reasons we kept going down the left flank, he doesn't have the vision of Busquets.
 
F

Flavia

Guest
I love Masch, but for dm for Barça, in games like el clasico, Busi all the way. And now, if Mathieu keeps performing well, I'd sit Masch for those games. Like footyfan said, masch at cb yesterday wouldn't had been good.
 

Iarwain

New member
Why do people always bring the World Cup argument into the discussion? Being good there doesn't mean being good at Barca.

http://www.fourfourtwo.com/statszon...er-stats/32644/OVERALL_04#tabs-wrapper-anchor

Even defensively it wasn't a good game from him. 5 attempted tackles, only 1 successful. 20% success rate while Busquets had 100% yesterday.
This.

It is worth mentioning he was a stand-out player on WC only in games where Sabella used cautious defensive approach (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany) with 8 players behind the ball and defense line deep into their own half. Mascherano had less empty space to cover and more teammates utilized defensively around him.

He was not so convincing in all those games Argentina played offensively (Bosnia, Iran, Nigeria, Switzerland), where he was more positionally exposed.
 

Stric

New member
You guys are right, my post does sound like I suggest that his quality for the NT magically translates here, so forgive me for making the wrong impression. That's not what I wanted to say. Basically, what I wanted to say is that in general, he's a world class DM. In Barca, he might not be the fit for the role as he is in his NT, but still, I would personally prefer him most of the time over the recently overconfident and unreliable Busquets. I understand that most will disagree with me, though. However, I will gladly change my mind once I see Busquets have a stretch of consistently strong performances. I just don't see it at the moment. Since his groin injury or whatever that was, I think he lost his step and has been riding on the wave of previous seasons' performances in terms of reputation.
 

Blaugrana Bull

HiiiPoWeR
Hyperboles everywhere.
Busi is wc and Masche is wc but Busi's abilities are more important for Barca's game and he perfectly fits into the team. Masche can play that role too but as not as good as Busi.
But there will of course be games where Busi has a bad performance and Masche has an outstanding one and the latter looks better than the former.

You guys compare the two as if one was a world beater and the other one some bum from the street.
User A: "Busi is best, Masche is shit."
User B: "How can you say that? Masche is better, Busi is shit."
And so on.
 

Stric

New member
That is exactly my point. If we don't take into consideration a player's form, we will be making decision based on the general idea about them, which is bad for the team and the game. Class is permanent, but in the context of deciding lineups, form is everything. We've seen it with Messi, with Pique, with Iniesta, with any player you can think of.
 

Alik

Moderator
Hyperboles everywhere.
Busi is wc and Masche is wc but Busi's abilities are more important for Barca's game and he perfectly fits into the team. Masche can play that role too but as not as good as Busi.
But there will of course be games where Busi has a bad performance and Masche has an outstanding one and the latter looks better than the former.

You guys compare the two as if one was a world beater and the other one some bum from the street.
User A: "Busi is best, Masche is shit."
User B: "How can you say that? Masche is better, Busi is shit."
And so on.

Agreed.
 

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