It is not easy to make it in BBZ rating system
BBZmetrics
---------------------------------
Too Choir Boy
---------------------------------
Rakitic Perfect Mix of Calm, Confidence, Croatian and Comb-over
---------------------------------
Too Arrogant
---------------------------------
You are right to some extrent:
1) choir boy
2) healthy amount of courage, arrogance, cockiness, fighting spirit
3) too much of cockiness which leads to turning into:
1) either all time greats like Zlatan and CR7 who are insanely mentally strong
2) or 95% of other guys who buy their own hype and overrate their abilities and performances like Neymar, Halilovic, or from our team: Riki, Mats, Griezmann with his BallonD Or ideas, Ilaix etc
Easy answer.. Xavi/Puyol/Valdes 'came good' when matured and had coaches/teams that gave them confidence and suited their style of play.
Usual BBZ trying to take some illogical argument as if those players just came good from nowhere without a coach or style of play.
Xavi went from not believing in his place at the club and wanting to leave in 2008 to being best midfielder of all time standard a year later... down to the change of coach.
Using all time greats as a comparison is ridiculous anyway as no one is claiming current players are of that level and as for excuses you deal out your fair share for likes of Coutinho who has been far worse than likes of Ansu or FDJ.
Xavi was on 90% of prime Xavi even in 2004 and 2005.
You guys are making too much fuss out of 2008' incident when he considered leaving.
Even Messi almost ended at Espanyol aged 16, 17 iirc.
Does that mean that he was not good enough?
Btw, people will say that I am just a contrarian, but since the forum is mostly flooded with praises, it is more fun to add some negativity and flaws to return back to Earth from this dreamland.
Regarding young players, in this moment:
I like:
Mingueza: good personality, a healthy amount of a fighting spirit. He lacks in skills, but he is a nice squad player
Gavi looks promising till now. Okish skills, combative
Where I am not as impressed as majority of our fans:
Frenkie: probably slightly better version of Arthur in the end (Arthur with pace and stamina), due to not fitting to any midfield position and being horrible in possession and attack, and questionable at defending.
Pedri: master of hide and seek for now. He might work though, if we surround him with 1-2 guys in midfield who will be leaders and have bigger balls than him.
Araujo: a huge guy who is quite scared and injury prone behind the surface, it seems.
Fati: the sample is way too small. I still can't point a finger on whether:
1) he is a genius who has a bad touch/stupid decisions here and there
2) or he is a better version of Dembele who will always have meh skills, bad decisions but who is scoring wondergoals out of nowhere which mask his actual abilities in other aspects of the game
Also, about his finishing, I am not sure:
1) whether he is a lethal killer with some horrible shots and touches
2) or he is extremely sloppy player like Dembele/Alexis who is just on a hot streak currently where every of his shots is going in like Alexis in his early years here or Dembele in those 3 Months where he was scoring on each game
About his attitude, I have wrote above, there are some worrisome elements of him buying his hype about no10, Messi's successor, being the next big thing, a club building a future around him, fans expecting him to be the future best player of a team.
Again, if he is not as mentally strong as Zlatan or Cr7, all ingredients are here for him to make a wrong turn mentality wise.
Being the next Messi already killed way too many talents.
Let's see whether that curse/pressure/hype will kill again this time, as always till now.
I said his level should be Fati's goal for the future. I honestly see some similarities in those two players. I know many of you would disagree but Fati could maybe become our No.9 in the future. He has that killer instinct in front of the goal while on the wing he sometimes lacks a bit of creativity and speed.