6 - Gavi

khaled_a_d said:

1- You are asking the wrong guy, because till the moment I don't think Minqueza deserves to be Barca 1st team player. He is here due to crisis and I would hope some Liga team will offer us 8-10M for him next summer and we move on from him.

2-You still didn't answer the question, you claim he ignored talents for veterans, but which talent? Because is honestly a ridiculous claim in vacuum,
Because basing it on "there could be someone there who could have been developed" is ridiculous. Maybe there is someone now? Maybe there was someone who Pep ignored during his time? Hey maybe Gai Assulin could have became the next great winger if Pep trusted him. Poor kid, Pep destroyed his career .

3-If you want to make EV the devil who hated youth player, fine. I am not arguing whether EV was a youth oriented coach or not, but actually about the state of La Masia back then.
Those B teams were piss poor, with coach who was there in hope to get results in order to get a better job in Liga, like Pep,Lucho & Eusebio. The state of the B team was a mess between 2014-2018.
The goal wasn't to develop young talents, it was to get results and get to compete in Segunda, so fans can watch it on youtube and we claim La Masia is great because B team is freakin winning.
How any first team coach would look at that team and even find worthy player in that?

Did Carles Alena ever learned to be a CM with B team? Because every time I watched him, he was one of the most advanced player on the pitch, hoping to get the ball in attacking position in order to start running with it.
Even before EV time, has any La Masia or B team coach has told Samper that he needs to be classical DM or even CM, rather than an old fashioned deep lying playmaker?
Anyone tried to get into Adama's head and told him to raise his head while playing? I could go own on on those examples.
Even your boy Puig, has only stared to develop when Pimenta took over and we had a more stable team developing players, the results only started to occur by last year, when Araujo,Perez was doing well there, same with Oscar.

4-So regarding Mingueza, even if you think "he has future here" this would have not happened if he was couple of years older, because we would have failed to develop him and shipped his ass to a segunda team.

I love Koemann work with young players now, but ignoring the difference in the state of the youth system back then and now is actually unjustified, and don't do justice to guys like Pimenta

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serghei said:

[MENTION=11668]khaled_a_d[/MENTION], I see your point, I don't watch much La Masia, and I know you do. If you say there's a clear gap of quality in favor of now, compared to even 1.5 years ago, I'll take your word for it. Cheers.

My argument started from the fact that it seems odd and convenient that just when we have to rebuild, some players show talent. It just seems hard to believe. It seems like a freak coincidence, which got me wondering, but maybe it is just that, a coincidence.

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JamDav1982 said:

Puig more or less played the same role as Alena in B team. Both more AMs with freedom more than CMs.

Cant really praise Pimienta on that side of it and blame coaches for Alena when approach was same for both players.

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serghei said:

EV never really cared for developing players. He was rather conservative in that regard and liked to work with mostly mature players. Fati was developed because he was out of options at the time with all of Messi, Suarez, Dembele injured. Malcolm for example never got a chance except for some scrub minutes.

He used the old midfield Vidal - Rakitic - Busquets instead of maybe giving a chance to a La Masia player.

EV was a short-term manager with a short-term plan of getting the last bit of sweat from the older players. He wasn't interested to lay a solid foundation for years to come.

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Porque said:

Talents still at LaMasia or who have left?

Mateu Morey, Adrian Bernabe, Pablo Moreno, Xavi Simons
Robert Navarro, Dani Olmo.

The only one that we ignored and turned out good was Dani Olmo. He would probably be starting for us ahead in of Pedri.

The rest are not better than what we have. Bernabe was super hyped and has good numbers in the City reserves.

Robert Navarro is doing well in Sociedad B team and with a contract up in 2022 could be an option to bring back next year.

And they all left for greener pastures, not being ignored.

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Messi983 said:

Some great posts here, really enjoyed reading them.




Tbh, I'm not so sure about that. Sure, he's a starter for a good team like RBL and a part of Spain NT but he's mostly used as a RW.

Another thing about his development is that he made what most would consider a "step back" in his career by joining Dinamo Zagreb, a dominant team in a good, but not top level league. And even there he didn't immediately get a chance and wasn't all that impressive in their second team. So he didn't really show all that much potential aged 16 and it's understandable why Barca also didn't rate him so much to try and desperately keep him at any cost (like we did with Fati and Ilaix).

Eventhough they might have a similar potential level (and at the end similar careers) not every player develop at the same rate at a young age and Olmo was one of those players who just needed more time to show his talent. He left Barca in 2014 but only started to get regular minutes for Dinamo's first team at the end of the 2016/17 season when he was already almost 19 (and I consider this still as a fairly normal age for players to make a breakthrough; we've just been spoiled by players like Fati, Pedri and many players in other clubs who are starting to get first team minutes at 17-18).

So who knows how he'd develop had he stayed at Barca B for a few more years but I think his current level and future career projection might be closer to that of Denis Suarez than him being a starter for a good CL team with potential to establish himself at an even better club so leaving when he did was the right decision for his career but as explained above I also don't blame the club for "letting him go".

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Horatio said:

Honest question: We both agree he was brought in as a short-term manager. What is your opinion then on why he decided to attend Barcelona B matches? Something Luis Enrique has never done.

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soul24rage said:

Given the CB crisis that we had, I think EV would have played Araujo and or another Barca B CB, or maybe played DJ at CB.

However, I don't think EV would have played Pedri as much as Koeman did or even subbed in Ilaix in important games like Koeman did.

Koeman > EV for me.

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serghei said:

Little doubt for me that EV would play Pjanic a lot, at the expense of Pedri and Ilaix, not to mention Puig who would see little to no game time.

Busi - De Jong - Pjanic would be his go to midfield.

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messi2140 said:

How many matches did he attend ?

And can you say with a straight face that Valverde would have given the same amount of playing time/chance to Mingueza , Pedri and Illaix ? We would probably seeing Pjanic-Busquets pivot , with Umtiti getting the minutes of Mingueza. Especially when it comes to the latter that I mentioned since he isn't some huge talent with massive potential but rather that the seniors in his place are underperforming massively (Umtiti/Lenglet) , hence him getting his minutes.

Keep also reading here that Valverde chose Araujo over Todibo , but somehow Todibo got first team minutes and Araujo got fuck all under him. It is what it is though.

(obviously this isn't aimed only at you , but just in general the points I have seen brought up here).

Will take a Koeman season where we play good football , most of the underperforming seniors getting shown the bench , young players getting their chances etc over the 442 Valverdeball that put me to sleep, any day of the week.

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Bobo32 said:

I don't think he'd trust that midfield, as he shouldn't. He rarely played Busi-De Jong-Arthur, which would be more stable...

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Bobo32 said:

It was him with the outside pass for Collado before Peques goal, right?

You may say promote Gavi, Nico, Orellana, Collado, Balde etc, and you may be right. But I wonder if the first one to promote shouldn't be Pimienta...

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