1 - Marc-Andre ter Stegen

serghei

Senior Member
Flick is very very principled as a manager. He has sound principles as far as I can tell. What you see is what you get. Even cuts some slack for the defenders knowing he himself is to blame for them looking worse than they are in reality.

I dig that. Harsh, but fair, no nonsense. The terms are clear, you either adhere or try to at least, or you move. The moment we step ouside of those requirements as a club is when a new Amigo culture can catch roots, which has been sort of our plague as a club.

You can blame Flick for his tactics, or disagree with them, but the overall conduct, unimpeachable.
 

TheStig

Member
Are we the only club that offers to pay the player for the season after the transfer out of the club? Do you know how crazy that is?

I thought this bum is a world class goalkeeper in his eyes, where are all the offers from top clubs for him? I really wonder how he answers this question in his head.

Anyway, money is less important than safety from terrorism. If he got undeserved wages for 10 years I'll live with another year if he finally leaves us alone.
 

Windhook

Well-known member
I dig that. Harsh, but fair, no nonsense. The terms are clear, you either adhere or try to at least, or you move. The moment we step ouside of those requirements as a club is when a new Amigo culture can catch roots, which has been sort of our plague as a club.
Good point and I hope this is the philosophy under Flick. No more Amigos. The La Masia core of the squad love Inaki Pena, but if you're late for training, you lose starter role. No more kindergarten stuff.

In MATS case if you're not performing well, not only you lose minutes, but the captain armband is under risk.
 

khaled_a_d

Senior Member
Frenkie was 25-26 when we tried to sell him, minor injuries, a position that every emerging good player cost 100M+ (Rice, Enzo, Caicedo) and while he was underperforming due to high expectations, he was still very highly regarded.

Ter Stegen is 33, in a position that you can easily find good players for dirt cheap, had 2 major injuries in his last 2 seasons, and even before that he had several knee surgeries.
 
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serghei

Senior Member
Man, if Courtois who had his cruciate severed and missed almost the entire last season is available at 33, big clubs jump at it. It is much more than just an injury and age thing, it's also a quality thing which is as big of a factor if not more.

But then Barca wouldn't even think to ship out Coutois. Barca tries to sell Stegen because he is crooked, old, and also average or even sub-average, and he has an atitude problem. It's all those things combined that make him an almost impossible sell for even a decent fee.

But Stegen? All you need to do is to look at his lost eyes and desperate face the moment a cross flies around his space and you instantly get scared and look elsewere.
 
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serghei

Senior Member
Good point and I hope this is the philosophy under Flick. No more Amigos. The La Masia core of the squad love Inaki Pena, but if you're late for training, you lose starter role. No more kindergarten stuff.

In MATS case if you're not performing well, not only you lose minutes, but the captain armband is under risk.

Absolutely, the way I see it, since 2003 or so since Laporta took over, we had the era of Ronaldinho who lasted 3-4 years (normal cycle for elite stuff). Until 2007. Amigo culture started to take place, but then Laporta did a very smart thing which is cut the stars who stirred shite after naming Pep and giving him full powers.

That was an inspired move, and then we came back in force, until in 2012 we saw some of that happening again, motivation and focus started to dip a lot. Pep left instead of dealing with it, also because he felt the players (many of those were probably an issue) had the backing of the board.

Between 2012 and 2014-15 we had some off years, but then we used those money accumulated from the glory days of Pep to land us 3 hit signings. Neymar and Suarez most importantly to bolster the attack, but Rakitic as well to tackle aging legs in midfield. And those 3 starters added some fresh energy and motivation in the team.

Then Lucho, like Pep, started to see the balance was just very thin. And left as well, after only managing to get a truly elite level for about one calendar year. Surely Barca legends such as Pep and Lucho didn't want to be seen as the bad guys by going hard at some big names. And he also left. To do this, you need full and uncompromising support from the board. By 2017 the names we had to go after were simply too big to do this safely.

After Lucho, there's the biggest sign that, at that moment, the Amigo culture was so established and rooted, that the club even had to find managers who would tolerate it. None of the big names would have done that. Then you have EV, who basically was a nice guy type who tried to deal with bad things at the club in the most non-confrontational manner possible. But it only further enabled bad things in the club to run even more rampant.

Then the EV era basically led to a finished team, with ballooning wages and the 2-8 as symbols of the Amigo culture taking over the club due to an embarassment of a presidency. The cleaning job of those disastrous days isn't even done today, 6 years later.
 
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serghei

Senior Member
Only regret I have is I would have liked to see what Laporta would have done in moment of 2012. But we'll never know. If you step in in 2012 and put things in order, react well to the first sign of decline in mentality, I think Messi would've been far more successful than he was at a club level. Messi, let this sink in, only won 1 Champions League title after his 24th birthday.

And to give an example of why you side with a leading manager over any player... Flick had in his first season at the club, the 2nd best Barca season since 2010-11. With no stadium, struggling to even register players, a thin squad, and Martin at LB in CL semis.
 
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xXKonan

Senior Member
I think it's good to point out Deco was part of that "Amigo" Culture from 2006-08 and was gone once Pep took over along with Dinho.

So he knows how things like that can pan out especially with a young squad like ours.
 

serghei

Senior Member
I think it's good to point out Deco was part of that "Amigo" Culture from 2006-08 and was gone once Pep took over along with Dinho.

So he knows how things like that can pan out especially with a young squad like ours.

Good point. It's not like the players conscientiously want to do it, but it's human nature at some point to want comfort. Everyone who reached a certain high level thinks he is too good to let a slip in motivation show, everyone thinks he can switch it back on when it's time, but they all show it. Mbappe shows it already and he didn't even win CL.
 

xXKonan

Senior Member
Good point. It's not like the players conscientiously want to do it, but it's human nature at some point to want comfort. Everyone who reached a certain high level thinks he is too good to let a slip in motivation show, everyone thinks he can switch it back on when it's time, but they all show it. Mbappe shows it already and he didn't even win CL.
I consider Mats to be a model professional as in he's always on time, trains hard and never is an issue off the pitch when it comes to partying or being stupid. If anything he's very private with his personal life.

I think his personality is deeply flawed on the pitch, however. He has quite the ego, and he doesn't think he's the "Problem" so to speak and I guess it's why there's been too many rumors over the years of him not having the greatest relationship with some of the team, especially the old guard like Messi.

He plays the media game and often gets his way. It's gotten to a point that, yeah, we have got to do something about it. He's not going to like but it's time, we just have to move on and start a brand new cycle.
 

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