It seems there is no end to the woes of Barcelona FC. The downward journey started a few years back in 2017 after the exit of Neymar and things have come a full circle now with the departure of Lionel Messi. On October 2, 2021, when they went down 2-0 to Atletico Madrid Barca ensured that it also began the La Liga season with a horror show. This comes only a few days after they were humbled by Benfica 3-0 in the Champions League. The jury is already out and suddenly the most celebrated club in the not-so-distant past has become a butt of ridicule, a meme fest has started on social media with regard to its recent performances. So, what has gone wrong for the team that has won eight of the last 12 league titles? Time to analyze the same.
Failure to Retain Messi
A player like Lionel Messi can never be replaced and Barcelona is currently missing him badly in its hour of despair. With 30 Liga goals to his credit, the club must be ruing the financial mess that forced them to let go of the Talismanic striker. This is for the first time in several years that Barca is without none of their match-defining players and the continuing losses only establish the fact that the club needs to soon find a good combination that can take it back to the winning ways. Losing, just like winning, becomes a habit otherwise.
Aging Defence
In football fresh legs are extremely important to the fortunes of a team. But the club is heavily reliant on Gerard Pique (34) to shore up their defence and the brilliant footballer from La Masia is not having the best of times at present. In the 4-1 rout against PSG in the Champions League earlier this year, the sight of Kylian Mbappe sprinting away from Pique is still fresh in everyone’s memory. If not anything else the Mbappe episode highlight the perils of leaning heavily on an aging player apart from the inability of Clement Lenglet and Samuel Umtiti to cover up adequately for Pique’s waning powers. Hence, the Catalans require good enough players at the Centre Back position.
Koeman’s Precarious Situation
It is not good for any team if the most important person who is supposed to motivate the squad in testing times is himself under the pump. The head coach Ronald Koeman has presided over many defeats of Barcelona this season and it can be very hard to focus on the team and individuals in such a situation. However, the top management of the club has backed Koeman to the hilt so far but the series of losses are piling up pressure on him to deliver, sooner the better. To make it worse, Koeman’s outburst against a greenhorn in the league circuit, Nico Gonzalez, after the loss against Atletico Madrid could not have been more ill-timed. So, Koeman’s present situation is also a big factor in the downward spiral of the once most-dreaded team in the league circuit.
Financial Misery
Well, the Covid-19 pandemic has not spared anyone, the Catalan club is no exception. But more than the pandemic the financial mess that the club finds itself in is an outcome of inept financial management. After Neymar left Barca in 2016 for PSG, the French club gave the former 222 million Euros. A wise board would have ideally utilized the sum to find suited players who can revive the fortunes of the club in the future. However, their big-ticket investment of over 400 million euros on players such as Philippe Coutinho, Antoine Griezmann, and Ousmane Dembele post-Neymar’s departure hasn’t yielded the desired results. The things eventually turned so adverse that in 2021, when Messi made a generous offer of a 50 percent pay cut the club could not even manage the same. So, Barca needs to clean up the financial mess at the earliest.
