FC Barcelona Thread

Thanks, TSO, we played and inmense first half. The goals were amazing. Messi didn't score but did 2 incredible assists. Messi is rapidly growing more as a player (if that is even possible). In the last matches, if he doesn't score 2 or 3 goals, he simply sits back and destroy deffenses with his passing. 4 assists this week....

Villa is getting in the rhythm as well, and scoring more and more. What a pitty Alves injury. He's one of the underestimated players of the squad. People think he's godd, but he's much more than that, one of the top 15 players in the world for me! People doesn't know just how good he is. Now, we'll miss it a lot! Hope he can come back in 2-3 weeks.

I'm liking afellay up to now. He has only played some late minutes in some matches, but you can see he's understanding the "pass and move" philosophy of the team. He did 2 great passes to Bojan and I can't wait to watch him play 90 minutes with Messi and Iniesta around him.

The title is not decided. The team has to put incredible efforts in all matches if we want to win again the title. Madrid is going to loose less than 8 points in the 2nd leg, so we can't loose or draw much.
 
The anwser is logical to me... If you have a team and you need one more player, who do you choose between xavi or messi?? based on this years player performance...even if I rate Xavi in the highest standard, i'd choose messi on my team anyday... and he won the ballon d'or and deserve it...
 
drekkard said:
Thanks, TSO, we played and inmense first half. The goals were amazing. Messi didn't score but did 2 incredible assists. Messi is rapidly growing more as a player (if that is even possible). In the last matches, if he doesn't score 2 or 3 goals, he simply sits back and destroy deffenses with his passing. 4 assists this week....

Villa is getting in the rhythm as well, and scoring more and more. What a pitty Alves injury. He's one of the underestimated players of the squad. People think he's godd, but he's much more than that, one of the top 15 players in the world for me! People doesn't know just how good he is. Now, we'll miss it a lot! Hope he can come back in 2-3 weeks.

I'm liking afellay up to now. He has only played some late minutes in some matches, but you can see he's understanding the "pass and move" philosophy of the team. He did 2 great passes to Bojan and I can't wait to watch him play 90 minutes with Messi and Iniesta around him.

The title is not decided. The team has to put incredible efforts in all matches if we want to win again the title. Madrid is going to loose less than 8 points in the 2nd leg, so we can't loose or draw much.
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Well i don't underestimate Alves cuz he's one of the best red defenders in the word ...

I have to disagree with affelay i mean he is good but you can't really judge on what he showed it was to less.
Futhermore Thiago will take his place
 
Well, in the 20 minutes that he has played, he's understood perfectly the team pace and positional play, which is the hardest thing to do. Something Hleb couldn't in 20 matches.

I think Thiago is a long term project. He's skillful but he needs to improve his decisions, regularity and positional play. If he does that, then he can be as good as Iniesta. But, as I say, I doubt he's having first team football constantly until the next season.

Btw, Thiago's brother, Rafa, is considered to be the best of the brothers, and plays as CAM or striker. So, goodbye to Bojan when he arrives to the first team. Please.
 
I'm not a fan of Bojan at all either. Though he's still very young and could potentially turn into a very good player.

Usually though watching him just frustrates me! And it's also interesting to note that considering the crazy amount of HYPE and media attention that there was on him a couple years ago and the LACK of it on Pedro, look at the difference in their quality now! :LOL:

Pedro >>>>>>>>>> Bojan

Pedro turned out to be an awesome player and of course is still improving with each match but I don't think many people even Barcelona fans thought he would become this good!
 
You should not at all name Hleb or Bojan in one sentence with Adu, that's not even close. About Bojan, imo he lacks the quality to be a very good player, can see him play a Euro League team in Spain tho, but I didn't see any improvement of him the last years.
 
drekkard said:
Well, in the 20 minutes that he has played, he's understood perfectly the team pace and positional play, which is the hardest thing to do. Something Hleb couldn't in 20 matches.

I think Thiago is a long term project. He's skillful but he needs to improve his decisions, regularity and positional play. If he does that, then he can be as good as Iniesta. But, as I say, I doubt he's having first team football constantly until the next season.

Btw, Thiago's brother, Rafa, is considered to be the best of the brothers, and plays as CAM or striker. So, goodbye to Bojan when he arrives to the first team. Please.
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Yes for sure but Thiago is 19 so he has time to improve ... and he will be "integrated" permanently in the first team next team so we'll see

In my opinion Affelay will always stay a backup player and thats the sad thing but the other midfielder are way to goood.
 
Yep affelay is a player to use in rotation, as well as Thiago will be for 1 or 2 seasons. Every team need this kind of player and many titles are decided by bench depth. I think Afellay is a superb signing and Thiago a great prospect, though I fear the "mentality" factor in Thiago, the rest of his skills are amazing. Let's see how they evolve.
 
u mean because he have brazialn origins and brazilians are well known for beeing divas ? :P

Yeah i mean they paid 3 oder 4 million for affelay compared to Ibrahimovic or a "normal" tranfer its nothing at all ...

Did some watch the game against Betis ? Can somebody say something about it ?
 
Worst game in ages, the players which were given a chance could not show anything in their favour, maybe Mascherano if at all, but the rest was really, really bad. 5-0 was too clear probably, still would have expected more. Milito made some horrible mistakes in the beginning, Bojan keeps the ball too long and Afellay doesn't look very promising, in terms of strengthening the squad, either.
 
Credit to Betis, the Andalucians came out with more spirit than most teams in primera.

It's good for barca to lose this game, will keep them wary for the next games and not overconfident after some great results this past weeks.

I agree that Adriano has long ways to go, not really liking what he is doing. Afellay, I will give him a pass, its his first start. Gaby looked slow and out of sync with GP.

Again, this was more of an experiment for Pep, he might not have another chance to do so with the players he gave a chance today again this season.

We are through to the Semis, and another trip to Andalucia beckons.
 
Well, I think this match is again a prove that our bench is so limited.

First of all, I think Afellay was probably the best player, or at least he tried to do something and all our attacks happened through him. He wasn't too accurate and lost position now and then, and need to understand better the pressure movements. But it was his first real match, and he did much more than the rest.

Mascherano did a bad match, but probably because there was nothing around him. The machine can't work when you put so many spare parts. He tried and at least put a lot of energy in his actions.

Bojan is absurdly bad and useless, Keita offers nothing more than running and this is also useless in this team. Adriano has been a huge let down, he just doesn't do a thing right. He was lost in deffense, didn't appear in midfield, failed all of his attacking moves... And Milito, well, he's not what he used to be. He was slow, sloppy, out of position, nervous. I think Bartra or Fontas from the youth team would be miles better than him.

So, at the end, what we already knew. We have the best group of 12-13 players in the world, but our bench is a complete and epic fail. Really, we must cross fingers and hope none of the starters gets injured or we're in trouble.
 
Really, Betis looks a very attractive team. It was obvious from the first match they were one of the few teams that are able to beat Barça no matter what was the conditon of the last night's match. Congrats Betis for having shown how a team should deal with Barcelona, congrats Barcelona and fans for having advanced through the next round.
 
Thing is barca were leading 1st leg 5-0.So, starting a side that doesn`t get too much action was in order. Like drekkard said "rusty parts added to an oil machine"

Barca do hammer teams proper they should bring those players to mixed up it a bit. :P
 
As long as I know, they've beaten Panathinaikos with a similar team to last night's. beboq, let's see if Arsenal can play better than Betis against Barça. :P
 
Iniesta, Villa, Puyol, Alves, Valdes and Pedro played against Panathinkaikos and not last night. Plus, having to defend a 5-0 is not the same as going to greece to win in the CL.

The important thing is not that our starters are very good, but that we have no bench. The same team that played yesterday would have been defeated badly by Arsenal. It's all a matter of being fit, no injuries and in your peek of form. I can't wait to watch us play against a fully fit Arsenal. A feast for football lovers!
 
Hats should be taken off for the bravery of the Andalusian team. They deserved to win, and Barca deserved to reach,simply crowning to the genius Messi at least..
 
Can someone tell something about the match ? I know they won but how did Barca play ?
Had to work, though i couldn watch it :RANT:
 
Messi has more gols then games play in every comp. :YAWN: if that`s not the best player on the planet. He should invent a sport and call it Messiball !
 
it's not extraordinary when you talk about Barcelona.

P.S. what is extraordinary is pedro's header. maybe lucky maybe not but that was awesome.
 
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@NO_Limit Barcelona started well and scored 3 in the first 30 minutes (2 messi and 1 villa). Then they decided it was anough for the time being and dragged the match a little before Pedro scoring the 4th with a header! before halftime.

The 2nd half the team decided to take a nap and did only 4 or 5 clear chances to score (so, usual stuff) before deciding in the last 10 minutes that considering Almeria had drawn with Real Madrid in the league, they sohuld score them the same goals that Real received. So they put the level a little higher in the last 10 minutes until Keita scored a beautiful goal thanks to an assits of Messi.

The biggest thing of Messi is not only the goals, is that he's the best assistant in the world as well! About 20 assists already this year in all competitions. He does 0.6 assists per goal. A man who has scored 30+ up to now.
 
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