Barcelona have many issues but their collective hunger is what champions are made of

Andy West 14:47 15/10/2017
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  • Luis Suarez celebrates his equaliser against Atletico

    There are lots of things lacking in this current Barcelona team.

    For starters, there is a lack creative talent in the centre of the pitch, with ageing skipper Andres Iniesta the only midfielder really capable of breaking the lines between the opposition midfield and back four.

    Of course, Lionel Messi can do so as well, and the Argentine star’s increasing role as a playmaker as well as play finisher partly reflects the fact that without him and Iniesta, nobody else has the ability to consistently create chances.

    There’s also a lack of attacking width, especially during the ongoing injury absence of marquee summer signing Ousmane Dembele.

    Even Dembele is not really a wide player, though, meaning that Gerard Deulofeu is the only natural winger in the squad, with manager Ernesto Valverde consequently forced to fill his flanks with players such as Iniesta, Andre Gomes and Denis Suarez whose preferred action is to cut inside rather than get past the full-back and attack the penalty box from wide.

    Mentioning Valverde, it’s also unclear exactly where this Barca team is heading in a tactical direction, with the former Athletic Bilbao boss experimenting with several different formulas during the opening two months of the campaign.

    In Saturday’s trip to Atletico Madrid, for example, Valverde started out with a loose version of a 4-4-2, with Messi roaming free behind and around Luis Suarez in attack while Gomes and Iniesta appeared as wide-ish midfielders alongside Ivan Rakitic and Sergio Busquets.

    But after an hour with his team trailing and looking unlikely to score, Valverde went for a new approach with the introduction of Deulofeu, who went onto the right wing with Gomes on the left in a 4-2-1-3 which saw Messi given freedom to play wherever he saw fit as the spare ‘1’ behind the front three.

    So considering all those imperfections, to which could be added the lack of a centre forward to back up Suarez and ongoing uncertainty in the right-back position, it’s clear there are still plenty of question marks hanging over Barca despite their position at the top of La Liga.

    One thing which cannot be questioned, however, and which goes a long way to explaining their current spot at the top of the pile, is their hunger: their collective commitment and their willingness to work hard.

    This season, despite yielding nine wins and a draw from the last ten games, has been a struggle for Barca. Wins have rarely come easily, with even supposedly lightweight opponents such as Alaves and Getafe providing plenty of problems.

    Throughout it all, though, Barca have just kept on going, believing in their ability to somehow make things work.

    That was never more evident than Saturday night at Atletico’s new Wanda Metropolitano, where Marc-Andre ter Stegen was by far the busier of the two goalkeepers for the first hour and Atletico’s famous defence was looking comfortable as the hosts closed in on three points.

    In a similar scenario, many teams would have folded and more or less given up, but that is simply not Barca’s way.

    With the significant help of Valverde’s tactical tweak, they gradually found a foothold in the game, established some momentum and started to apply pressure. Cracks appeared in the Atletico defence, chances came and finally one was taken, with Suarez powering home Sergi Roberto’s cross.

    Tellingly, even then Barca didn’t stop going, pushing hard for a winner (which would have been largely undeserved) all the way until the last kick of the game, which saw Jan Oblak make a relieved save from Messi’s free-kick.

    And at the moment, Barca’s sheer persistence and unstinting self-belief is sustaining their season, despite all the obstacles they are facing and the limitations to their squad. They did not play particularly well on Saturday night, but through obstinacy and a refusal to accept defeat they managed to grind out a positive result – repeating the pattern we have seen for much of the season.

    Interestingly, that pattern is also reminiscent of the situation Real Madrid were in roughly this time last year: back then, Zinedine Zidane’s team were not playing particularly well, but they were still somehow collecting win after win after win, often undeserved and often scrambled through scrappy late goals from Sergio Ramos.

    We all know how that story finally unfolded, as Madrid eventually found the quality to go with their tenacity and ended up winning everything.

    And that stubborn winning mentality is, perhaps, an undersung requirement for winning teams.

    To be successful, of course it is necessary to have good players. It is necessary to have an effective tactical system. It is necessary to have strength in depth to cater for inevitable injuries and suspensions.

    But it is also necessary to have determination, guts and persistence, refusing to accept negative outcomes even when things aren’t running smoothly and defeat looks likely.

    That’s what Real Madrid had last season, and it’s what Barcelona have right now. We can’t know if the outcome will be the same, but one thing we can currently say for sure about Valverde’s men is that if they end up falling short, it won’t be for a lack of effort.

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