Marco Verratti demands move to Barcelona but Xavi's €100m heir won't solve all their midfield problems

Andy West 22:21 12/06/2017
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  • Ever since Xavi declined and then departed, there has been a big hole in the heart of Barcelona’s midfield. A very big hole.

    The captain was not just an important player for Barca, he was the important player – even more so than Lionel Messi – in terms of defining the team’s overall structure, so it is only natural that his presence has been sorely missed.

    It’s also only natural that Marco Verratti is being heavily linked with a summer move to Camp Nou, because the Italian international is one of the best possible options for Barca to strengthen an area of the pitch which has been below par since Xavi’s departure.

    That’s not to suggest that Verratti is a carbon copy of Xavi. Nobody ever could be, and the two players are very different in many of their strengths and capabilities, with Verratti a far more physical player but falling well short of Xavi’s peerless passing powers.

    One crucial thing they do have in common, however, is their intensity. Because he was so good with the ball at his feet, one aspect of Xavi’s game which was always criminally under-regarded was his work-rate.

    He simply never stopped running, either with or without the ball, shuttling back and forth in an attempt to create space when his team had possession or deny it to the opposition whenever the ball was lost, and Verratti is similar in his tireless quest to win and then keep the ball.

    However, Barca fans should not fool themselves into thinking their team’s obvious problems in midfield would be simply solved in one swoop by prising Verratti away from Paris Saint-Germain.

    Rather than the identity of the individuals, the Catalan club’s problems in the last few years have been organisational, and the main task facing incoming coach Ernesto Valverde is not determining which players he is able to select, but how he uses them.

    Barca’s starting trio in midfield since Xavi’s demise has been Ivan Rakitic, Sergio Busquets and Andres Iniesta. That’s hardly a shabby bunch and, indeed, while those three players were part of a focussed collective unit during the 2014/15 season they were good enough to win a league, cup and European treble (with Rakitic scoring the opener in the Champions League final against Juventus).

    But after entering into a cycle of individualism which left the team ragged and disjointed for much of last season, those same three players could not do anything to prevent humiliating 3-0 and 4-0 defeats against Juve and PSG respectively.

    Rakitic, Busquets and Iniesta had not suddenly become bad players – they are obviously all world class – but they did find themselves in a team without a sense of direction, where far too much emphasis was placed on letting Lionel Messi and, to a lesser extent, Neymar do whatever they want and hope it would be enough.

    Let’s be honest: if Rakitic had been taken out of the team that was battered and bruised by Juve and replaced by Verratti, it would not have made much difference.

    Barca did not lose that game, or miss out to Real Madrid in La Liga, because their midfielders were not good enough. Rather, they fell short because their team structure was not good enough.

    Taking one player out and replacing him with another would not have addressed the bigger collective issues which left them vulnerable in defence and one-dimensional in attack, and working out how his pieces can move together is much more important for Valverde than who those pieces actually are.

    Verratti is a great player, but he won’t solve everything on his own.

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