Josep Maria Bartomeu may need to sign Ousmane Dembele and Philippe Coutinho to save Barcelona job

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Mail
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • WhatsApp
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Paulinho purchase shows everything that is wrong with Barcelona.

    In isolation, Barcelona paying €40million (Dh172m) for Paulinho isn’t as bad a piece of business as it is being considered.

    A survey conducted by Mundo Deportivo revealed 80 per cent of fans didn’t think he was worth more than €20m, let alone if they should sign the defensive midfielder.

    But in today’s market, and with €222m burning a hole in their pocket, €40m for an experienced Brazilian international isn’t quite the great swindle the Catalans are being mocked for. In a tactical sense, he also brings some much needed protection to a worryingly overexposed defence.

    Don’t expect him to have much, if any, impact in the final third bar the odd screamer, but in terms of adding some muscle and steel to the middle of the field, plus covering the forward breaks of Jordi Alba and Aleix Vidal or Sergi Roberto, Barca have given some themselves a degree of security.

    If anything, they’re mimicking what’s happened at the Bernabeu with Casemiro, who is as integral to Real Madrid’s XI now as much as Cristiano Ronaldo or Marcelo.

    Paulinho’s job will be to make his team-mates better and lighten the defensive load on Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi. It makes sense.

    But narrative is everything in football and against the backdrop of Neymar’s departure, an ageing first XI, two of their best La Masia prospects Jordi Mboula and Eric Garcia departing due to a lack of first-team opportunities, for Josep Maria Bartomeu it is, what they call in politics, bad optics.

    So bad, that if Barcelona’s season continues along the calamitous scenes at the Camp Nou on Sunday – Luis Suarez in a perpetual state of moaning, Gerard Pique’s own goal and symbolic late Madrid goals from Cristiano Ronaldo (the present) and Marco Asensio (the future) – Bartomeu may well be inclined to fall on his sword.

    What could save him, is if he can force through deals for what appears to be their only targets – Borussia Dortmund’s Ousmane Dembele and Liverpool’s Philippe Coutinho.

    Bartomeu has placed two very expensive eggs in his basket and with not much time to get anything done.

    President Bartomeu faces a race against time to sign his targets.

    Bartomeu faces a race against time to sign his targets.

    So expensive that if somehow the club manages to pull off this double deal it will more than likely cost them more than the nine figures received from PSG.

    Granted, it will lead to them being in possession of one of the world’s best young attackers and a flexible Iniesta-like replacement, but the pertinent question is: how has one of the world’s elite clubs, who once prided themselves on youth development, got themselves in a situation where they are rushing through transfer targets two weeks before August 31?

    Nobody saw Neymar coming – apart from Pique, apparently – but surely somebody has been formulating a succession plan to Messi, Suarez, Iniesta, Pique etc.

    They only need to look to Real where Florentino Perez and Zinedine Zidane have altered their own transfer policy to the extent that since 2014 they haven’t bought a single first-team-ready player, instead investing in youth, and this season we will see Asensio, Dani Ceballos, Jesus Vallejo, Theo Hernandez and Marcos Llorente taking on greater roles.

    Neymar's move to PSG has exposed Barcelona's lack of planning.

    Neymar’s move to PSG has exposed Barcelona’s lack of planning.

    Barca’s future is their present: Iniesta, 30-year-olds Messi, Suarez and Pique, 29-year-olds Ivan Rakitic and Sergio Busquets and 28-year-old Jordi Alba. Neymar was the seamless transition from Messidependencia.

    Instead, their default setting will now be to revert to the Argentine more so than ever, and in their current guise only Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Samuel Umtiti and Marlon Santos represent hope beyond the next couple of seasons.

    Dembele improves this but such is the timeline Barca have left themselves, his arrival isn’t a given. And their hurried pursuit merely reveals a chronic lack of foresight and planning on the part of Bartomeu and his board.

    As Sid Lowe noted on espnfc.com last week, in 2001 then-president Joan Gaspert was thrown off course by the sale of Luis Figo to Madrid, and in panic threw money at Marc Overmars, Gerard Lopez, Alfonso Perez and Emmanuel Petit.

    Good players, admittedly, but none looked right for the club and, subsequently, all proved failures. Bartomeu has left himself in a position where he is destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. A mess that Paulinho will be hard pressed to clean up.

    Recommended