FC Barcelona lost its match in El Clasico against Real Madrid last Saturday. Then, during the past week, they lost a legal case between the club and its former President, Joan Laporta. Finally, as we saw yesterday, FC Barcelona managed to fall to Celta Vigo 1-to-0. Although Barcelona had the majority of the scoring opportunities, everything and everyone was a step out of sync, and they were unable to get a single goal past Sergio, who had a terrific game.
There are two ways of interpreting Barcelona’s slump:
First, we could blame the business side of the clubs operations. A long drawn out court case being ruled in the favor of your opposition, the clubs natural tendencies for internal power disputes, and the fact that Catalunya is marking November 9th as the date that they will vote on a referendum for Independence all create an environment of tension within the club and with the fans.
Second, and the reason that we think the team is struggling, is because of team-level changes. Suarez, who has not looked in top shape the past two weeks, has served his suspension time, and is now among the ranks of Neymar and Messi. Although this sounds great, the team chemistry has been disrupted, and the high scoring offense we saw a few weeks ago has had a fundamental change. The team carried the loss from El Clasico all week, and let it affect them again against a inferior opponent.
Hopefully they will get this figured out shortly.
Do you agree that this is a Club, team and player issue, or do you feel more heavily in favor of our first point, that the Business behind the game may be creating the majority of the downswing? Comment below!
source: http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/nov/01/barcelona-celta-vigo-la-liga-match-report
FC Barcelona: Club or Business? 