you say that but Bellingham from Championship is GOAT this season lol
Incoming rant, sorry
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Yes, I wouldn't argue that Premier League stars are good, but it's a 50/50 gamble. For every Ronaldo, Modric, Alonso we have Beckham, Owen, Coutinho, etc.. And the thing is that Barca have enough talents that are, I would argue, comparable to Dembele, Griezmann, Coutinho,... potential when they were bought. Sure a wonderkid making it throught to top tier is 1 in thousands but La Masia never lack talents. Yet we saw how Barca copied the Galaticos strat of early 2000s Real and like the Galaticos 1.0, it crashed and burned. We bought Coutinho and made him played LW ffs, and that transfer also strengthened Liverpool and lead to the second remontada against us in a row, followed by the nightmarish night next year, in which Coutinho scored two against us lol. We misidentified and misvalued the talents and value of both our academy players and the stars that we brought in.
Also on the topic of scouting, to give you a summary, our former technical assistant, Ramon Planes, reported to the board about Diaz, Darwin Nunez, Enzo Fernandez, Julian Alvarez, Tchoumeni, Amadou Onana and many more , even about De Ligt and De Jong long before their breakthrough season at Ajax, they even got eyes on Bellingham. He also suggested us about the potential of De Zerbi and recommended us the keep him on our list. We actually was quite close to getting Tchoumeni, he even sent a former deal to them but in the end the board all vetoes against it. And Bartomeu brought in Dembele, Coutinho, Griezmann, Lenglet, Dest,... Laporta spent over 200 mil to bring in Raphinha, Ferran, Lewan, Kounde, a fuck ton of salary spot for old players like Gundogan, Martinez. I am not saying that it's their faults, I have nothing against them, they are not the one that give them the fees, the club did, but the prices that we spent is absolutely not justified on them and it's entirely on the board.
The club sold their own assets in a hope of immediately coming back to competitive, a foolish decision. Instead of going the Liverpool or MC route and letting a long term project to develop, what we got after 2 and a half year was a squad riddled with injuries, one CL group stage exist, this year we are going in without our two most talented and important midfielders while Napoli is reviving, the Laliga is all but lost and if the club are not careful, top 4 might be in danger. Xavi did all he could, bringing back a Laliga and a Supercopa but ultimately, he failed, both from his weakness as a coach and how the board let him down. Real Madrid is close to assemble their third Galaticos, this time a REALLY young team that can potentially dominated for the next decade while we struggled to even register our players.
I have been watching Barcelona ever since 2008, starting with my love for the Xavi-Iniesta duo, and never have I felt so pessimistic watching football before. When we still got Messi, there is still hope that he can somehow save us from time to time, now? There is nothing left to hope for, everything in this club is fucked, the board is a bunch of incompetence and nepotist fucks, the fanbase are increasingly becoming more toxic and divided days after days. The players, I wished them the best and for them to be able to get the fuck out of this sinking ship and achieve their own glories, from Frenkie, Pedri, Yamal, Balde, Gavi...they deserved so much more than this, especially the youngsters who literally ruined themselves because we abused them and attacked them the moment they failed to perform, if only you could see how they treated Balde, Pedri or Gavi, Yamal, Roque... Unless the socios seriously sit down and change, unless the culture of the club go through a revolution, there is nothing to be save. Barcelona is doomed. 16 years of watching the blaugrana shirt and never has I felt so sad, and worse, so empty seeing this team plays and function.