#360view: UCL humiliation sums up Barca's lacklustre season

Andy West 00:41 16/02/2017
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  • Lionel Messi.

    Barcelona’s Champions League debacle at Paris Saint-Germain offered a 90-minute encapsulation of everything that has been bad about the team this season. And make no mistake: it has been a bad season for the Catalan club.

    Although they are still in with a shout in La Liga and have progressed to the Copa del Rey final, their campaign has regularly appeared to be on the brink of collapse, only being rescued by the quality of their individual players rather than anything they are doing as a team unit.

    More specifically, of course, they have been rescued time after time by the genius of Lionel Messi, who has routinely produced spectacular performances to more or less single-handedly keep his team afloat.

    On the few occasions when Messi fails to deliver, however, Barcelona appear to have little else to offer – and that was certainly the case on Tuesday, when the Argentine delivered one of his worst performances in Blaugrana colours and his teammates followed suit.

    One particularly worrying recurrent theme of their season has been their struggles against top-quality opposition. Although they have routinely put mid or lower-table teams to the sword, most recently their 6-0 thrashing of Alaves on Saturday, when they come up against teams closer to their own level they invariably struggled.

    In La Liga, for instance, they have only one won once against top-six opposition, when Messi’s magic orchestrated a thrilling 2-1 triumph at Sevilla.

    That’s a far cry from the success they enjoyed two seasons ago, when a brutally difficult Champions League run presented no problems to Luis Enrique’s men as they consecutively swept aside the reigning champions of England (Manchester City), France (PSG), Germany (Bayern Munich) and Italy (Juventus) en route to glory.

    The prospect of the current team being capable of beating so many top-quality opponents looks extremely remote, with Barcelona’s chances of winning a game reduced to the question of whether Messi will win it for them.

    The responsibility for that collective failure falls, of course, on the manager, and the reports widely circulating in Spain that Luis Enrique is nearing the end of his reign are almost certainly accurate.

    Throughout his time in charge, even when Barca were beating all-comers and claiming every trophy available, Enrique has laboured under the accusation that his team was winning despite him, rather than because of him.

    Fans can be divided into two roughly equal camps: those who believe the players are the only ones responsible for their success, and those who believe Enrique deserves more credit for keeping them on an even keel.

    The latter camp is rapidly dwindling in numbers, and the way Enrique was comprehensively out-thought by PSG boss Unai Emery on Tuesday was a stark indictment of his tactical abilities.

    The die was cast right from the opening whistle, with PSG’s high pressing forcing Marc-Andre ter Stegen into a pair of uncomfortably hurried clearances, both of which resulted in possession being conceded.

    From that moment onwards, Barca knew they would not enjoy the luxury of building their attacks from the back before bringing their superstar forward line into the action, and they had no answers.

    Their defensive weaknesses were also laid bare, with the home team’s second, third and fourth goals all coming after PSG players were allowed to run at least 20 yards towards goal without even being challenged.

    Even at half-time, Enrique was unable to effect any meaningful changes. His switch to a 4-2-3-1 formation, ostensibly designed to place Messi more centrally, made no difference because the Argentine had been spending most of his time infield anyway, and PSG dominated the second half just as much as they did the first.

    As good as Messi is, he can’t solve everything on his own, and the only man who can fix the team’s many structural problems is the manager. Whether Luis Enrique is capable of doing so is the million-dollar question.

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