Barca Tiki Taka Football Is Boring…
- Thread starter mike412
- Start date
I’ll take anything over the boring football of my Panthers, Steelers, and Blues. and all 3 of my teams woes can be blamed on leadership.
I’m one who thinks direct and counter attacking football is more exciting. But when you watch a team like Man City yesterday come out after halftime and break down another teams defense within seconds of Peps halftime talk, you can’t help but appreciate the brilliance of guys like Pep and his Barca ways. Or maybe it’s the Netherlands way.
It all goes back to Rinus Michels and Total Football with Ajax and then the 1974 World Cup Dutch “Clockwork Orange” team. I also like more direct football, and Luis Enrique modified Barca’s style to include some. Ironically, some Barca fans are complaining that yesterday the team played too much direct football. But, when you have fast and offensively skilled left and right backs like Balde and Cancelo, you have to use them. And, they had Gavi, the human Energizer Bunny to cover for them when they came forward.
There are times that Barca complete 20 or more passes which appear to have no purpose. But, if you watch De Jong’s movement during those 14 passes, he was slowly moving Betis players out of position to create the angle for Christensen to play that ball through to Lewandowski. So often De Jong is the creator that I think Betis expected him to be the one playing the through ball.
I bet you wish you had seen more of that from Christensen at Chelsea! I can’t believe he is only 27. It seems like he has been around forever. When he is healthy he is a very steady presence on defense. After the first 20 minutes, when Barca was shaky, he and Kounde were almost perfect.
I mean Betis is a top 6 or 7 team in La Liga and they just got swamped for a 50 minute stretch. Barca scored 5 goals and hit the woodwork 4 times. It was the best I have seen them play since 2015. Unfortunately, it’s the only high quality game they have played in 5 matches this season.
I liked Christensen as a player but he got pulled from lineups because he had stomach issues, nerves, butterflies, whatever it was. And when he played for Denmark, they’d play him in the midfield. So that speaks to his abilities. I do remember Barca tearing him up in a champions league match about 5 years ago. But then again, he was still young and pretty sure it was Messi so that will happen. Lol.
It’s also funny how I really didn’t want De Jong when Chelsea was pursuing him last year. Goes to show how you just never know. I did want Kounde though.
