Ban shows up Barca flaws
Reprimanded champions cannot rely on finding new blood to fix leaky defence Impressive City grab early advantage over Chelsea in title race
Summers at Barcelona need some theatre. Usually, the stagehands have by midAugust readied Camp Nou, on some scorching afternoon, to make a presentation that at once reminds the club of the strength of its own fanbase and sends a message to Madrid about Barca’s long lines of credit.
Recent pre-seasons have had tens of thousands flocking to the unveilings of Neymar, or Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Twelve months back, there was the big spend on Luis Suarez. This year, the new European champions and treble-holders cannot do that sort of thing. Barca’s transfer ban — imposed by Fifa for the duration of 2015 for infringing regulations on the recruitment of players under the age of 18 — has made the summer a little flat. There was a presidential election last month, but because of the ban, the manifestos were unusually light on bold promises that superstar X or Y would be dazzling voters if they cast their ballot this way or that.
Barca will have fresh faces in the team before the end of a Liga campaign that starts next weekend, but the two senior men identified as most important to the improvement of the squad, the Turkish attacking midfielder Arda Turan and fullback or winger Aleix Vidal, must wait until January to fully participate.
Arda, who has left Atletico Madrid, and Vidal, who won the Europa League last May with Sevilla, agreed to join Barca knowing that, because of the Fifa restriction, they would give up six months of their careers, waiting and watching.
At least it has not been dull. If Vidal felt torn as a touchline observer at the UEFA Super Cup last week, between his old employer and his new one, he would have been frazzled by the time the contest went into extra-time; a Barcelona defence he will be asked Sergio Aguero, Vincent Kompany and Fernandinho scored as Manchester City crushed Chelsea 3-0 yesterday to establish a five-point advantage over the champions early in the English Premier League season.
Aguero celebrated his return to the starting XI by scoring a 31st-minute opener before Kompany and Fernandinho made the game safe.
The well-earned victory continued City’s impressive start to the season following their 3-0 win at West to serve had conceded four times, let a three-goal slip away, and won 5-4 thanks only to the intervention of Pedro, a player who will be allowed to leave Barca in the next fortnight partly because Arda is coming in.
And if Vidal and Arda felt at all reassured to hear their captain, Andres Iniesta, pointing out, “it’s not normal, we’re not used to this” about the leaky defence, there will be a few thousand sitting around that patient pair for the second leg of the domestic Super Cup against Athletic Bilbao who are not. Athletic lead 4-0 at the halfway stage of Spain’s equivalent of the Community Shield. On Saturday night, the Basque Bromwich Albion and gave manager Manuel Pellegrini a first win over his nemesis Jose Mourinho since the Portuguese returned to Chelsea in 2013.
“To win 3-0 in two games, one against the champions — we are just starting the season, but it’s important to play in the way we did today,” Pellegrini told Sky Sports.
“We always dominate Chelsea. Maybe we draw against them last year and before we lost, but always team capitalised on a series of defensive errors to humiliate the champions.
Put starkly, in Iniesta’s era as club captain — he has replaced the departed Xavi — conceding four goals per competitive outing is entirely normal. Barcelona 2015-16: Two official matches, eight goals conceded. In the five preceding preseason friendlies, eight more went in against them. “Teams are built on defensive strength and we are letting a lot of goals in,” said Iniesta after the Bilbao blitz, “and that becomes more and more demoralis- we dominate Chelsea. Today we made the complete work.”
City are now top of the table, above Leicester City and Manchester United on goal difference.
Defeat completed a miserable week for Mourinho, widely criticised for demoting his medics Eva Carneiro and Jon Fearn after last weekend’s 2-2 draw with Swansea City, and means Chelsea have failed to win one of their first two league games for the first time since 1998. ing’’. Most ambitious, heavyweight clubs who shipped goals in the quantity Barcelona have would likely be hunting around for a solid centreback and doing a deal rapidly. Barcelona cannot, and the imperfections about what cover they do have across the defence suddenly seem pronounced.
There’s the enigma that is Thomas Vermaelen, signed a year ago, injured for all but a few playing minutes of the treble campaign and for that rather an unknown quantity to Barca supporters and colleagues. Then there’s the uneasy feeling that the back four is too often staffed by footballers who are versatile, but might just offer greater reassurance if they were true specialists. Four years into his reconfiguration at Barca into a central defender, Javier Mascherano is still a midfielder for Argentina, and sometimes for his club. Frenchman Jeremy Mathieu alternates between left-back and the middle of defence, while Adriano has accumulated his hefty stash of medals without quite ever establishing a standout virtue that isn’t his reputation for being able to do a sound job in almost every outfield position. Adriano looked at fault for Athletic’s third goal at San Mames on Friday. By the time Athletic had a fourth, the idea that Barcelona could finish 2015 with six trophies, by winning the Spanish, UEFA and Fifa bonus cups that a Treble sets up, appeared distant.
Head coach Luis Enrique hopes the attempt to overturn a four-goal deficit will at least provide the summer with some theatre. “If any team is capable of coming back from this, it is this one,” he declared, without pausing to reflect too long on the fact that less than a week ago Sevilla had very nearly come back from four down, at Barcelona’s expense.
Mourinho protested that the scoreline reflected a “fake result”.
“We were the best team by far in the second half. What they did in the first, we did in the second,” he said.
Earlier, Arsene Wenger breathed a sigh of relief as Arsenal got their title challenge up and running with a hardfought 2-1 win at Crystal Palace.
After slumping to a dismal 2-0 defeat against West Ham United in their opening game, Wenger’s side had no margin for error at Selhurst Park if they wanted to avoid being cast adrift in the title race.
They rose to the challenge, securing a first league win of the season thanks to Olivier Giroud’s 16th-minute volley and a Damien Delaney own goal in the 55th minute after Joel Ward had blasted Palace level.
“If we had gone two games and zero points it would be absolutely difficult,” Wenger said, “we knew this would be a tricky one.”