Barcelona mismanagement leading to a decline

All (great) sports teams go through peaks and troughs. Maybe it's simply the end of a cycle? But their transfer dealings have been close to a shambles, it must be said.

Then again, how easy is it to replace players like Xavi and Iniesta? I agree with the Thiago bit though. They should have done everything they could to hold on to him, but then again, the great SAF did (sort of) similar by holding on/relying on maybe Scholes/Giggs a bit too long, and allowing a talent like Pogba to seek minutes elsewhere.

@FCBarca

I think you've mentioned or alluded to this a couple of times iirc. Or well, especially the mismanagement bit under Rosell I think.

Edit: I also recall a similar thread just before or after Enrique was appointed....and what happened? They went on to win the treble iirc :lol:

Edit edit:It's also pretty weird to see Ramos "only" earning 165k. Thought he'd be their second highest paid player or thereabout.
 
Decent article and they have clearly been mismanaged in recent years. Some really poor signings and bad contracts handed out.

The age of their squad is a big problem and doesn't get enough mention imo. Messi, Pique, Iniesta, Suarez and Mascherano all on the wrong side of 30 with Busquets and Rakitic not far behind. Apart from Neymar these are their best players.
 
They've been really poor in the transfer market and they are left with an ageing squad.

they've spent all summer 'tapping up' Verrati, PSG are not going to sell him especially not for the money Barcelona can offer.
 
The wages says it all (if those figures are true), compare Madrid's to Barcelona's......I'm getting a headache.

Just to highlight a few examples.

-Douglas (loaned-out) 26 £35,000 3 Years (2019) vs Daniel Carvajal £35,000 (4 Years) 2020
-Jérémy Mathieu 32 £90,000 2 Years (2018) vs Marcelo £80,000 (4 Years) 2020
-André Gomes (new signing) 23 £80,000 5 years (2021) vs Isco £60,000 (2 Years) 2018

Now I'm sure some Carvajal and Isco will get a raise but the point still stands, its criminal that we pay such high wages for players who barely contribute.
 
Feel sorry for Valverde taking what is likely his dream job and getting them at this stage. The Bilbao players obviously liked him and didn't want him to go. It is going to be a difficult job. A lot of egos.
 
Dembeza said:
This can't be real :eek::eek:
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Yeah was going to point this out as well, if all those figures are right forget Barcelona overpaying clearly Marcelo needs to start his 'muy triste' talk. Madrid are taking the piss with some of their player wages.
 
They've been poor off the pitch for awhile and unsurprisingly it's having an impact on the pitch now. And that's why football being a team sport is so important and times neglected. You can have that absurdly good front three and still be exploited by teams if the rest/management is poor.

I mean look at their midfield. There's nothing particularly great about it whatsoever other than days when iniesta turns back the clock. They've replaced Dani Alves with Sergie Roberto. And somehow players like Matheu and Gomes play for Barcelona.
 
I can see them trying for Romeu as a last resort and being quoted 40M.
 
DomesticTadpole said:
Feel sorry for Valverde taking what is likely his dream job and getting them at this stage. The Bilbao players obviously liked him and didn't want him to go. It is going to be a difficult job. A lot of egos.
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Most big teams have egos. Barcelona aren't particularly bad in that respect. Issues appear to lie in their transfer activity and leadership (president, board).
 
amolbhatia50k said:
Most big teams have egos. Barcelona aren't particularly bad in that respect. Issues appear to lie in their transfer activity and leadership (president, board).
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Problem he has is if they are deciding who to buy and not getting him who he wants. Then the bad investment is going to continue.
 
Theyve invested shockingly but on the pitch isnt it just back to business as usual? They have always been the #2 club in Spain with ups and downs on the pitch for as long as I can remember and beyond. They just had a freak crop of academy graduates.
 
Carvajal £35k, Marcelo £80k and Isco £60k? Surely that's not right, even if it's after tax?
 
The reality is that it's hard to replace the likes of Adriano, Seydou Keita and others Pedro for cheap. People will call it mismanagement, I will call it normal outcome. And Barcelona are very competitive.
 
Culero said:
Yeah was going to point this out as well, if all those figures are right forget Barcelona overpaying clearly Marcelo needs to start his 'muy triste' talk. Madrid are taking the piss with some of their player wages.
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Remember you dont have to pay tax in Spain though.
 
Kasper said:
Carvajal £35k, Marcelo £80k and Isco £60k? Surely that's not right, even if it's after tax?
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Think I remember reading a few years ago that the so called 'prestige' of playing for Madrid added with the commercial deals you get from it mean they get away with paying lower wages.

Edit: also remember hearing that for Barca but looks like they are paying way over the odds for some of their players but remember hearing Fabregas took a wage cut to go back.
 
Castia said:
They've been really poor in the transfer market and they are left with an ageing squad.

they've spent all summer 'tapping up' Verrati, PSG are not going to sell him especially not for the money Barcelona can offer.
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And it looks like Paulinho and Lucas Lima are their backup plans if they can not get Verratti.
 
JPRouve said:
The reality is that it's hard to replace the likes of Adriano, Seydou Keita and others Pedro for cheap. People will call it mismanagement, I will call it normal outcome. And Barcelona are very competitive.
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Yeah, when you reach the kind of pinnacle that Barcelona reached, the only way is down eventually.
 
Brwned said:
Yeah, when you reach the kind of pinnacle that Barcelona reached, the only way is down eventually.
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Though the Thiago debacle was ridiculous, they only had to play him for the last game iirc.
 
If Barcelona is on the decline, so let me say the European Football is also on the decline. We are going to die :(

I would like to be a fan of club that frequently wins the Champions League
 
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JPRouve said:
Though the Thiago debacle was ridiculous, they only had to play him for the last game iirc.
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No doubt theres been loads of mistakes at the senior level across player purchases, salary negotiations, managerial hiring etc. but they're an inevitable result of Barcelona's success - hubris, complacency, inspired competition etc.
 
Barca's strongest point has always been their youth academy. They have never been good at signing players (apart from Neymar and Suarez).
 
No way carvajal is on 35grand a week. Money teams would happily multiply that by five to get a hold of him, he's one of the best RB's in the world.
 
I'm sure they'll have some brilliant young players coming through again over the next few seasons. as Brwned said the only way is down when you've absolutely dominated like that. It was an extraordinary cycle. They'll be back no doubt.
 
Santi_Mesut_Alexis_87 said:
Barca's strongest point has always been their youth academy. They have never been good at signing players (apart from Neymar and Suarez).
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It surprising that their youth academy struggles to produce great players since 10 years i.e. the generation of Xavi/Iniesta/Fabregas & co.
 
Didn't Barca have some dodgy executives like Rosell etc? Some of their signings. :lol:
 
Football like any other sport is a cycle. We dominated in late 2000s ans would have continued to do so had we kept ronaldo and tevez . Barca are lucky to have messi , but now their time may come to an end. Real madrid have become the flavour of the decade and rightly so. They boast of world-class players playing in a less competitive league. They literally won the la liga playing their B side. What else to say. But like I said it is a cycle. Unfortunately for english clubs , the competition is too high. Unlike in bundesliga where Bayern can poach the best player in the league, top english clubs cannot do that.

But I am confident english clubs will again start dominating European football and hopefully it is us.
 
Estimated salaries of Real Madrid players

stipendi-real-madrid-2016-2017-1.png
 
AshRK said:
Football like any other sport is a cycle. We dominated in late 2000s ans would have continued to do so had we kept ronaldo and tevez . Barca are lucky to have messi , but now their time may come to an end. Real madrid have become the flavour of the decade and rightly so. They boast of world-class players playing in a less competitive league. They literally won the la liga playing their B side. What else to say. But like I said it is a cycle. Unfortunately for english clubs , the competition is too high. Unlike in bundesliga where Bayern can poach the best player in the league, top english clubs cannot do that.

But I am confident english clubs will again start dominating European football and hopefully it is us.
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The EPL is the wealthiest league in the world: their clubs can plunder 95% of foreign clubs.
 
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Surely their academy is about to produce some more future regular first team players? I can only assume that some of the best young talent on the planet is in their junior teams.
 
JPRouve said:
The reality is that it's hard to replace the likes of Adriano, Seydou Keita and others Pedro for cheap. People will call it mismanagement, I will call it normal outcome. And Barcelona are very competitive.
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Its mismanagement due to the fact they have so much money tied up in the wages of the front 3.
Barça could easily have replaced those players if their finances weren't such a mess.
 
Barca are ruthless when it comes to their standard of football though. They would never tolerate a player like messi
Even ibrahimovic couldn't cut it for them
We're still stuck with Rooney.
 
Santi_Mesut_Alexis_87 said:
Barca's strongest point has always been their youth academy. They have never been good at signing players (apart from Neymar and Suarez).
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All comes back to the board of Rosell/Bartomeu. Among the many wrongs committed against the club, the erosion of the cantera & it's foundation is perhaps the most egregious.
 
Still can't believe they didn't keep Thiago or sign Isco.
 
Madrid always seem to spend the bulk of their expenditure on the transfer costs, because the players they target are desperate to play for them, they dont need to prop up player salaries for an incentive to play for them.

However i would have assumed the same for Barca as well, seems like their negotiating team is aweful looking at those wages. Just because you can afford something doesn't mean you should pay that rate it sets a precedent.

Its one of the issues with uniteds current trajectory, we're having to overspend because of mismanagement and decline, but where does that leave us in 5 years time after building that reputation? sure we have the money, but is that really the best way of correcting a decline?

Barca were always going to hit problems, as people have said, you dont lose players like Xavi, Puyol and the host of other characters they've had at their prime without hitting some rocks along the way.

They've had some shockers in their recent transfer history, and they add up.
 
Our squad management has been poor, no doubt. I don't think it's been quite as bad as others do, some of the players haven't done what we would have hoped. Enrique takes a share of the blame for his long term move away from midfield control of matches. The squad is an odd development. In the 15-16 season, we were cruising along in all tournaments, but Enrique wasn't rotating enough. Eventually, the players hit a massive wall of physical and mental fatigue, starting with Villareal away where we went from a comfortable 2-0 lead to clinging on for a 2-2 draw, then we went over a period of losing several league games and going out of the CL. It wasn't by accident that during that league run in, when our fixtures went back to 1 a week, the performances recovered and we won the Double.

The signings over this period appeared to be decent enough IMO in parts. Umtiti has done well and should grow in the role. Turan was massively disappointing, particularly coming in and being quoted as saying he was happy to leave Atletico because he wants to run less. :S Digne was supposed to be a full back cover for either side, Gomes was Liga proven cover for midfield, Vidal started to play well when he came in before getting that injury that took him out of most of last season. Guys like Alcacer are weird signings, he doesn't do anything a cantera product couldn't also do. There have obviously been squad mistakes made. Enrique isn't the visionary that Guardiola is, thus the football isn't as advanced and at times we are basically waiting on Messi to lift the team to results. The overall team strength has deteriorated, and there has been no planning for slowly replacing Iniesta, or Alves. Sergi Roberto has done as well as he could have done, but to me he should either have been worked on as a long term replacement for Busquets, or most likely shown the door. Rakitic IMO is the only midfield signing of recent years that gives us what we need in there.

The overall signing plan has been pretty poor, so much money has been spent on players we didn't play, or barely played. Obviously someone was gettint fat cheques out of those deals.

I think there is still plenty of room in this squad to continue winning big trophies, after all it was only 1 season ago we were back to back Double winners. They need to work on blooding young players with a view of establishing them in the squad, and finding top level replacements for Ineista and Alves in the first instance.
 
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I don't understand why they are paying such high wages. Barcelona, like Real Madrid, are a team that most players want to play for and they don't need to overpay to convince a player to join them. To top it off, they are paying high wages to players who probably wouldn't have options as good as Barcelona to begin with.
 
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