And suddenly, the Barça was disconnected. Hansi Flick’s team had been showing signs of fatigue and tiredness for weeks, the famous “shit November” that the German coach said, more mental than physical, as if everything shown until the month of November had been diluted in the last games, going from an overwhelming and full-fledged Barça to a timid and incapable one. The Blaugrana transform the best teams they face into smaller ones and the theoretically small ones into insurmountable giants. It happened against Las Palmas and it happened again against Leganés.
In Dani Olmo the culer found a player who floated and who turned everything he touched into gold. Rayo, Valladolid and Girona presaged a brutal qualitative leap, because the man from Egara seemed to have the superpower of transforming water into wine, something that never really belonged to him. Olmo is a fantastic player who seems to have lost steam, as if aware of his weakened physique he played by regulating himself, thinking both about what he does and what he saves, and Barça is a team built so that it is Olmo who makes the difference when the rival sinks. Without him at his level, everything seems worse.
It became clear that Lamine Yamal touched, even without dribbling, he is better than Raphinha on the right. The youth player has the ability to invent, to fix, open and break down situations that for the Brazilian are like unintelligible formulas: a matter of technique and talent. While for Lamine everything is natural, for Rapha everything is forced, and In the second half, Barça noticed the absence of Yamal in life and the subsequent absence without him on the field. Everything was simplified. Centers and a funnel that suffocated a team that only found in Pedri an answer to the suffering. The canary is the most consistent player of the season and the only one who seems to remember, every three days, what Flick demands.
The consequences of your three forwards being earthly is that you do not score everything they generate and more. Barça no longer leaves tips. He barely has enough to pay his rent, and accustomed to an abundance that was not sustainable, scoring three at a time before half-time, this blackout surprises and shocks those who believed they lived in perpetual wealth. The truths always come out when something goes wrongand the one about this team is that the distance between the starters and the substitutes grows when the first ones are badthat the team needs a winger who in these lock scenarios has something different on the left and that football does not give up. What was worth it yesterday, tomorrow will be a dead letter.
The Champions League maintains a very poor level in the League, something paradoxical considering that this team always lived in reverse, finding routine in the League and terror in the Champions League. It seems that this Barça cannot have it all even having seen that it is capable of it. In moments of weakness, the lack of depth of this squad is highlighted and that much of what has been achieved so far was born from an inspiration and punctuality that is difficult to sustain. Barça knew how to win when they deserved it, but they will have to learn to rebel against their own laziness and mistakes. Champions are always made on ugly days.
