Barcelona sent in an incredible 45 crosses from open-play in the entire match and it took them 90minutes to finally break the Granada defence.
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Barcelona came from behind to earn a 1-1 draw against a lowly ranked Granada in the La Liga fixture on Monday. Central Defender Ronald Araujo scored a late equalizer to cancel out Domingos Duarte’s opener. After being humbled by Bayern Munich in the mid-week Champions League fixture it was yet another setback for Ronal Koeman’s men. Meanwhile other than the result, the talking point has been the tactics deployed by the Dutchman. Barcelona is usually known for their possession-based football known as ‘tiki-taka’ but at Camp Nou, they played more of a direct football with three big frontmen.
Towards the final quarter of the game, Barcelona played with three target-man-forward Luuk de Jong and make-shift strikers Araujo and Gerard Pique. It was very unusual to see such tactics from a Barcelona side whom we were so used to seeing play with a flair and tactical brilliance in the past.
Koeman said: ‘Barca right now is not the Barca of eight years ago.
‘We play the Barca way but we don’t have the speed in wide areas because we have Coutinho who cuts inside and Demir who doesn’t reach the byline much.
‘When Ansu Fati and Dembele come back then we will be different but they are not fit so we have to find alternatives.’
Koeman’s side sent in an incredible 45 crosses from open play in the entire match and it took them 90minutes to finally break the Granada defense. Araujo was the best player for Blaugrana, not for his defensive skills but for his attacking play. The 22-year-old used his tall figure effectively to get at the end of crosses consistently. And finally got on the scoresheet after heading home from Paez Gaviria’s cross.
Barcelona has been struggling with financial problems and therefore hasn’t been able to make the desired signings during the summer transfer window. The best Barcelona team of 2011 and 2015 consisted of a world-class midfield. The likes of Sergio Busquets, Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta, Ivan Rakitic, Lionel Messi were extremely talented and capable of finding their way through the best defense in the world.
Messi, Xavi, and Iniesta had telepathy between them that they could find each other even with a closed eye. Bot now, Buquets is the only one who remains from that legendary team. Philippe Coutinho who joined Barca from Liverpool with lots of promise has delivered very little. The Brazilian was considered as a replacement for Iniesta but unfortunately has been nowhere near his best at Camp Nou.
At 33, Busquets still has the skill set to pull the strings from the middle but he is not getting ample support from his fellow midfielders. However, Koeman can still be optimistic because Frankie de Jong, Ansu Fati, and Ousmane Dembele are sidelined with injuries and once they are back things could get better.
Dutch midfielder De Jong has been a livewire since leaving Ajax in 2019. His ability to deliver defense-splitting passes and make attacking runs were clearly missed against Granada. Therefore, once Koeman has a full-strength squad at his disposal things we might see a better Barcelona side.
