A very interesting debate started “HERE”, about the worth of fighting for the Spanish Cup, and how may that effect the club chances to win la liga, and the champions league. Some fans confessed that: “If we lose in the cup, I will be glad”, and thats understandable for being so dispirit to win the champions instead, but is it true that winning against Espanyol hammered our chances in the CL so we cried desperately demanding a defeat against our hated rivals?? And now against Mallorca? Can we win the treble? Or we need to pick two out of three? Or one title will stamp a successful season? But most importantly, do we really have the luxury to pick any guaranteed choices?
Where do we stand at the moment in the three competitions?
La liga
Played 21 games, gathered 56 points creating a Margin of 12 points far from the nearest opponent battling in the second place. Keeping in mind a reasonable prediction that every team WILL lose AT LEAST 6 more points out of the remaining 51 points till the end of the season, that will give you at least18 points risk margin, in the other hand, winning against Real Madrid 2-0 in the classico first leg earned us a virtual extra point (So the margin is virtually 19 points) advantage, a Virtual point we will only lose if Real Madrid prevented us from scoring any goal at their home defeating us 3-0 in the el Classico second leg (Sorry, but unlikely). Dropping less than this margin of points in the following 17 games guarantee you the liga.
Our closest Opponent-Real Madrid- will not get any better in my opinion, I think in the previous few games they got everything they wish, the psychological boost of changing the coach, played without injuries (talking about the players who will serve them till the end of the season and excluding the long term injuries), their players hit the peak and offered the best performance they can, specially Robben and Diarra the second, and got the supernatural help of refereeing mistakes. Still, they only grabbed points but the performance was awful as Real Madrid fans admit. The following page will not be as shiny specially if it happened and they knocked out Liverpool in the Champions’ league, because that will suck the energy out of their shallow squad that lack depth. Not to mention the out of field crises they have and will no doubt leave an impact on the over all performance.
The other opponents are quality, yet for different reasons they don’t have the “it” to be taken seriously as title contenders, but only as bothersome competitors at their best.
Champions’ league
Atlético, Porto, Lyon, Barcelona, Arsenal, Roma, Internazionale, Man United, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Chelsea, Juventus, Villarreal, Panathinaikos, Sporting, and Bayern.
That’s the Bowl of teams standing in a row to try to win the title. The most certain fact we know is that we will play Lyon in the following stage, and hey! It’s not a finished business! Now after knocking out Lyon, the other teams results will define our path, if the English or Italian teams dominated their opponents then we –Barcelona FC- will be in the row of “The Others” standing near the wall for the dominant English/Italian clubs to pick their opponents from the rest of other nations’ clubs, so we will play against (Arsenal/Roma-Man utd/Inter-Chelsea/Juventus-or Liverpool). If the Spanish clubs dominated (and it happens if the England vs Italian clubs games knocked out a mix of both and Real Madrid did that miracle we know) then the Spanish clubs will be the ones to pick opponents from “The others” and that will give us a better chance to be drawn against the only light opponent (Sporting if they defeated Bayern) or else – again- one of the Italian/English big boots mentioned above added to Bayern. The last condition will be a “non dominance nation” results, where a mix of Spanish-Italian-English clubs qualify and that may offer us the best scenario to pick a non Italian/English club like Porto, Panathinaikos, Sporting or Bayern (if we can label the Bavarian as an easier opponent) and theoretically that will be the best –easiest- option to keep going forward.
Conclusion: The Best scenario is: Porto defeats Atletico and Panathinaikos defeats Villarreal creating options for us to be drawn against Porto or Panathinaicos if Real Madrid knocks out Liverpool preventing English clubs from being the dominant nation picking from others, and the Three English vs Italian clubs games end up promoting two-and-three from each country. The result will be then: Two clubs from Spain, two/three from England, and Three/two from Italy, added to Panathinaikos, Porto and Sporting/Bayern. That will give us a 50/50 chance to get it easy in the following stage.
Some may wonder why bothering ourselves in all these storming probabilities, “we have the best squad so get me any team!!!” calm down dude... Knowing that my next article will be about Champions league I will not go more in details about our Champions’ league challenge, all what I will say for now is that this is a knock out competition, the “Weaker” the opponents you get on the way are, the less you will be threatened by an unpleasant surprise. We know in knock out stages surprises happen all the time, and surprise in football means based on my Foxford Dictionary –yes with “F”- Surprise: the best team LOSE.
YES, I pray to get one of the teams that lack the quality needed to create a surprise so they don’t get advantage of a Barcelona Bad day in the wrong timing. That’s a part of what’s Called “Champions’ luck”.
Beside, Listing the scenarios mentioned above makes it more exciting to follow the rest of the games results beside our game, and strangely will make those who wish Real Madrid the worse usually, to wish them the best for their game, ONLY for that one! It also has a sweet flavor that they open an easier Path for us to win the Champions’ league because I can’t see them doing two miracles in one season, just one at most (beating Liverpool). Note: I don’t mind to live in the era where Barcelona and Real Madrid Meet in the Champions’ league Final, God! Just imagine!
Furthermore, and linked to our Road Map to titles, there is a chance we secure a good result against the likes of Porto in the first leg so the second leg becomes less demanding physically saving our players energy –as we demand when we ask to drop the cup- but with all my respect to our squad brilliance its unlikely happening against an English/Italian opponent.
All in all, Champions league is too complicated to put all your eggs there. So we need to ride the Challenge to win it without allowing that challenge to ride us.
Spanish Cup:
As we all know, we are three games far from the title, we already played six games against Benidorm, Atletico and Espanyol back and forth where none of the games was an easy trip. To win the title we need to pass Mallorca and then challenging either Sevilla or Bilbao in the final.
Do we drop the cup?
First of all, if Pep Guardiola and Co are asking themselves this question, it’s automatically a notable strategic mistake from their behalf. The mistake they committed is not discussing the option, but discussing it NOW. Usually Coaches set their objectives at the beginning of the season, and only reconsider it if something unavoidable and unexpected happens during the season –Injury crises, Drop in form, ect…- or if they figured out the early objectives set were not realistic or attainable. No injury crises on the horizon –We are still in the minimal rate of injures per season and we will get one of our long term injured guys back, Milito- and drop in form? Are you kidding me? So there is no need for the original plans to be changed. But what are the original plans?
For a big team like Barcelona, the target will never be “reaching the semi finals”, it’s either fighting for the title or ignoring it and handing it to the second string of players to test their potentials and polish their talents. In brief, the objective from the start was winning this cup, or else we would have seen more of Pedro, Víctor Vázquez, Thiago, Maric, Jeffren, Rochina, Abraham, Gai, Xavi Torres and Corcoles beside Victor Sanchez, Caceres, Busquets and Bojan lead by Sylvinho and Pinto as grandfathers. But for Guardiola to reach this stage then consider dropping it, that’s nonsense. NO NOT NOW, after Puyol started three out of the six previous games and got involved in a forth, same as Iniesta, Yaya played Three out of six, Messi Started three and Got involved in two other matches, Marquez two out of six, and Guess what?! Alves – the only defender we can’t afford to lose - Played five out of the six games; we were not pushing ourselves to that edge even in the Champions’ league group stage. NO NOT NOW, it’s too late to start saving batteries or else the already burned energy Bottles were wasted for free. I don’t see us in the “Cut down the loss” situation, so the only way is forward from now and on, hunting for a title that makes it worth all the risks, efforts and sacrifices made till now in this competition. Either you do it “Arsenal way” or “Chelsea way” from the beginning when you deal with a secondary title, you can’t start a Chelsea then switch to an Arsenal in the last 100 meters, because this way you lose the positives of the two methods, neither you win it with the big boys nor you give the young boys a chance to gain experience. How smart is it to take a daring risk selecting our indispensible players against Benidorm to reach the semi finals and hand the rest of the trip willingly to Mallorca?
But relax, I don’t think pep has that in mind, first because he know the story of the dog who was walking on the lake side with a piece of meat in his mouth, he looked to the lake and on the water surface he saw another dog with a bigger piece of meat between his Jaws, he threw the one he had away and jumped to the water for the big one to figure out that it was only his image on the water surface. It was too late because till he understood that, an eagle landed on the ground grabbed the meat and flied away. Pep know that the most definite titles to win are the liga and the copa del Rey, he will not drop any of it by intention just because the team is running for the champions’ league, “I will get the guaranteed ones and do my best in that tough title of Europe” that’s what he is thinking of, or that’s what I wish.
That’s the first reason, the second reason is the fact that the cup matches impact on the players’ fitness level is not as radical as its felt, nor it has that big effect on the team performance in the other competitions specially the champions’ league. If we look close to the rest of the Cup games, there is a chance that only one game may demand players energy before Liga and non will create any trouble for the Champions league games, and thats the following Mallorca game, first leg. Here is the schedule linked to the closest Liga/champions’ league games:
Game (A): 01 Feb Racing - FC Barcelona (Then 4 days to next game)
Game (B): 05 Feb FC Barcelona - RCD Mallorca (Then 3 days to next game)
Game (C): 08 Feb 19:00 FC Barcelona - R. Sporting de Gijón (Then 7 days to next game)
Game (D): 15 Feb --:-- Real Betis - FC Barcelona (Then 7 days to next game)
Game (E): 22 Feb --:-- FC Barcelona - RCD Espanyol (Then 4 days to next game)
Game (F): 24 Feb 20:45 O. Lyon - FC Barcelona (Then 3 days to next game)
Game (G): 01 Mar --:-- At.Madrid - FC Barcelona (Then 3 days to next game)
Game (H): 04 Mar --:-- RCD Mallorca - FC Barcelona (Then 4 days to next game)
Game (I): 08 Mar --:-- FC Barcelona - Ath.Bilbao (Then 4 days to next game)
Game (J): 11 Mar 20:45 FC Barcelona - O. Lyon (Then 4 days to next game)
Game (K): 15 Mar --:-- UD Almería - FC Barcelona (Then 4 days to next game)
In this schedule, the first important remark is that the first leg of Copa del Rey game against Mallorca Game (B) has nothing to do with the first leg of the Champions’ league game against LYON Game (F), twenty days separate the two games. Beside, we already know that there will always be at least a liga game separating any two games in Copa del Rey and Champions’ league and that liga game is the one that will has most of the impact on the players form and preparations for the Champions’ league, any simple knock in that liga match rule out the player from the following game in the champions league(3 days later), while from Cup to Champions’ league you have at least eight days, so resting a player in the Cup and selecting him in the league game before Champions’ league is too creative to be effective. Practically if you need a fully fit player for a CL game, you need to rest him in the liga game that introduce the CL week.
Mallorca is struggling against relegation in the liga, if they are little smart they will not burn their energy in the cup against Barcelona – even Espanyol figured that out- so at our home they may rest their key players, and my trick is the opposite of the popular method of rotation, I recommend that we play the best selection we have in that game, Game (B), we have what it takes to score enough goals in this game to cancel any importance for the return leg Game (H), so we can use a second class selection there. Using first class selection at home against Mallorca is not a big risk knowing that there is an easy schedule for the following two weeks -One game per week-so the players will have enough time to recharge their batteries, we finish the opponents hope in the first game, and then focus on the liga title while playing the Champions’ league stages in the following two months-March and april, Knowing that The Copa del Rey Final is on May 13, so till then it will only be Liga and Champions.
The trickiest Phase is the last slice of the season, the month of May, and here how it goes:
26 Apr Valencia CF - FC Barcelona
28/29 Apr Champions League Semi-finals
03 May Real Madrid - FC Barcelona
5/6 May Champions League Semi-finals
10 May FC Barcelona - Villarreal CF
13 May Copa Del Rey Final
17 May RCD Mallorca - FC Barcelona
24 May FC Barcelona - Osasuna
27 May Champions League finals
31 May Deportivo - FC Barcelona
Last six games of the season (Liga games), means last 18 points. If we reached the champions’ league final then obviously the key players will be rested against Osasuna because they will be too cautious to play that game anyway scared of getting injured or exhausted, and in this situation the second class selection offer you even more than the key players, so no case for the final. I think we can afford resting players at least in one of the two games against Valencia and Real Madrid depending on the point’s gap and the result we get in the Champions’ league first leg. Till then there will be enough time to plan things, if we kept the 12 points difference between us and Real Madrid, then we can afford resting our players against Valencia, Real madrid and Ossasuna knowing that it doesnt mean an automatic loss. Yet, the most important fact is , again, the Copa del Rey final will have no impact on the Champions’ league, because the Champions’ league semi Finals are played before the cup Final, and there are two weeks period between the Copa del Rey final and the Champions’ league final.
The conclusion is: to have a better chance in the Champions’ league, the rotation in the liga matches is the key while the cup games impact is not big enough to make us blow all the effort made to reach this stage. I support the idea of going all the way hunting for the three titles, first because you always need to seek getting the best out of what you have through being extremely efficient, and secondly because I don’t think if the season is planned well, targeting the three titles will dramatically change the club hopes to gain the most important ones. Beside, the only Competition we can actually guarantee if we focused all our potentials to win is the liga, while the champions league will never be guaranteed even if we forgot about both the liga and the Cup and only focused on that single competition (Champions league), the same goes for the Spanish cup.
I hope this will help everyone to make his/her own map for the season, evaluating every game importance and scheduling priorities.
Ramzi Tanani
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