Xavi: Chico, you do know that the game ended two days ago, right?                                                                                                                                                         

Chico: Chill, Xavi. Just let me finish going wee wee and I’ll leave. 

There has been a worried reaction in the culé world about Chico’s now famous man marking job on Xavi during last weekend’s Almeria game. A bronze statue replica of the comic strip above is now being built and will be installed in front of Almeria’s stadium.  Hugo essentially said: “haha! I made you traded Xavi for Chico! That’s a net win for me all day long”. False, Hugo.  False.

That strategy works against teams that are extremely reliant on a single player for creative inspiration. Maradona’s Napoli and Argentina being examples 1(a) and 1(b) of this and notice how it did not stop him from becoming in the eyes of many, [ARGUABLY lest I invoke outrage] the best player in history. We are not Napoli or Argentina. Either one of Iniesta, Yaya, Messi, or Zlatan has more creativity than the whole teams of Almeria or Malaga combined. So, what do we do?

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Every now and then a goal comes along that highlights some important concepts in our philosophy and tactics.  In my arbitrary opinion, our second goal against Racing does exactly that. So, follow along as we break down that goal second by second. Continue Reading

While we wait for today’s news, individual highlights from the Getafe game of three of our players have come out on the youtubes. My personal favorites were Chygnasty’s crossfield passes and Zlatan’s long pass to Pedro which I somehow totally missed during the game. What about you? Enjoy:

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As we all know, in a move that seemingly inspired more controversy than Jose Mourinho’s entire career of playing mind games combined, FC Barcelona traded one of the best strikers in its entire history who happened to still be in the prime of his career for a certain Big Ass Ninja Gangsta Swede (BANGS). The particular horse that is the issue of whether his transfer was right or wrong has already been killed, dismembered, and nuked so let’s instead focus on ways in which we might expect Pep to use our newly acquired BANGS.

To quote The Johan in his latest blog:

“The signing of the Swede affects the whole team including even the goalkeeper. Valdes now has a new option available: kicking long balls for Ibra to either hold or take and attack. Same thing for the defenders and, it goes without saying; the midfielders and forwards will also have new options.”

So, what new options are we talking about here? Let’s have a look. Today we’ll start out with what he adds to one of our favorite tweaks from last season: the False 9 formation.

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Welcome to the new look of Barcelona Football Blog. You’ll immediately notice several new things, of course, but there are some things I would like to point out in addition to the visual differences (background image, sidebar).

First, I’d like to point out that this new look is the work of our IT man, Tarun, who is a juggernaut behind the scenes. He’s the hidden gem behind the Messi-like qualities of our mercurial poster, Kevin, and our deep-lying midfield maestro, Hector. I suppose that makes me the Hleb of the group. Shit.

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Does this have anything to do with Barcelona? Besides Messi and Alves possibly being on the pitch at the same time? NO.

Are international breaks boring unless you also happen to be a rabid American college football fan and the season starts today although you still feel emptiness inside due to not watching Barca for a weekend (that’s me by the way)? Yes.

As such, we decided that maybe an Argentina-Brazil preview/game post would be in order if only to help us past the time with no Barca on TV. So, here you go.

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