Somehow, the season has already started. I just got back from summer vacation. Just a few minutes ago, Spain won the World Cup. And yet Barça has played 4 league matches and the Champions League group stage just started. How is this possible? It is still The Time of Previews out there in Sportsland, I scream as I throw my hat on the ground and stomp on it.
On the plus side, the transfer window is closed, so I no longer need to speculate on who will stay and who will go. All the comings and goings are done! Get out your spreadsheets to calculate up the costs, which are actually made up numbers that do not necessarily reflect reality because nothing is real and everything is speculation. Let’s celebrate arrivals as well as some of the departures. We can all laugh at Ferran, knowing that he has never scored a goal in his life, especially not over the summer. Cha-ching.
Okay.
Let’s go ahead and think about the season, shall we? Two—count ’em!—league titles in a row have earned you that much, I think, especially when the coming year promises to be a slog through Rivalries Past. Additionally, next season (2027-28) will include a lot more financial shenanigans when the Camp Nou is once again closed to put the roof on the refurbed stadium. We might not get any real transfer movement for quite a while, so the assembled squad may be something of a long-haul affair. Think being trapped in an RV with your extended family for a trip across whatever your nearest desert is. You can’t really go outside (too hot), but you definitely can’t stay inside either (too Uncle Bill, who won’t stop talking about how he could have been something if only he hadn’t blown out his knees when he was 11).
Of Those Who Have Gone
Because this is my blog and I write whatever (and, uh, whenever) the hell I want, I’m going to start the meat of the season preview, a project generally considered to involve what will happen over the next 9 months and to have been written before any competitive matches, with writing about people who aren’t even here anymore. It’s my party and I can talk about Marcus Rashford if I want to.
Outgoing players: Marcus Rashford, Robert Lewandowski, Iñaki Peña, Ansu Fati, Diego Kochen, Andrés Cuenca, Marc-André ter Stegen, Ronald Araújo, Ferran Torres, Jofre Torrents, Áron Yaakobishvili, Tommy Marqués, Héctor Fort, Guille Fernández, Álvaro Cortés, Marc Casadó
PHEW.
These moves change a lot of things. In fact, all the things! Things you weren’t even aware could change, things you thought were etched entirely in stone, like Ferran continuing to balloon shots over the bar from point blank range for the rest of time. But that has changed! It has changed so dramatically that his lack of doing so one single time—and thus winning a World Cup—has changed him from being the annoying cousin who shows up at the aforementioned RV unannounced and just sits down in the driver’s seat like he owns the damn thing to being some epic find on Antique Roadshow you discovered in the attic when you were looking for that stupid beach chair that you swear is up there and it’s freaking 150 degrees. And that thing is now worth 50 million euros for reasons beyond your comprehension. Finally, some luck! Please ignore that your grandfather bought that cobwebbed clock or whatever for 55 million euros a few centuries ago and just revel in the 50 million euros for a dumb radio or tinker toy or whatever it is the funny guy said before you stole his money and gave him something out of your junk drawer.
Ferran’s contract extension negotiations were beginning to drag on unnecessarily1 and we got a pretty solid chunk of money for a player with 1 year left on his current deal. It all counts as profit, which is fabulous because math at this level isn’t real.2
The postmortem on Ferran’s career is a little weird. First, he arrived for too much, then he left a World Cup champion, World Cup 2026 Final player of the match (because he scored and no one else did), 1 time Euro winner, 3 time La Liga winner, and 1 time Copa del Rey winner (when he was also top scorer). He’s even shortlisted for the Ballon d’Or, which…okay, sure, I totally respect that award even more now.3
He made 207 appearances and scored 65 goals for Barça across all competitions, the vast bulk of which (40) were scored in the last 2 seasons. He has scored 25 goals in 65 appearances for the Spanish national team, a little bit worse record than Mikel Oyarzabal has (30 in 61). He runs very well. He is fast. He is fairly strong. He can get into good positions. And then he very often screws those good positions up with a bad touch, a poor decision, a failure to read the play as it develops. But he works at it and he has gotten better. The increase in his goalscoring shows this. We’ll miss…some of what he does. We won’t miss his weird lack of sunscreen or his ability to find the 10th row from a good position, but we will need to replace his runs, his quickness, his determination.
You know whose contributions we will absolutely miss? Robert Lewandoski. He only scored 19 goals last season, his lowest total since his first season in the Bundesliga back in 2010-11, but he knew how to occupy defenders, create space for teammates, and put in the work. It was time for him to go, yes, and certainly time for his salary to go, but his professionalism, his instincts, and his talent will be hard to replace. He was just 9 goals from being in Barcelona’s all-time top 10 scorers after only 4 seasons in his mid-30s, bagging 120 in 193 matches. He arrived in the middle of the CVC fiasco, his transfer fee paid by the influx of capital from Sixth Street, and the liftoff of the only joke anyone has ever told on a Barça broadcast since (something about levers). There were those who argued that this was proof Barcelona were through, kaput, finito while there were other, smarter people who simply pointed out that it was the right move, even if it left a bad taste in your mouth. I was proven correct, of course, but it didn’t hurt at all that Lewandoski was such a fantastic signing from the beginning. 33 goals his first season, 26 his next, and 42 in his third. Godspeed and I highly recommend you very publicly put ketchup on your hot dogs throughout Chicago. They will love it.
I would be remiss if I did not admit to crying a little over the departure of Ronald Araujo. What a king. He’s the type of player whose qualities are lost on those who refuse to acknowledge them. For instance, when he repeatedly shut down Vinicius in clasicos, it was, according to fools, because he was able to ignore his attacking role and concentrate on pocketing one of the (supposedly) better wingers in the world, conveniently ignoring that Araujo also scored in one of those performances. His downfall was brought on mainly through injuries that he just couldn’t seem to avoid and the inconsistencies in performance that it led to. He is a human wrecking ball whose hamstrings simply cannot deal with the required level of strain to send him hurtling through space and time to thwack opponents, which seems fair enough from their perspective. Moving his salary on is huge for us because he was increasingly a backup, partly because of Cubarsi’s consistency and partly through his own inconsistency. Still, when he was on, he was glorious to watch, from the crunching tackle to the, uh, crunching tackles. May we one day appreciate you properly, king (but thanks for taking your salary off our books).
In a lot of ways, this is similar to Marc-André ter Stegen, who captained our squad for something like 3 decades and whose save on Robert Lewandowski (yes, that one) essentially told the world that we would not be denied a Champions League title in 2016. That was 10 years ago! How does this happen? I am not ready to tell my grandchildren stories about the heady days of the late 2010s, about how I was born in the late 20th century. How dare you. And yet, it was, actually, that long ago and the slow decline of ter Stegen is a small-scale version of what happens to dynasties on the macro level. You slip a little, you aren’t quite as quick in either reaction time or speed, you find yourself saying things like “I just need a little more time” both when you receive the ball and when you’re asked to do something around the house. You have a specific mechanic you like because of the way he explains engines to you and has a mustache, as is proper, but there’s no way you can actually implement his suggestions because there’s karate practice and theater practice and poker night to get to so you just pay him to change out the filters or whatever. And eventually you too are replaced for a younger, fitter model that can get the job done for half the cost. I should probably go do the dishes.
Ansu Fati is also off the books, which is devastating for anyone who thinks it’s 2023, but the right thing to do at this point both for the club financially and for Ansu personally. His career arc was one of those ones where I was sure he would be devastatingly good for a generation and then injuries derailed everything. Uncle Bill, but not made up. Ansu was the first post-Messi #10 in the squad and there were incredible expectations for a guy who scored just 29 goals for the club. It’s kind of weird to look back at that now and see the numbers. They can’t be right, but there they are, in black and white: 29 goals in 123 appearances. Ferran Torres got 21 just last season. Anyway, Ansu’s departure is about his salary more than anything, a topic we’ve all covered exhaustively the last few summers thanks to The Bartomeu Legacy, my least favorite installment of the Jason Bourne series. I wish Ansu nothing but the best and may he have a glorious career on the sun-soaked southern shores of France.
Speaking of idols-cum-misfit-toys, it feels like we are now fully into Laporta 2.0 in a way that we weren’t before. We can spend money, dream big dreams, and fight about whether players have the right attitude. Over the summer, rumors flew about real, actual players, not just weird has-beens or might-bes that are borderline insane. I’m sorry to say that talk about Sofyan Amrabat was completely crazy, whenever it was that we collectively went through psychosis and had whole conversations revolving around where he would fit in the system. I have nothing against Amrabat as a person (I know nothing about him) and I even think he is a decent player, but he was never going to be the stud those random Twitter accounts were acting like he was. Also, did you know Amrabat is currently (Right now, today!) 30 years old? I would have bet money he was in his mid-to-late30s. I do not miss Twitter.
Incoming players: Karim Adeyemi, Jesse Bisiwu, Anthony Gordon, Rodri, Dominik Livakovic, Hamza Abdelkarim, Gabriel Jesus, João Cancelo
You will notice that I did not write paragraphs about every player who left, partially because I am lazy and partially because I am going to wrap their goodbyes into hellos for the players replacing them. This feels unfair to players like Marc Casadó, but it’s what’s going to happen.
Obviously this segues perfectly into talking about…Dominik Livakovic. Naturally. The first guy you want to read about after this summer’s moves. Well, today is your lucky day!
I mentioned above that a lot of our moves are predicated on the concept of building a squad that can survive next year without a single incoming or outgoing player. Because of La Liga’s rules, we are able to register players now, but may not be able to do so next year when our revenue sharply declines. That is why Julian Alvarez was a now-or-never signing (more on that later) and why we signed Livakovic on a 4-year deal despite having a bevy of young goalie talent in our system.
Livakovic is a regular starter for Croatia, including at this past summer’s World Cup finals, and cost just 2 million euros. He appears to be fine just sitting around in Spain, given that he spent 6 months on loan at Girona last season and refused to enter a match, leading to banishment and an eventual loan to Dinamo Zagreb in January. Fenerbahçe were clearly ready to see the back of him and maybe Dinamo were too since a supposed plan to sign him and loan him out for the season fell through. If this is true, it likely cost one of Diego Kochen or Áron Yaakobishvili (both of whom are 20) a squad spot. They’re both loaned out, so I suppose hope never dies, but it seems unlikely that they will make the jump back, as is the way with loanees.
It is good to have a capable backup in case of injury—depth! It’s cool!—and that seems to be the real modus operandi of this year’s moves and why I’m mentioning Livakovic first. We must clear the decks and build squad depth so that when the Winter of Scarcity is upon us, we can survive and maybe even thrive until spring.
The central question for squad members wasn’t “Are you capable of contributing in the future?” but rather “Can you meaningfully contribute to or improve the squad right now and in the future?” Any hesitancy on the part of the technical staff or the front office in answering that question in the affirmative seems to have spelled doom for a few players. The main examples of that are Héctor Fort and Marc Casadó, both of whom are solid players with long professional careers in their futures, but they are not world beaters, as much as I love Casadó and wanted him to succeed at Barça.
With financial constraints and a win-now mentality (as always), there are no places in the squad for possibilities, only sure things. Fort found himself behind Eric Garcia, Jules Kounde, and even João Cancelo. Casadó may have had it worse: Rodri, Marc Bernal, Frenkie de Jong, Gavi, Pedri, Dani Olmo, Fermín López, and Eric García are ahead of him in the depth chart, which means he would have been begging for scraps in minor games, playing-time-wise. This is the simple math of having a squad with actual depth. Ferran was, in a way, a victim of this same formula, which is fun to be able to say because, well, depth is awesome.
Here’s my current guess as to our depth chart, with started listed first, followed by backup and then 3rd string, etc.
GK: Joan Garcia, Wojciech Szczęsny, Dominik Livaković, Eder Aller
RB: Eric Garcia, Jules Kounde, Joao Cancelo
RCB: Pau Cubarsi, Andreas Christensen, Jules Koundé, Eric García
LCB: Gerard Martín, Andreas Christensen
LB: Xavi Espart, Joao Cancelo, Alejandro Balde
DM: Rodri, Marc Bernal, Eric García, Brian Fariñas, Frenkie de Jong
CM: Pedri, Dani Olmo, Fermín López, Gavi, Marc Bernal, Frenkie de Jong
RW: Lamine Yamal, Raphinha, Karim Adeyemi, Fermín López
LW: Anthony Gordon, Karim Adeyemi, Raphinha, Joao Cancelo
FW: Raphinha, Fermín López, Karim Adeyemi, Anthony Gordon, Jesse Bisiwu, Hamza Abdelkarim
Feel free to quibble with my placement of a few of these, especially Frenkie, who may or may not be injured for the rest of time, but the truth is that we are purring without him and I do not see how he regularly makes the lineup once he is back. There is serious competition at every position, although we are perhaps “lightest” at left and right back, depending on your particular opinion(s) of Balde and Kounde. Still, if luck holds and there are no long-term injuries, we’ll have plenty of cover even in those positions.
One player I have not included is the injured Roony Bardghji, who I doubt we’ll see play for Barça again and who would have been offloaded had he not gotten injured when did. I enjoyed watching him, but he just doesn’t seem to have the It factor that is required at such a high-performing club. He wasn’t taking over matches or even hinting that he could, really.
There is also Brian Fariñas, who is maybe just kind of there? Maybe slated for stardom? I don’t know what’s going on with him, but I had originally included him in a “ones to watch” list to end this preview and then he went and got promoted to the first team. Watching preseason matches is always fun because we get to see the next crop of players and make outlandish calls about them (The Next Big Thing! or No Chance in Hell!), so it’s nice to look at that list of performances I like and note that one of them is already in the first team. Go me! I also had Álvaro Cortés penciled in, but with a note that I expected him to be sold and replaced with a new arrival. It is extremely rare that I am right once in an offseason, much less twice. I’m giddy.
For the record, the other players I noticed were Ebrima Tunkara, Orian Goren, and Jordi Pesquer, with Goren the most impressive to me, but also the rawest. That can be a good thing at that age, though.
So: the major question that every commentator asked repeatedly throughout the preseason was whether or not the team could find a true 9 and thus find enough goals. The math is simple enough:
144 total goals last season, 58 of which were scored by players who have since departed (Ferran, Lewandowski, Rashford, Araujo) and 2 which were scored by Roony, who is out indefinitely.
Replacing Lewandowski, Rashford, and then Ferran were obvious priorities and the club jumped all over Anthony Gordon even before the World Cup, shelling out what seemed like a lot for a player who was, statistically, basically a slightly younger Rashford. The comparisons between the players were easy to make:
Rashford is 28, played in 49 matches last year, and scored 14 goals. 5 of his goals were in the Champions League, which seems worth mentioning, especially since none of them were penalties.
Gordon is 25, played in 46 matches last year, and scored 17 goals. Although he scored 10 goals in the Champions League, 4 of them came in the qualifiers against Qarabag and 7 of his total (including 2 against Qarabag) were penalties. 3 of his 6 league goals were also penalties.
Weirder yet is that Rashford notched 15 assists with Barça and Gordon got just 5 all season with Newcastle. And then Gordon went and scored against Barça, of course, but Rashford, well, he scored two, against Newcastle that same match, both of them very nice goals.
Do those 3 years really make the difference? Well, Gordon has played in 5 matches so far for Barça and has…5 assists. I would compare some xG and xA stats, but apparently FBRef no longer has the Opta license, so I can’t do that and I’m not smart enough to figure out xGStat right now or sign up for an account or anything like that. Basically I’m saying that I don’t know what the underlying numbers suggested, but I would guess they showed that Rashford either overperformed or was right in line with expected returns while I would simultaneously guess that Gordon’s would show that he underperformed expectation. I could be wrong! I don’t know!
All I know is that Gordon has been stellar. They’re even calling him Catalan in the stands. His language skills are ridiculous and he fits like a freakin’ glove. It is already obvious that he was the correct call between him and Rashford, even with the price difference.
The other major outlay is less clear cut so far, with Rodri only starting twice so far, but the signs are good and my optimism remains high. Very high. Probably too high. When the rumors swirled that Rodri was likely going to sign for Madrid, I declared the season a complete loss, it was all over. They would lift something like 52 trophies this year. And then there was an about-face, Madrid was shunned, and we became the kings of the world. Err, am I getting ahead of myself?
Probably not.
Season predictions: 52 trophies, 2500 goals scored, 3 goals allowed across all competitions, and the new roof will be installed in 2 months next summer with no problems.
Any amount of time we spent contemplating whether to extend him instead of sell him was time we could have used in any other way and been more productive. Such as doing research on whether Joan Laporta really can drink all the cava in Catalunya in one sitting (I believe in him) or if there is open wifi at the Bernabeu and we can print various pictures of Ronaldo crying while being eliminated from the World Cup (again) on their office printers while parked in the parking lot (if we haven’t tried this, fire Deco immediately). ↩︎
Accounting math is the best math because 55 minus 50 is…50! Science! Why does my wife keep asking why we’re broke and our kids keep repeating grades? I have a spreadsheet that shows exactly how we have enough money to buy another original Monet and I’ve taught the children everything I know! ↩︎