GRIEZMANN LEADS THE BARCELONA WAY

          ...as if the football gawds had heard our doomed cries from the pit after Barcelona's all time low this last week that saw them featured as a club finally hitting its iceberg, truly at rock bottom, it was a performance worth celebrating that surprisingly arrived for Barca fans.

          On the back of a horrific 1-0 loss to Bilbao, the sight of our slapstick Ahab manager who'll only be fired if he murders Messi, a never-ending and futile chase after a manipulative and high maintenance Brazilian ex-lover, the unnecessary loaning out of our most valuable transfer purchase of all time (and the meager offering we received from Bayern for Coutinho's services), the injury to our 2nd most valuable transfer purchase of all time (Ousmane Dembele going down with yet another hamstring injury) and the already devastating blows from missing Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Carles Alena and now Jean-Claire Todibo, coupled with the deranged embarrassment Bartomeu has wrought upon the club...all of this drama came to a head.
         All across every European paper and from the foaming mouth of every graduate degree-mumbling pundit came the news of Barcelona's destruction, not at the hands of Valverde or Bartomeu, but due to our staggering list of injuries and inability to capture Neymar.
           For all these nonsensical bloggers and pundits from ESPNFC to Men In Raincoats, you just had to put Neymar, Messi, Griezmann, Suarez AND Dembele all on the pitch and you'd have success. 
           That was all that was required.
           All you need is Neymar...Frenkie who?
           But the investments made by sporting director Eric Abidal (the only man making any sense behind the scenes at the club) are the answer.
            In the purchases of Antoine Griezmann and Frenkie De Jong comes an impetus and violent energy from the center of the park, both players capable of winning possession in the final third and in midfield, something the aging Barca platoon desperately need. 
          With the mere presence of these two juggernauts, an intense competition for spots in attack and in midfield has arrived, a key factor that didn't exist previously. 
            And though the injury list contains Messi, Suarez, Dembele, Carles Alena among others, the match vs Betis on Sunday is complete proof that the Barca way 
can never truly die, as long as there are players in the squad willing to fight.
           Barca began in a scintillating manner 
for the first time 
since the Tottenham 
match back in 2018, 
cutting Betis's midfield 
and back line to pieces 
with one slicing move 
after another, only for football to do what it does best: the exact opposite of what we expect. 
           Betis went 1-0 up after a lightning-paced counter attack invited on by an accurate Busquets pass into midfield that neither Frenkie De Jong nor Jordi Alba seemed to be aware of. The Betis players stormed into the Barca half with a numbers advantage, breezing through Pique and Lenglet with ease and finished the move off with a nasty Nabil Fekir finish from a Loren Moron assist. 
            This silky goal slapped the faces of the Catalan faithful in attendance and put even more pressure on the players, all while Ernesto Valverde watched in the shadows with a typical cowardly visage. Meanwhile, goalscorer Fekir resumed his high-fouling, physical play in the middle of the pitch, impressing at the Camp Nou yet again.
            However, 
It didn't matter: what 
would transpire next 
had
nothing to do 
with the 
bumbling buffoons at the helm of Barcelona, 
both on the 
sideline and in the boardroom or the danger of Nabil Fekir: the 5 goal explosion had everything to do with the high tempos we'd seen earlier from the Barca press paying dividends.
           The Barca way: passing quickly though patiently, always straddling the line and making the right pass for the situation, dominating the ball, always feeding forward options and scoring goals has universally been supplemented and supported by the necessity to win possession back as quickly as possible.          
           This hard work 
           was the basis of the            legendary Cruyff 
         Dream Team in 1992  or Pep Guardiola's legendary 2008-2012 squad; even Spain's run as Kings of the Football World from 2008-2012, or if you wanna go back to Rinus Michel's 1974 Dutch team that featured Johann Cruyff as a player...any and all successful possession-based teams had tough tackling / intercepting ball-winners who could then accurately distribute under duress (Ronald Koeman, Xabi Alonso and Busquets to name a few).
             Pep Segura was wrong. 
             The crisis at Barcelona isn't about us needing athleticism and physical giants, it's all about us needing an injection of hunger, effort, stamina, speed and accuracy...and nothing does that better than friendly competition amongst the players, youthful intensity and players driven to achieve it all. 
             Maybe Messi, Suarez, Pique, Busquets, etc think they've achieved it all...but Griezmann hasn't...he may have a World Cup, but he doesn't have a Champions League and he's hungry...Messi and Suarez witnessed that hunger in the stands today, their own personal drive now on notice.
             With Griezmann's penchant for dropping deep and physically jousting opponents for the ball, Frenkie De Jong's seamless accuracy and opposition-stretching movement, Busquets' momentum ticking, "dagger ball" dishing  (acc. to Ray Hudson) and Sergi Roberto's versatility and high pressing chemistry with Messi, Suarez and now 2 assists to Griezmann, expect many fireworks to come from this team if they can sustain this state of scorching play.
             If we can see these three players (Busquets, Frenkie and Roberto) in midfield for Barcelona, alongside the energetic intensity up top of Antoine Griezmann and (when they return) Luis Suarez, Ousmane Dembele and of course, the sorcerer in human clothing Lionel Messi, we could see a revitalized and simply scary team...regardless of Valverde's idiocy, perhaps in spite of his ineptitude.

              On Sunday, 
against a very good 
Real Betis team 
(who beat us 4-3 last season with that slower Rakitic-based core) 
the players turned 
on the style, 
led by a high-octane front press that won the ball back in the Betis half on many occasions tonight, leading to a litany of shots on goal. 
             Front to back, we saw a Barcelona that has returned to its roots. 
            But do we really think this was Valverde finally remembering how he was once managed by the great Johan Cruyff or just instilling some energetic principles on the training ground? 
            We highly doubt it. In fact, are you joking? Valverde probably hates Cruyff for selling him right on the cusp of The Dream Team's success in 1992 (Valverde was an underwhelming 2nd, 3rd string forward). 

            What this performance feels like is a group of players who had a meeting after the Bilbao match, looked each other in the eye and said "we can't keep doing this to the club, to the fans and perpetrating this impotent play upon ourselves".
           The old guard: Pique, Busquets, Alba 
and Roberto all played with the Spanish zest and flair that seemed 
to abandon them 
the last few seasons, using the one-touch play that made them so successful for all these years to blistering effect. 
           Sunday was all about the defiant ignition of our veteran players, with Roberto and Busquets grabbing assists in the face of criticism, Alba grabbing his earliest goal in a Barcelona campaign ever and even Arturo Vidal popped up from the bench to score; and yes, Sunday was also about a tempo and violence we haven't seen from Barcelona in a long time, but it was also about Antoine Griezmann announcing himself as a Barca man, getting the perceived "monkey off his back" much quicker than many big name signings before him.
            It wasn't just the 2 goals, it wasn't only the mercurial diving assist to Vidal, it wasn't just the extremely powerful, epic goal celebrations: Griezmann showed absolute commitment and desire in every facet of the game, entertaining Messi and Suarez in the crowd and demonstrating to Ousmane Dembele (also present in the stands) how it's gotta be done. 
           He was commanding on the ball, flicking it around in a flurry of instigation, dictating the tempo early and flashing dangerous shots upon the Betis goal. 
          Once Griezmann began redefining 
Valverde's once 
passive rules of 
engagement, hungry players like Carles Perez, Rafinha and Sergi Roberto joined in the fray, blasting shots after incisive, filthy one touch play around the Betis box. Though we surrendered a horrendous goal while playing so well, we saw Gerard Pique barking orders to press on in the same fashion only seconds after the Fekir goal.
           However, because Barcelona continued to play such attractive, positive football, the usually silent, death-knell ambience of the Camp Nou (that for the last two years has resembled a crowd at a Lakers game more than a European footballing cathedral) was lit up with chanting and singing as the players proudly battled. 
          Now that the players have the backing of the often arrogant Valverde-backing Camp Nou fans, the pundits will come in raining down their praises and singing their joys to the world at the return of Barcelona, hell one or two of them may say "see what Valverde does", all while the Twittersphere has gone in full-on "Griezmann arrives at Barca mode", this squad now knows exactly what kind of a performance we expect from them.
           If they can sustain this current state of stunning play in spite of Ernesto Valverde, perhaps that may be the biggest achievement of all. Though what happens if he begins starting Rakitic in a slew of matches, once again, say...even at the loss of Frenkie De Jong in the lineup? 
          Can we tolerate that? 
         Can we suffer through that?
          Well, one thing I've known as a Barcelona fan: Valverde is like going to the dentist, you don't want to go, you don't want any part of this, but you know for some reason he's going to be there and there's nothing you can do about it...