At this point, when Barcelona is falling into a bottomless pit, it is really hard to say when their expected ‘New Era’ will begin.
But as per the reports, it is being conveyed that it will begin with the arrival of Ferran Torres in January. Although it is hard to assume how this is plausible given Barcelona’s evident financial crisis and state of the team.
But the growing rumours leave room for optimism. Ferran Torres also wills to join Barcelona as reported.
Ferran Torres joined Manchester City from Valencia in 2020 with a fee of around £20 million only. The Spanish prodigy fared decently for City with 16 goals and 5 assists in 43 games.
Although he missed quite a few matches for injury and for the heavy rotation policy of Pep Guardiola, his growing prominence in the team and him being one of the future flag bearers of City was always on cards.
Now, here we are talking about Manchester City, current English Champions and European runner-ups and also favourites for both the competition this season; not to mention one of the deadliest and well-functioned teams in the world right now.
Clearly, he has more chances to have a successful career here than most other clubs, especially Barcelona. And he is now playing under Pep Guardiola who is well-known for bringing out the best from such youngsters.
But if the rumours are true, Ferran Torres is willing to leave all this behind to join Barcelona. There might be two reasons behind this.
One is City’s forward line is packed with world-class players - Grealish, Sterling, Mahrez, Jesus, Foden. Sometimes, De Bryune and Bernardo Silva are also used as forwards. Clearly, Torres will have to go the hard way to even break into the playing XI regularly.
Also, this is a world cup year. So, he just cannot afford to be on the bench. Rather, he might take his chances with a relatively weaker side playing regularly to increase his chances for featuring and performing well in the World Cup.
Since the departure of Messi and being burdened with a huge financial crisis, Barcelona wanted to get rid of some unwanted players. Coutinho, Umtiti, Roberto, Lenglet are some of them.
But the players did now want to leave. They showed wanted to fight for their place. But their current heavy payscale is causing the club much inconvenience.
So they are not leaving, even after the coach cleared that these players are not a part of their plan. They are not thinking like Torres, to perform extremely well and make a place in the national side to participate in the upcoming World Cup. They actually lack ambition.
Now, if we move on from them and move to some certain veterans like Pique, Busquests and Alba, we see the same story of lack of ambition.
Pique won everything in his career before 2015 and his regression as a footballer is quite visible since 2016.
The same goes for Busquets, although he looks good in the national side. Alba might not be as prolific as them but still won a lot. This set of veterans practically has nothing left to win. And this lack of hunger is clearly visible in their performance now.
Their low intensity and lack of will to fight till the end has been putting negative effects on the youngsters. And it’s no coincidence that every Champions League embarrassment for Barcelona in recent years has featured all of them.
These players mentioned have been the core of Barcelona XI, a core that has zero ambition both individually and collectively. And it will be meaningless to expect big things from such an ambitionless core group of players who has no hunger or eagerness to fight or be better anymore.
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