FC BARCELONA NEED TO STOP

La Liga is back and well and truly on the way. A rather intriguing title-race is ongoing with Spain's two top clubs, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid CF, going for it. At the time this article is being published, Real Madrid sit top of the table, level on points with Barcelona courtesy of a 1-2 victory over Real Sociedad in what has been described as a controversial match. In fact, Barcelona has a superior goal difference of 38 to Madrid's 36 and Real are only top of the league by virtue of a better head-to-head record over Barcelona. But, today my problem isn't with Madrid going top of the table in arguably dubious circumstances, but with how the Barcelona community are taking a slip up on their part.

FC Barcelona had one job and one job only, to try and win every match they had left in other to retain their title. They have actually had quite a decent season, maybe not one on par with their lofty La Liga standards. But on the 13th of January, they announced they had sacked their manager Ernesto Valverde and replaced him with former Betis boss Quique Setien. The consensus for why they decided to dispatch their former boss was due to poor stylistic way of playing football that did not fit very well with the mould that the club has been trying to craft for several years. They also had a few bad results here and there, but generally speaking style of play was the main antagonist during the Valverde era at Barcelona. This can be noted that from his two and a half seasons in charge of the club the man won four trophies and had a 66% win rate in matches. Though these numbers are significantly less than his predecessor, they are not bad numbers to put up out of context. Now, I'm not making an argument that Valverde shouldn't have been sacked, rather I question the reasoning behind sacking a manager mid-season who had the club at the top of the table mainly for stylistic issues. And I do not know a lot of clubs that can make such decisions, such is Barcelona's commitment to the style of play they have crafted. The decision to sack or as clubs like to put it "mutually terminate" Valverde's contract could have been made at the end of last season when they lost the Copa Del Rey final against Valencia, but they choose to back him then, only for eight months later then decide to sack him. Absolutely atrocious decision making. Since they decided to back him then, I believe they should have at least kept him till the end of this season rather than having to chop and change in the middle of a title race with your greatest rivals. And I think that decision is now affecting the mentality of the entire squad.

But, my main issue with Barcelona is that the whole club including their fans can't seem to get Real Madrid out of their mind. There is a well-documented history of Real getting dubious refereeing decisions going their way and we all know about this, but why should Barcelona be constantly thinking of that. They had the advantage heading into the latest round of fixtures as they had a two points gap over Madrid. Their task was not the simplest but I can say it was a very straight-forward one beat Sevilla and keep your advantage. They couldn't do this as they drew love all against the side from Seville. And so the club and its entire fanbase had their title hopes resting on Sociedad beating Real the following day. Even senior figure at the club Gerard Pique made a statement that some have interpreted to be cryptic about Real Madrid not being able to drop points. A large section of media interpreted this as him saying Madrid had been getting refereeing decision their way since the restart of football in Spain. Either way we can see the club is very often thinking about their bitter rivals. The reaction from a section of their fanbase on Twitter that was nagging about the fact that Madrid may or may not have cheated their way to victory in all three opening games instead of discussing why their club was unable to find the back of the net against a side 13 points behind them in the standings makes it even clearer that the club as a whole do not have their priorities distinctly set. I'm not trying to disregard Sevilla's efforts this season, but for a side as dominant as this Barcelona side a win is always the expectation. It really does bother me that a club as large as Barcelona can be so affected by so many off-field distractions. In the end, the title is not away from their grasp just yet, but they need to start thinking about winning all of their remaining matches instead of having how Madrid win the rest of their's at the back of their mind. Partially because of this pessimistic view they have given up their advantage in this season's title race.

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