BarcelonaPau Cubarsí, fascinating as usual, won the award for the best player of the match. Maybe it was surprising. The point, in this case, is that their wonderful performances have already ceased to be news. Creative with the ball at the feet, attentive and concentrated without, and always with that point of tension, both when making the passes and when intervening in defensive duels, which make him a very complete central at his tender age . But within Barça’s good collective game, the finesse of Pedri González also stood out and, yes, this is significant news. Not because he had not exhibited it at other times, but because, as often happens immediately when a Barça player does well, even if it is without the regularity and constancy required of the elite, he is placed in the altar of the best players on the football planet.
Pedri, considered by many to be the best midfielder in the world for years and a carbon copy of Andrés Iniesta, had never played consistently at the level we saw against Brest and are seeing this season. It is likely that the context of the team did not help and it is certain that neither did the injuries and, above all, something very normal, the same process of football maturity of a player who has just turned 22 years old.
Pedri has a very good gift, fundamental in midfielders: it is very difficult, almost impossible, to take the ball from him. He doesn’t lose it and, curiously, this has been Barça’s problem in the last two League matches, in Vigo and also in Sant Sebastià. The Blaugrana team lost masses of them and, above all, they lost them too quickly. When this happens, when you have not been able to manage it or extend the sequence of passes to the opposite field, it is impossible to make a good counter-pressure or a high pressure that stifles the opponent’s exit. You simply lack cash. Because you haven’t traveled as a group with the ball, then when you lose it, you don’t have enough players to apply the pressure that would apply to where the loss occurred. The opponent finds space to progress, you have a poorly maintained relationship distance between the lines and, in short, we all run with the defense high… When this happens, Iñigo Martínez and Cubarsí are sold because the rival team’s passer always he will be able to raise his head and, with comfort, throw his teammates into space.
Barça needs players who don’t lose it and who keep it, but who keep it meaningfully. You keep it, attract pressure from the opponent, release teammates and make the pass to the free man at the indicated moment. Lamine Yamal, even if it looks like a lie, at his age he is a master at this. Dani Olmo, for example, also plays it well. For his part, Pedri is the most classic midfielder in the team who, once his technical abilities and tactical arguments are gathered, has more tools to be able to do well something that seems easy, but which is not at all. An action that, even more so if you can alternate it with the talent to dribble or leave an opponent behind, triggers many others, such as for example overcoming their pressure, making the entire structure of the other team fall back, the possibility to improve your possession with the ball, improve with it and, ultimately, apply the good pressure we have seen from Flick’s Barça in these first months.
