Is My Barcelona Agnostic Heart Thawing?
No team has begun the season like Barcelona, not just this year but in recent memory. Is it any more real than it's been the past two?
For the past two seasons, I've scoffed at Barcelona's antics in La Liga. While they've sashayed to the Spanish crown twice, it didn't feel all that much different than what Bayern Munich does in Germany. With Real Madrid becoming their own Muppet Show without any of the whimsy, the financial disparities between the three big clubs and the rest of La Liga, Barcelona merely having to be upright to win the league didn't seem much of an accomplishment, no matter the amount of goals they scored. Padding the stats on wiffleball, as it were.
They have gotten found out in Europe, obviously. While they lost to Inter Milan two seasons ago in the semis in extra time, they also gave up seven goals over two legs in the process. Their policy of trying to apply Brian Flores's blitzing concepts to soccer saw them donate a fair amount of ya-ha time to opponents, which Inter were only too happy to receive. Considering that Inter then got utterly destroyed by PSG in that final, Barca wasn't all that close to the top of the hill in Europe.
They were undone by Atletico Madrid last season, as Atletico weren't dizzied by the attacking array that Barca can sport, and took their chances. Again, considering how far off Atletico were to eventual finalist Arsenal in the semi, Barca weren't all that close to claiming the European Cup again.
While La Liga is no stronger than it was the past couple of seasons, it's hard not to notice the fashion in which Barca has festooned the Camp Nou with the various innards of whoever has had the misfortune of coming across them so far. They've played seven games, won them all, scored 31 goals, given up just seven. Yes, they're averaging over four goals per game. It's not even some BABIP treachery, or shooting wizardry, as their xG for the season is at 28.5. They've only gotten a splash of shooting luck.
There have been a couple structural changes for Barca from last season to this one. The big one is that Raphina, because they couldn't find anyone to buy to play central striker, has moved to the #9 role and become...well, the best one in the world at the moment. 12 goals in seven games, while losing nothing of the creativity he had when he played wide on the right (2.27 chances created per 90 this season, 2.66 last). He's just doubled his goal output. His heatmap is something else:
In case you were curious what last season's #9's, Robert Lewandowski, heatmap looked like, well:
Raphina operates in the hole far more often, allowing him to link with Pedri and Fermin Lopez/Dani Olmo and Lamine Yamal more than Lewi did. And still he's scoring as much as Lewandowski did.
The big result of all of this is that Yamal, already in the team photo for best player in the world (even if he and Kylian Mbappe are kind of comedically bickering over the Ballon D'or at the moment) is now averaging yet another shot per game, up over five. Only two players are averaging more shots per 90 minutes than Yamal in all of the Big 5 leagues, and that's Ousmane Dembele and Lautaro Martinez. Both of them play as center forwards, Yamal is doing it from the right wing. The attack is simply celestial.
As always with Barca, it's a question of whether anyone thinks they can shut down another European elite over two legs when it gets to the business end of the Champions League (they already appear to be on course for another easy La Liga title). So far, their defense is markedly better. They're giving up just seven shots per game, compared with nine last season. Here it would be obvious, and correct, to point out that having Rodri patrolling the areas in front of the defense, where other teams launched the counters into the national park of space that Barca left behind their defense, makes a huge difference. That may sound like a big task over a full season, but given that La Liga is usually played at a pace that generally comes with devices that have tennis balls attached to their legs, Rodri can probably handle it.
There definitely is still an element of getting fat off some tripe left around Spain. Barcelona have played only one team that has started above 10th in La Liga, which is Sevilla. Whom they pretty well flattened 3-1.
But that just might be the case all season. Madrid are once again a bickering mess, though at least they've saved the bickering for the refs and La Liga officials this time, for now, as is Jose Mourinho's wont. It's hard to pinpoint another team that can even get in Barca's zip code.
Europe-wide? It's hard to believe that any team could stifle this unholy force that Yamal and Raphina are currently, assuming health for both. But then teams that were getting wondrous individual performances, or even a couple, haven't seen that take them all the way to Big Ears. Harry Kane and his avalanche of goals last season still came unstuck against PSG. Same goes for two seasons ago when Mo Salah was winning a Premier League title pretty much on his own. Mbappe remains ring-less, at least when it comes to the Champions League.
If Rodri can stay healthy, get some rest in the league, and be at this best for the later ties in Europe, maybe this is the time for Barca. But it takes more than a good month to warm my frozen heart, as you probably know.