BARCELONA – Luis Suárez scoring goals with Atlético de Madrid is the definition of the depression that Barcelona suffers. The Uruguayan was convicted of Josep Maria Bartomeu, sentenced by Ramon Planes and executed by Ronald Koeman, in an executioner’s role he found when he arrived at the Camp Nou without saying anything about sports planning at the club.
There are those in Barcelona who already suspect that Suárez will become the successor of David Villa, to whom the club gave him a little less in the summer of 2013 at Atlético, convinced that he no longer had a place in a Barça he was reaching. Neymar and he had Alexis Sánchez … And he ended up winning the Mattress League. Scoring 13 goals, a modest figure … But being fundamental in golden victories against Celta, Athletic, Granada or Real Sociedad.
Barça seem to be looking the other way, with the conviction that the Uruguayan’s departure was essential to lighten the payroll and change the dressing room controls. It was thought that with Ansu Fati it would be enough to forget Suárez, but when the young man from the youth team was injured, everything fell like a house of cards.
With 16 league games behind him, Barça added 41 goals last season, 8 from Suárez, who scored 10 and 9 respectively in the previous two seasons. His theoretical successor, Martin Braithwaite, adds two. And the team notices it. Nor does he remember, since 2003, the last time he scored fewer goals.
INDISCUTIBLE
On the 41st anniversary of the signing of Roberto Dinamita, who became an undisputed star in Brazil and left Barcelona through the back door two goals and three months later, it is striking that Barça have been unable to to find a successor to him to Suárez. And, even more, that he has given it to a rival of the first magnitude.
“If you go to a direct rival and pay your salary to Barcelona” Leo Messi shouted not many days ago in his interview with La Sexta, realizing that the whole thing with the Uruguayan is a bad joke.
Barça signed Roberto Dinamita in January 1980 because Hasi Krankl, the top scorer in the previous season, had his tank dried up. The Brazilian’s invention did not work (patience was not a virtue at the club) and the president decided at the end of the season to sign an old club longing, Quini, already in the final stretch of his career but which still gave a more than remarkable performance over the next two years.
From here, and for years now, scorers like Archibald (a major global mistake in preventing the signing of Hugo Sánchez), Lineker, Hughes (another monumental failure), Julio Salinas, Romario, Kodro, Ronaldo, Anderson (accompanied by Rivaldo to fill the void of the Phenomenon), Kluivert, the also fiascos Alfonso and Dani, Eto’o, Ibrahimovic, Villa or Alexis … Until reaching Luis Suárez, which broke all records.
Always, with more or less success, Barcelona looked for and found a successor of level when the stage of this forward who had had in the club finished. But with Suárez the mold was broken. The Uruguayan, a close friend of Leo Messi in the locker room and according to many characters of bad influence in recent times, snatched a contract from Leon to renew Josep Maria Bartomeu and the Barça sports management neither knew, nor could nor he dared to look for- then a first-rate substitute.
Beside them they passed Munir or Alcázar, incapable to shade to him no matter how much that in the last times its null renimiento in Europe dragged all the equipment. And not even when he was injured in January 2020 and operated on after the Spanish Super Cup was the club able to take the step forward.
While Borussia Dortmund bet 45 million euros on the signing of Erling Haaland, Barcelona waited for the umpteenth injury of Dembélé, already in February, to pay 18 million for Martin Braithwaite, a hard-working striker … of the Leganés, with whom he had scored 13 goals in 48 games. And there were those who, without blushing, proclaimed that the Dane could be this substitute for Suarez, whom the club, after the Lisbon disaster, fired in any way.
“Suárez’s stage was over” was argued to explain his departure, without considering that it was given to a rival, even paying his salary and without giving him the project he had to leading Koeman a top-tier substitute because the box was, is, empty at the Camp Nou.
There was neither and no money. And neither was there nor is there a center forward in a Barça that has a hard time turning all the opportunities it creates into a goal. Beyond a game that moves between mediocrity and excitement, the tight victory in Huesca leaves it uncovered, as happened against Eibar, Valencia, Levante, Cadiz and Getafe that this team calls in the desert to recover a fundamental figure …
And while Suarez, his, continues to score in Atletico. Although he has not broken his bad luck in Europe, he has scored nine goals in twelve league games so far and those scored against Elche (two), Getafe and Alava have given Simeone’s team six gold points. this role of favorite that, little by little, is acquiring the Athletic one.
Such is the case with some talking about cheap demagoguery when others allude to the lack of goal and the absence of the Uruguayan. The most frightening fact is simple: Barça have scored 30 goals in 16 league games, their worst record since the 2003-04 season. Little else needs to be added in the face of the harshness of this statistic.