It isn’t the fact we lost El Clasico. It’s how we did it. A stupid Pique penalty; a goal from a corner where not one of our players remembered Pepe was there; and a massive fuck up between Luis Enrique (who shouldn’t have made the Xavi sub to begin with, let alone during a corner kick), Iniesta (who stumbled on Mathieu) and Mascherano (who saved us many times after this mistake). All grave, individual errors, yes. But we weren’t a team. Especially, not the team we’ve come to know since 2008.

Luis Enrique is not using the FC Barcelona/Masia system. This is the cold truth. This idea of his of using “wingers in the center”, then giving the flanks so the fullbacks attack as they wish will not prosper in big matches. We saw that against PSG and now had to endure Real Madrid making it very, very clear, again. His system basically leaves us with not actual midfield, since both CMs have to stay close to the wing to cover for the fullbacks, who are always attacking, by the way. Busquets is left all alone, with acres of space to cover, and no CM near him to help him in the defensive transitions. It’s all too far apart, trying way too much to be vertical and completely letting go of the importance of having the control of the match. Not the Barça way, at all.

Of course his system has advantages. Messi and Neymar have never been so good together, linking up superbly well, and being responsible for over 80% of our goals. But that’s it. The notion we had a great defensive structure is now completely blown out of the water after the debacle against Madrid. PSG warned us and Luis Enrique, but nothing changed. We conceded 3 times again, yet this time Ter Stegen wasn’t there to be blamed…

Luis Enrique’s biggest sin, by a distance, isn’t messing and basically disintegrating our famous midfield. It’s the fact he decided to not use actual wingers. Since 1988, when a certain Johan took over as our coach, we’ve played 433, with wingers. We have been doing that since then, and being quite successful, may I add. There are 4 UCL trophies in our museum to prove it, and more La Liga ones than any other team in the same period.

All Masia teams use wingers. Deulofeu and Adama are superb players, but we won’t be seeing them playing this season, because Luis Enrique decided he would change the system that has given us everything since 1988. That’s another hard truth. Wingers are the base to how Cruijff sees football. They help defend, cause they pressure up the oppositions fullbacks and wingers; help the midfield dominate play, since they stretch the opposition’s defenders, making the middle of the pitch less populated by default; they add movement to each attacking effort, cause, besides already stretching the defense, they can also make runs and make themselves available for passes from a certain Lionel Messi. Hell, we even used Thierry Henry as a winger to keep the system alive! And won a Treble for his/our troubles.

Luis Enrique has the potential to become a world class coach. But right now, he’s far from it. He’s hard working, focused, has a modern approach to football, built a young and serious staff around him, and makes the players be at their best fitness possible. All the players pressure, they all run their hearts out, they are focused. But all of that without proper tactics, without respecting the FC Barcelona way of playing won’t be of much help to him and to the team. He should have started using the system we and all Masia kids know, then slowly making the changes so the way he sees football can also be seen by the players, the adversaries, and us. Right now, apart from the results against average La Liga teams, there isn’t much to see. 2 real tests, 2 losses, 6 goals conceded. We need changes, and serious ones.

Apart from the system, Luis Enrique has to decide if he actually values meritocracy or not. So far, he’s talked more about it than actually put it in place. Pique is the best example, by far. Clearly not fit, the player cannot turn, let alone run like a professional footballer. Had 2 bad performances on the 2 matches leading up to El Clasico. Yet, he started it.
The same can be said about Xavi. Right now, he’s the most in form MF we have, yet Enrique decided to take him our during a corner kick, put Rakitic in (who hasn’t been the same since we went to Paris) and kept Iniesta playing (who also hasn’t been his same since the start of the season, and so far has only had flashes of his usual genius). The result? We conceded right after Xavi left, with mistakes from both Rakitic and Iniesta. Actually applying meritocracy could have prevented that, maybe. We can’t be sure, but it sure is better to lose/concede while fielding the players that actually deserve to be on the pitch.

Lucho talks about meritocracy, but Pedro, who’s been in decline since 11-12, but has now reached rock bottom, keeps having minutes to add nothing in the pitch. Alves, apart from his excellent performance today, is also far from his best. And Sergi Roberto, who clearly will not become a starter on this team, or stay in Barcelona for much longer, gets minutes instead of Rafinha, the best player Luis Enrique had when he coached Celta. But the best example to prove our coach doesn’t really do as he says, is Sandro.

Sandro is the closest 9 we have to Suarez. He came on as a sub on basically all Liga matches, and helped us win in each of them (apart from Malaga). Scored more than Munir, provided the space so Messi and Neymar could score on several occasions, yet… he didn’t have a single start under Luis Enrique. And today, the day Suarez finally debuted, he was sent back to Barça B. Meanwhile, Pedro keeps his place as the “4th forward”. I’m sorry, but he is not using the players who are actually working hard to earn playing time.

The measure of a good coach is being able to change the system and the way the team is playing without making a single sub. Guardiola could go from 433, to 343, then to 4312 in a matter of minutes. It all depended on the way the adversary was playing. Today, Madrid was fielding a midfield with zero CDMs. If we have our proper midfield, playing close to each other, making triangulations and having wingers to stretch the play, while having Suarez giving trouble to their CBs… it could have been different. We could all see that their midfield was just using our flanks and letting us do the same. And Luis Enrique decided to just left Mathieu (!) keep attacking when he saw fit, and focused most of our attacking moves on the left wing. Meanwhile, a certain Lionel Messi didn’t receive the ball. Just watched as we uselessly tried to turn Mathieu into something he is not.

When Guardiola left, some people even said he did it because we had lost to Chelsea. Funny thing, that. I’d rather lose just like the way we did that day on the Camp Nou to the Blues, when we knew we did all we could to win, including hits to the post and last man tackles and brilliant saves from Cech, than to win with a system that only makes it hard to do something our team has learned to do, and love, since 1988. It’s not about winning, for us. It’s about how well we do it. And, so far, we are not winning well enough, nor winning the matches that matter. We need serious changes, and I hope Lucho is wise enough to realize that and implement them. Most of them have been used since 1988. All he needs is to be humble and pay heed to what was being done right before he arrived as our coach.