DISCLAIMER: Before you read on, let me remind the obvious: I do not hate anyone who works for our club. I only hate Rosell, Bartomeu and the board (https://lucasammr.com/2015/01/29/from-throne-to-gutter/).
I don’t hate Pedro, or Pique. I never hated Tata Martino (even though he said he wanted “Messi to touch the ball the least possible).
However, I will never support players or coaches who are not performing at their best or doing a good enough job.
That’s why I have been critical towards Lucho.
Besides being arrogant with  the press and dealing with the player with a heavy hand, what I saw on the pitch never felt right with our team, our system, our club.
Today, for the first time, his system worked for 90 minutes. And since I have nothing personal against him, this article is dedicated to the first match I actually had fun watching this season.

I didn’t like our 3-1 win against PSG. Or any of the 3 matches against Atletico Madrid (even though the first half of the La Liga one was pretty good). The 0-6 against Elche did not impress me. Or the 3-2 against the Yellow Submarine. In all of those matches, we either lost control of the match and didn’t create changes for dozens of minutes (or even a whole half), or we depended too much on Messi, Neymar and Suarez. We didn’t actually dominate, or were clearly superior for the whole 90.

But, today, against Bilbao at San Mames, we were.

We still didn’t do it through the middle, mind you. Actually, we might as well forget about seeing it under Lucho. The thing that have defined us since 1988, our midfield dominance, will not be seen this season. No horizontal control, triangles, lines close together, or total dominance. We will not completely tame any adversary precisely because we do not use the midfield well enough.

But we will do it out of complete and utter agression upfront.

In a proper tactical analysis, Lucho’s system really doesn’t generate anything. It’s Messi on the right, Neymar on the left, and each get help from their fullback and CM. We do not advance due to a dominance from triangulation and associative plays. We do it because Messi and Neymar are simply too good. They can beat 3-4 players constantly and create something out of nothing. No other team in Europe have players that can destroy a backline all by themselves.

We kept seeing that today, over and over again. Especially from Messi. Dressed in all green, he was our Green Lantern. “In brighest day, in darkest night”. Scored once and created the other 4. The 5th one could only have been scored after a Messi play. No other player alive could have done that. He kept the ball of 8 Bilbao players, while basically walking in front of the area.

The dominance comes from Messi being on his best form since 2012. The dominance comes from Neymar having a superb season in European football. And it also comes from Suarez making the right runs to allow both of our “wingers” to wreck havoc.

For the first time in months, I enjoyed watching our team playing. It’s too vertical, too reliant on MSN, and we are now leaking goals (2 goals conceded on each of the last 3 matches). But, for the first time this season, we kept this chaotic design for 90 minutes.

And dominated. At San Mames.

I do not think this system, this style, is sustainable. Messi one day will face 3 good markers, Neymar one day will have an off day, and Suarez won’t be able to move as much. That’s the danger of relying so much on 3 players out of 11. That’s the reason that I, being the cruijffista I am, will keep wanting to see a proper midfield, a proper build-up, proper control, and Messi playing on the center again.

But, given Messi’s form, Neymar’s brillance and Suarez’s hard work, we can not rule out anything. They are simply too good together.

Individual brillance can win matches, and will keep winning most of them. Soon the hard challenges will arrive: City, Madrid, Villarreal. If we manage to win these 5 matches by playing the same chaotic way we did today, nothing is impossible.

There will always be one exception to prove that a rule is right. In football, having 3 superb forwards is not a guarantee of success. A cohesive team always prevails over individual talent. Maybe, if we are lucky, Messi, Suarez and Neymar are the expections to that rule.

Beware my power, Green Lantern’s light.