Lionel Messi scored the goal that puts Barcelona in pole position to progress from their Champions League tie with Chelsea. But the feeling persists that Ernesto Valverde’s system puts too much of the onus on one man, writes Adam Bate from Stamford Bridge.
Lionel Messi finally got that long-awaited goal, his first against Chelsea in nine attempts. The late equaliser at Stamford Bridge ensured Barcelona remain big favourites to progress to the quarter finals of the Champions League. But the manner of the performance raised doubts over the wisdom of Ernesto Valverde putting so much of the burden on his star player.
Messi’s output this season is remarkable. The top scorer in La Liga with 20 goals, he has also provided more assists for his team-mates than anyone else in Spain too. Contrary to that idle old cliché that argues the exact opposite, if anybody else other than the great man had been clocking up such numbers, nobody would be able to stop talking about them.
But it is no coincidence that Messi is the one making things happen. It reflects the structure of Valverde’s Barcelona. After spending time out on the right wing under Luis Enrique, Messi is at the heart of Barca once more and central to everything that they do. He now operates as a deep-lying forward in what – whisper it – is not too far away from a 4-4-2 system.
“Without Neymar we are more balanced,” claimed Messi himself in an uncharacteristically revealing interview with World Soccer magazine earlier this season. “His departure led to a change in the way we play. We have lost a lot of our offensive potential but we have improved in defence. We have more balance and this allows us to be more solid.”
Messi attempted five dribbles but completed only one of them. “There was a lot of traffic around their box and we struggled to break through,” acknowledged Valverde afterwards. It was an accurate assessment but the fact that Messi felt compelled to dribble his way through that maze of bodies reflects the lack of passing options that he had ahead of him.
In prioritising the team’s defensive structure, Valverde has robbed Messi of runners beyond him in a Barcelona side that is already alarmingly short of pace. As a result, with nobody ahead of him, dribbling often looks the best bet. Indeed, the statistic show that Messi has completed almost twice as many dribbles as any other player in La Liga this season.
