Lionel Messi and company got the job done in Amsterdam but concerns remain that better teams will punish their obvious weaknesses.
Barcelona’s victory over Ajax was a welcome return to winning ways and a timely reminder that regardless of how well the team plays, this frontline can seize on a single mistake and decide a match in their favour. For much of the first half the home side looked the better team as a slightly experimental setup from Luis Enrique saw Barça lose the initiative, but the second saw an encouraging turnaround and a defensive midfield masterclass from Sergio Busquets.
On paper, Barça started the game playing 4-1-4-1, a slight twist on the 4-3-3/4-3-1-2 Luis Enrique clearly favours. Luis Suárez and Neymar played more as wing-forwards than out-and-out strikers and moved back into wide positions when Barça didn’t have the ball. They were there to prevent Ajax’s full-backs from advancing, but neither did the job well enough and this caused big problems for Dani Alves and Jordi Alba, who were often overloaded.
In practice, Barça often moved into a 4-4-2 shape with Xavi Hernández pressing right-centre-back Joël Veltman and Lionel Messi taking left-centre-back Niklas Moisander and goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen. Their attempts to win the ball were minimal, however, and Ajax quickly established supremacy.
To their credit, Frank De Boer’s team was proactive from the first whistle, playing the standard 4-3-3, pushing their full-backs forward and passing out from the back. Rotational movement in their midfield allowed them to dominate the centre and the aggression of wingers Lasse Schöne and Anwar El Ghazi pinned Alba and Alves back, forcing them to rush clearances and surrender possession. This was a noticeable difference to game at Camp Nou, in which Schöne and Ricardo Kishna failed to work nearly hard enough to unsettle Barça.
The first half started in scrappy fashion, with Ajax having the majority of the ball, building moves that started with their centre-backs and forcing Barça’s defenders to aimlessly clear their lines. Four times in the first ten minutes, Joël Veltman took the ball in the right centre-back position and Xavi was the only man who came forward to press him, which underlined Barça’s intention to sit deep and absorb pressure.
Barça remained dangerous when going forward, having a Neymar goal disallowed for offside and threatening on a couple of other occasions, but Ajax were definitely the side in control. Barça seemed stretched: when Ajax had the ball, Messi, Neymar and Suárez tended to remain high up the pitch while the rest of the team dropped, giving Ajax a lot of space to play in midfield. When the forwards advanced with the ball, the rest of the team stayed relatively deep, leaving the same ocean of space for Ajax to use when the ball turned over.
Up until the 35th minute, Ajax gave a good example of how to play Luis Enrique’s Barça, passing through the midfield, getting two-versus-one against the exposed full-backs and constantly keeping the pressure on. They had forced Marc-André ter Stegen to make a couple of smart stops and they had a good shout for a penalty turned down when Jordi Alba blocked Ricardo Van Rhijn’s shot with his hand. Had this pressure been converted into a goal, the match would have turned out differently – there has been little to suggest that Lucho knows how rearrange the side to attack when Barça go a goal behind.
Thankfully for Barça, it was they who scored the first goal. Ajax failed to clear their lines after a Messi free-kick, Dani Alves lobbed a lazy, hopeful pass back into the box and Cillessen lost his aerial duel for the loose ball with Bartra. The centre-back hooked the ball back into the centre and Messi headed home: all of Ajax’s good work was undone in an instant, and from that moment Barça were in the driving seat.
They grew noticeably in confidence and soon looked much more assertive in midfield. Almost immediately after the opening goal, Moisander joined Veltman on a yellow card and, knowing that they couldn’t touch him for fear of getting sent off, Messi drove at the two centre-backs for the rest of the match. It was with a creeping inevitability that the Argentine drew a second-half foul from Veltman that resulted in his dismissal and essentially ended the match as a contest.
Even before the red card, Barça had looked very comfortable in the second period. Ajax seemed to have tired, sitting off and allowing Bartra and Mascherano time that they didn’t have during the first forty-five minutes. Knowing that there was no rush to add a second goal and that Ajax couldn’t score if they didn’t have the ball, Barça calmly moved it around and waited for openings to develop.
Sergio Busquets in particular benefited from Ajax’s change in tack, repeatedly finding space between Ajax’s forwards and midfielders to start and maintain passing moves as well as repeatedly finding Messi.
The huge chance that Suárez missed in the 58th minute, for example, came from Busquets taking the ball in space and playing a perfectly timed pass to Messi in a pocket just ahead, allowing him to turn and slip Suárez in on goal.
Busquets has been criticised a lot for his performances in recent weeks, with many suggesting that he deserves to lose his place to the more physical and hyperactive Mascherano, but this performance was a timely reminder that at his best there’s simply no-one else like him. The new system leaves him exposed a lot of the time and he has struggled to cover huge swathes of space single-handed, but he should always be one of the first names on the teamsheet.
Given that Ajax were sitting relatively deep and struggling to move the ball forward quickly at transitions, there was more of an opportunity for Barça to press as a team and they didn’t pass it up. They mostly pressurised Van Rhijn and Nicolai Boilesen and prevented them playing forward passes into midfield, but the urgency increased all over the field. Ajax still put together forward advances, but aside from Arkadiusz Milik’s header that skimmed the post, they didn’t threaten.
The concerning thing for Luis Enrique was that most of Barça’s attacks didn’t really go anywhere either. There were too many occasions where – yet again – their play was far too narrow, predictable and Messi-centric. While he got better as the game went on, scoring a beautifully made and finished goal to put the game beyond doubt, there were too many situations like the one below where he had no passing options and tried to force a killer pass through a crowded defence, leading to a turnover.
After the second goal the match fizzled out. Down to ten men, Ajax knew there was no coming back and Barça kept the ball and ran the clock down. Luis Enrique will be happy with the result more than the performance, though the second half was of sufficient quality to quell most of the unrest that would have followed had they produced another like the first.
There were several positives to take from this game. Marc-André ter Stegen’s distribution was quick, accurate and decisive and he made a couple of vital saves. The second-half showing from Busquets couldn’t have come at a better time, and Marc Bartra, Jordi Alba and Lionel Messi also had good games.
Concerns remain, however. The quality of the team from back to front is debatable and that argument will remain to be settled another day, but due to the first half performance Luis Enrique’s way of thinking has to come under scrutiny. Nothing better sums up his muddled thinking than the uses of Ivan Rakitić and Xavi last night.
While it is undeniably amazing to see Xavi covering more distance than anyone else on the pitch, pressing high up the pitch and adding verticality to Barça’s too-often ponderous play, Barça shouldn’t be relying on a thirty-four year-old legend to act as the third-man-runner in every single attack when they’ve just signed a box-to-box midfielder as creative and productive as Rakitić. It’s bizarre that Lucho seems to think it’s for the best that Rakitić does nothing when Barça don’t have the ball and constantly stands behind Dani Alves when they are in possession.
On this occasion, Barça were fortunate that their opponents donated a goal to their cause and put them in a position of strength, but if the first half was anything to go by then better opponents – say, Qatari-owned, French opponents with a mighty Swedish striker among their ranks – will make short work of them in the near future.
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