FC Barcelona: What went wrong since the 2014/15 treble winning season
Where do we even start? Well, let’s start before the treble winning season. The slow and painful fall of Barcelona when Sandro Rosell was elected president in 2010. Barcelona won the La Liga and Champions League double in 2010/11 with the UNICEF logo on the shirt. Barcelona were sending a sum of $1.5 million in charity every year. Rosell wanted to commercialize the club. For that, he needed sponsorship money. Enter Qatar Foundation who were the shirt sponsors. The club signed a deal worth €150 million for 5 years. Barcelona still send charity money to UNICEF. But Rosell sent the UNICEF logo to the back side and bottom of the jersey. We can see that Barcelona sold their souls. In 2012, Pep Guardiola, the most successful coach in the club’s history with 14 trophies in 4 seasons, left the club due to disputes with Sandro Rosell.
However, Sandro is always well known for the Tax Evasion money used to buy Neymar from Santos in 2013 (€12 million in unpaid taxes). As a result, Rosell went to jail. Unfortunately for the club, the bad things do not end here. Josep Bartomeu who was the club’s Vice President under Rosell succeeded him. The team won only the Spanish Super Cup that season as they had to watch Atletico Madrid win La Liga on the final matchday at Camp Nou, lost the Copa del Rey final to bitter rivals Real Madrid and watch the Madrid Clubs play the UEFA Champions League Final where Los Blancos won the La Decima.
The 2014-15 season started poorly for the club as new signing Luis Suarez missed the first 3 months of the season due to that bite on Chiellini and head coach Luis Enrique on the verge of being sacked. However, from January the team was able to comeback strongly and win the treble, becoming the first European club to win the treble twice largely thanks to arguably the greatest attacking trio of all time in the form of Messi, Suarez and Neymar (MSN). However, this treble victory papered over the cracks because Bartomeu was elected President in the 2015 club elections. The club may have won three more league titles since the treble season, but in the UCL, it’s a different story.
From the 2015-16 season onwards, the club have repeatedly failed in the UEFA Champions League knockout stages, especially in the away legs. Given below are the results of a few matches that the team played in the away leg of the UCL knockout games:
Atletico Madrid 2-0 Barcelona (15/16)
Paris Saint Germain 4-0 Barcelona (16/17)
Juventus 3-0 Barcelona (16/17)
Roma 3-0 Barcelona (17/18)
Liverpool 4-0 Barcelona (18/19) and the most embarrassing of them all,
Bayern Munich 8-2 Barcelona which was a single leg neutral match played in Lisbon.
Since the 2014-15 treble, Barcelona have made repeated mistakes in the transfer market. Either they sign players who are simply not good enough for the club or they sign players who do not fit the system. Only Clement Lenglet could be considered an unqualified successful signing. The club still rely on the players who were part of the 14/15 treble winning season. As a result, in the team that started the 8-2 reverse against Bayern, 6 of them were aged 30 or above. Only Lenglet and Frenkie de Jong were 25 or under.
Another big problem at the club is the lack of encouragement for La Masia players under Bartomeu. Sure, there are the likes of Pique, Alba, Busquets and Messi. But only Sergi Roberto has established himself as a first team player at the club since Guardiola’s departure. Several ex-La Masia players have achieved success elsewhere like Thiago Alcantara, Dani Olmo, Takefusa Kubo, Andre Onana, Eric Garcia and Alex Grimaldo just to name a few.
Bartomeu’s incompetence showed when he also had a social media scandal called ‘Barcagate’ which tainted the reputation of the club. But, the most infamous moment of Bartomeu’s reign as Barcelona President was Messi’s transfer saga with the latter stating publicly that he wanted to leave the club after 16 years. Messi ended up staying because he didn’t want this saga to be a legal battle. It’s no secret that Bartomeu and his incompetent board held Lionel Messi to ransom.
Going by what happened for the past 4-5 years, it looks like the 2020-21 season is going to be a write-off for Barcelona. With the elections happening in 2021, a Barcelona fan can only hope that either Victor Font or Joan Laporta, who are the favourites to win, will lead the club in the right direction from 2021.
