This is the last post covering the main story of FC Barcelona.

Image source

We might not even need statistics and sources at this point to say that Lionel Messi is at least one of the best players of all time. Messi, according to many fans and people in general, is the closest thing we have to "football perfection". That is a great thing, sadly, it has dangerous downsides.

Messi's Consistent Top-Level Performance Became the Norm

In Barcelona, players come, players leave, the only consistent thing is that Messi will always score and assist. His goals and assists brought in trophies and with those trophies came money. His performance from one side leaves you with a lot of peace of mind as a fan, but from the other, the abundance of it turns it into a routine removing the excitement of it.

That's what happened to Messi at Barcelona, a great glory that everyone wanted the credit for.

The Hidden Problem

During a time when Real Madrid were building the best optimum way to take advantage of Cristiano Ronaldo's great performance, Barcelona were signing players in Messi's position and roles. The Rosell/Bartomeu leadership accumulated the highest debt any sporting entity could accumulate in the entire history.

You don't need a reminder or a breakdown to look at the number of deals that looked bad just from a fan perspective before an expert one. It wasn't just players, managers as well.

Barcelona also went through a parade of managers with opposite styles, from Barcelona's Tiki-Taka Tito to Tata Martino, back to Barcelona's school with Luis Enrique, to 442 defensive style classic Valverde, to mid-table manager Quique Setién.

Perhaps the greatest way to sum it up was the last pick, a manager who never stuck to style in his career, Ronald Koeman.

A Decaying Rot

Even as Barcelona continued to win titles here and there, there was a rot starting to spread. Around the period of Tito Vilanova and Puyol's retirement, along with Abidal, the problem was simple, Barcelona needed to improve their defensive line and keep going. They already had the style.

As time went by, more players started to lose their form and magic, Xavi, Iniesta, Bosquets, Pique. You only need to look at Barcelona's current starting XI to see how replacing them worked.

A lot of deals that are more media-caused than they are a result of Barcelona innovation hub, something I mentioned previously. To understand why that's such a big problem, you need to understand that many clubs were benefiting from Barcelona innovation hub, which was an extension of Barcelona's philosophy, had their ideas and strategies benefitted from by other clubs, including Manchester City.

So, while the Barcelona innovation hub was being a source of benefit for many clubs around, FC Barcelona were signing players overhyped by the media, and others with quality but with positions and roles contradicting Messi's.

And all those players weren't cheap and had salaries that made them immovable.

What started as a simple, clear problem in defense evolved into having it as well as having to replace Xavi and then Iniesta, then a great debacle replacing Neymar.

No Identity

With footballing styles changing between managers, and the type of players brought shined under different philosophies, Barcelona were just numbers on the pitch. They start whoever they want in midfield, defense, and in attack next to Messi. But, each game Barcelona played depended essentially on two players, Messi in attack and Ter Stegen between the stick. And when the first is marked tightly, and the latter unable to stop the stream of shots, there was no escaping the outcome.

Image source

Xerox Of A Xerox

Every season for Barcelona under Bartomeu was worse than the season before. Even the times they won the league, they can be heavily related to their competition haven't a bad season locally. All the money was spent until they accumulated 1.3 billion in debts, and they had a worse team than they did before sacking Zubi from the sporting director chair, ever since Barcelona had had five sporting directors in six years and nothing to show for it except disasters.

We Come Full Circle

I started this series by talking about the origin of Barcelona's inside war. In that post I talked about how Barcelona's president Josep Lluís Núñez' war with the entire squad of Barcelona. Here's an excerpt.

In 1988, for example, he was in a feud with the entire Barcelona team, players, and manager. The players protested in a hotel in what became known as the "Hesperia Mutiny". Núñez won that feud and 14 out of 26 first-team players along with the manager were forced out.

Núñez won that war by using the media to control the Barcelona public opinion, Bartomeu tried the same.

I3 Ventures case (Barçagate)

This is a case that is still being investigated today. So, everything said here comes with the allegedly label.

Bartomeu had hired I3 Ventures, something he denied at the beginning, for social media campaigns in 2017. In February 2020, it was revealed that the campaign was defaming many figures in Barcelona by creating a state of opinion via social media using fake accounts.

The targets of the campaign were different but included Messi, Xavi, Pique, Iniesta, Carles Puyol, and Pep Guardiola. Along with executives and election candidates like Laporta, Víctor Font, and Jaume Roures.

The end result was a lawsuit against Bartomeu that is still going on. We could only conclude that the goal behind that was to justify the mistakes of Barcelona's administration at the time, blame them on Messi as many players coming were in his position or had similar roles, and ensure Bartomeu getting another term in charge of Barcelona.

In The End, Everyone Lost

Messi had to leave the club, Rosell and Bartomeu are now disgraced figures, Laporta seems out of his depth, and Barcelona are struggling to rebuild. It is a war that is more than 40 years old, the winner of which, was no one.