BARCELONA – Luis Suárez scoring goals for Atlético de Madrid is the definition of depression that Barcelona suffers. The Uruguayan was convicted by Josep Maria Bartomeu, Ramón Planes convicted him and Ronald Koeman executed him, in a role of executioner that he found when he arrived at the Camp Nou without saying anything about sports planning at the club.
There are people in Barcelona who already suspect that Suárez will become the successor of David Villa, whom the club ceded to Atlético in the summer of 2013, convinced that it no longer takes place in a Barça that Neymar had reached and had Alexis Sánchez … And that he came to conquer the rojiblanco league. Scoring 13 goals, a modest number … But being fundamental in the golden victories against Celta, Athletic, Granada or Real Sociedad.
Barça seem to be looking elsewhere, convinced that the Uruguayan’s departure was essential to ease the payroll of the staff and to change the control of the dressing room. It was thought that with Ansu Fati it would be enough to forget Suárez, but when the young player of the team was injured, everything fell like a house of cards.
With 16 league games behind, Barça added 41 goals last season, 8 from Suárez, who have reached 10 and 9 respectively at the moment in the last two seasons. His theoretical successor, Martin Braithwaite, adds two. And the team notices her. He is not remembered, since 2003, the last time he scored fewer goals.
INDISPUTABLE
When 41 years have passed since the signing of a Roberto Dinamita who became an undisputed star in Brazil and left Barcelona through the back door two goals and three months later, it is striking that Barça failed to find a successor for Suárez . And, even more, that he gave it to a rival of the first magnitude.
“If he goes to a direct rival and Barcelona pays his salary”, Leo Messi said not many days ago in his interview with La Sexta, realizing that everything that is done with the Uruguayan is a bad joke.
Barça signed Roberto Dinamita in January 1980 because Hasi Krankl, the previous season’s top scorer, had a dry tank. The Brazilian’s invention did not work (patience was not a virtue in the club) and the president decided at the end of the season to sign an old wish of the club, Quini, already in the final stages of his career, but which still gave a remarkable performance in the next two years.
From there, and five years have passed since then, scorers like Archibald (a major global error in preventing Hugo Sánchez from signing), Lineker, Hughes (another monumental failure), Julio Salinas, Romario, Kodro have gone through Barça, Ronaldo, Anderson (accompanied by Rivaldo to fill the gap of the Phenomenon), Kluivert, also the fiascos Alfonso and Dani, Eto’o, Ibrahimovic, Villa or Alexis … Until Luis Suárez, the one who broke all records.
Always, with more or less success, Barcelona looked for and found a level successor when the stage of that striker he had in the club ended. But with Suárez, the mold broke. The Uruguayan, a close friend of Leo Messi in the locker room and to say that a person with a bad influence in recent times, took a contract for the renewal of Leonine from Josep Maria Bartomeu, and the Barça sports management neither knew nor could nor did she dare seek him a first-rate substitute.
Munir or Alcácer went with him, unable to overshadow him, even if in recent times the null resignation from Europe has shot the whole team. And even when he was injured in January 2020 and underwent surgery after the Spanish Super Cup, the club could not take the step forward.
While Borussia Dortmund bet 45 million euros on the signing of Erling Haaland, Barcelona waited for the eleventh injury of Dembélé, already in February, to pay 18 million for Martin Braithwaite, a diligent striker … from Leganés , with which he scored 13 goals in 48 games. And it was they who, without blushing, proclaimed that the Dane could be Suárez’s replacement, whom the club, after the Lisbon disaster, fired in some way.
“Suárez’s stage is over”, it was argued to explain his departure, without considering that it was given to a rival, even paying his salary and without giving the project that Koeman was going to lead a first-class replacement, because he was the box is empty in the Camp Nou.
There was no money. And there was not and is not a central striker in a Barça who find it difficult to turn all the opportunities he creates into a goal. Beyond a game that passes between mediocrity and illusion, the close victory in Huesca reveals, as happened against Eibar, Valencia, Levante, Cádiz or Getafe, that this team shouts in the desert to recover a fundamental figure ….
And while Suárez, in his own way, continues to score for Atlético. Although he did not break his bad luck in Europe, at the moment he has scored nine goals in twelve league matches and those scored against Elche (two), Getafe and Alavés have given Simeone’s team six gold points that explain the role of the favorite. Gradually, Atlético wins.
This is the case with some who talk about cheap demagoguery when others allude to the lack of purpose and the absence of the Uruguayan. The most shocking fact is simple: Barça scored 30 goals in 16 league games, their worst record of the 2003-04 season. A little more can be added, given the harshness of this statistic.