La Liga,Athletic Bilbao-Barcelona: Seeking a win in the Lion’s den.

Barcelona players travel to Bilbao’s football cathedral A.K.A. San Mamés to face Los leones de San Mamés-Bilboko leoiak , the Athletic lions of the Basque. Barcelona trips recorded 41 defeats, 17 draws and 21 wins. That tells a lot about the importance of this game for Barcelona. One of the milestones of the season, no doubt about that.

Athletic Bilbao enjoys a magnificent football cycles at the moment with some of the most promising young players in Spain strengthening their squad. One can go as far as saying that if they can keep all the players for the following few years they will have a definite chance to play in the champions’ league more often and why not, compete in La Liga. They may not be there yet but the potentials shouldn’t be underestimated when the club is managed by Capparos, one of the best coaches in developing youth to quality.

Capparos is trying to increase the offense doze in his tactics this season counting on flooding the midfield and getting advantage of his young players work rate and movement to link with Llorente in front. At home they are always lethal and aggressively devoted to their duties on the field. Their defense is physically strong as you can always expect when you face Athletic Bilbao and their holding midfielders are excellent with Martinez being the inspiring leader in the midfield and the player who will decide the level of his team performance in this game.

Barcelona

Barcelona’s performance so far this season is yet to convince. Last week I was not available to post any comments after the matches against Atletico and Sporting. It is too late to go to more details about it now, but we need to point two observations that are relevant for the following game:

1) Against Atletico: One can mention lot of factors leading Barcelona to win that game. What fits this preview most is the drastic response of Flores –Atletico’s coach- to counter Barcelona’s tactics, especially in the second half. One of the reasons Atletico lost that game was the lack of Versatility of Simao and Reyes in the match where they failed on the flanks and were unable to expose Barcelona’s defensive fragility in the center caused by having Busquets as a holding Midfielder supporting the center backs without any player to close the spaces cased between the lines Defense-Midfield. If Atletico were able to switch to more centered offense they could have had a better chance.

2) Against Sporting: Pep knew what his players need to do, but it was not happening. Bojan and Villa were asked to open to channels more often creating spaces for Pedro and Keita to slice the holes to the box. They failed to do so.

Against Athletic, Pep will have all that in mind, or so you can hope. A more balanced presence in the midfield is needed because Capparos is a fox who can expose such structural defects. Offense-wise, creating spaces is a must or else Barcelona will face the same Hercules episode once again.

Lineup:

Valdes ,Alves, Puyol,Pique, Adriano , Xavi, Busquets, Keita , Iniesta, Villa, Pedro

If the game was scheduled two months later I would have suggested starting Mascherano. No doubt. At the moment he is still adapting and unless Pep saw some notable improvement in the training I suggest not taking the risk in such a tricky match. There is a Champions’ league match coming. Adriano over Maxwell is a pure tactical preference taking in consideration the athleticism of Adriano that gives him the edge over Maxwell against Athletic-like teams.

Bojan had good times against Athletic recently, something that serves his case to start. Yet, Pedro is better in creating chaos and in making the timed runs into the box. Keita is a need in this type of games, or else Xavi will have to play too far from the opponents’ area to cover the space in the midfield. That may leave passive impact on an already struggling offense.

This is Villa’s chance to take responsibilities. In a previous post I pointed out that one of Villa’s problems so far is that he doesn’t feel the leader’s responsibility as he felt at Valencia. There he was the man who has to make the difference, and he did. At Barcelona, his performance is showing the signs of being settled to a supportive role to that’s of Messi. Regardless of his performance against Sporting, he finished the game with a goal in his bag followed by Hail! Hail the hero! Headlines in the media the following day (like we never seen before for a new striker scoring a winning goal. Ehm…). That’s all good and here is a chance to bring that confidence to Bilbao. Better performance today and another in Kazan, and Villa turns to a key member with leadership responsibilities again. That will help on the long run, because that’s when he can roll. Just don’t try to believe being equal with the best, or else… But we cross that bridge when we are there.