L'Equipe: PSG open to selling Neymar

Casciavit wrote:Any donkey with the slightest bit of positional discipline can do what Rakitic does at Barca.

Let's not kid ourselves. This isn't 2014 Rakitic leading counterattacks for Sevilla. This is 2019 Rakitic who covers Messi's back and passes the ball backwards whenever he has the chance.

He passing back is a very lazy observation and anyone watching him regularly will know that he creates more chance than anyone in our midfield. I agree Rakitic is not the fastest player in the world but what he lacks in pace makes up in other areas. Not to mention the guy is a thorough professional and a work horse.

This is Barca, not a coal mine ffs. Being hardworking is not enough.



Find the red dot. This is Rakitic.

Wasn't he our most offensive midfielder last season? It wasn't Busquets or Arthur, that's for sure. He's not an offensive midfielder per se, but those stats are just horrible given you have Messi and Suarez in front of you.

But if you keep passing back to Pique I'm not surprised your Expected Goals and Expected Assist stats are horrendeous!

BTW, Neymar on this map would be somewhere in the region of Messi and Ronaldo for xG and between Ziyech and Tadic for xA which is INCREDIBLE but he's played less games so it's not 100% truthful in his case.

Neymar plays in ligue 1, though. They're pretty much guaranteed to win the league every season, and it's definitely not rare for them to simply play around with their opponent teams and win comfortably.

So what you're trying to tell me is Mbappe isn't as big of a talent as Sports would claim, the leauge is just worse than English Football Leauge One?

Myesyats wrote:This is Barca, not a coal mine ffs. Being hardworking is not enough.



Find the red dot. This is Rakitic.

Wasn't he our most offensive midfielder last season? It wasn't Busquets or Arthur, that's for sure. He's not an offensive midfielder per se, but those stats are just horrible given you have Messi and Suarez in front of you.

But if you keep passing back to Pique I'm not surprised your Expected Goals and Expected Assist stats are horrendeous!

So your measure for a CM is goals and assists?

Madrid indirectly leading barcelona to bankrupt themselves.

futbol_bill wrote:
So your measure for a CM is goals and assists?

xG and xA are best criteria when judging an individual player. Rakitic is very much a player in our team who should be creating chances but does not.

xA is more or less calculated by taking into account passes the player makes and what the receiver does with them.

So, for example, when Rakitic makes a key pass to Messi and he scores or gets a good shot at the goal, Rakitic receives as many xA points as Messi receives xG points.

Many times we played with Busquets-Rakitic-Vidal or Arthur in place of Vidal so the burden of creating chances and making those crucial passes to our forwards lied on Rakitic. And he was terrible at it. Zero creativity.

For just doing donkey work and covering up for Messi we could replace him with literally anyone and you wouldn’t notice a difference.

Myesyats wrote:So what you're trying to tell me is Mbappe isn't as big of a talent as Sports would claim, the leauge is just worse than English Football Leauge One?

Your words, not mine

Not that anyone would be able to live up to Sport’s standards for french players, anyway. There are a lot of talented individuals in Ligue 1, but the power balance between the teams makes it significantly less competitive than the top 4 leagues. I’m saying this based on my relatively little experience watching Ligue 1. I’ve only ever watched Lyon consistently through a single season, and that was around 10 years ago now. I think it’s quite obvious that the league is not quite up to the standards of the top 4, though.

Myesyats wrote:

futbol_bill wrote:
So your measure for a CM is goals and assists?

xG and xA are best criteria when judging an individual player. Rakitic is very much a player in our team who should be creating chances but does not.

xA is more or less calculated by taking into account passes the player makes and what the receiver does with them.

So, for example, when Rakitic makes a key pass to Messi and he scores or gets a good shot at the goal, Rakitic receives as many xA points as Messi receives xG points.

Many times we played with Busquets-Rakitic-Vidal or Arthur in place of Vidal so the burden of creating chances and making those crucial passes to our forwards lied on Rakitic. And he was terrible at it. Zero creativity.

For just doing donkey work and covering up for Messi we could replace him with literally anyone and you wouldn’t notice a difference.

wrong, with that front three, the job of midfield is to get the ball into the hands of front three not necessarily to create chances. That front three will make their own chances.

Take a good look at that chart you posted and you’ll see there are hardly any CMs there. The ones that are there either play wing or are more of an AM than a CM!

I know, that's why I wrote right under the graph that Rakitić is not really an AM in our setup so it's a meh argument but..... 'not really' but he kind of is our most offensive midfield player on most occasions.

But what stat am I supposed to bring up then? Most successful passes per 90 mins? I'm quite certain he's great at that since he doesn't take any risks.

He's not great at keeping, shielding or distributing the ball. He's just as big of a liability as Busquets. There is no reason to keep him also because he's aging

Well you don't have to use stats but you could point out that he wasn't a top 20 player in La Liga last season scoring only a 7.06 rating. Still the best midfielder for Barca of course but not exactly great.

Our midfielders are Busquets who declined, old Vidal and Sergi Roberto

Being better than those 3 doesnt make you good.

Imo De Jong is no exaggeration 4x the player Rakitic is.

Myesyats wrote:Our midfielders are Busquets who declined, old Vidal and Sergi Roberto

Being better than those 3 doesnt make you good.

Imo De Jong is no exaggeration 4x the player Rakitic is.

Oh I do actually agree with you that Rakitic isn't great and in theory could be replaced but we know that's not going to happen. If you sell him, you won't replace him till next season which means that you'll just play one of the players that are worse than him.

If Rakitic's departure makes Neymar transfer happen than I'm more than willing to sacrifice him. We could get someone in the January window.

Bet you the finest Arabian horse that it would not make a difference. We literally COULD NOT play worse than we are playing right now. Can't sink lower than being dominated in midfield by Rayo Vallecano.

Well yeah, it's Neymar so obviously. I'm not actually arguing against the deal just saying that the midfield will be worse with Rakitic gone.

I’ve read that PSG is it accepting that latest offer!

Thimmy wrote:Neymar plays in ligue 1, though. They're pretty much guaranteed to win the league every season.

I'm struggling to see the difference

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

Thimmy wrote:Neymar plays in ligue 1, though. They're pretty much guaranteed to win the league every season.

I'm struggling to see the difference

Of course you can’t. You’re the guy that doesn’t watch games anymore, so of course you can’t see it!

futbol_bill wrote:I’ve read that PSG is it accepting that latest offer!

Wait, which one is that? I've genuinely lost track.

futbol_bill wrote:

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

Thimmy wrote:Neymar plays in ligue 1, though. They're pretty much guaranteed to win the league every season.

I'm struggling to see the difference

Of course you can’t. You’re the guy that doesn’t watch games anymore, so of course you can’t see it!

Pretty embarrassing that you do and can't see what i then isn't it?

They've won 8 La Liga in a decade so what's the difference lol.

Myesyats wrote:Anyone who actually watches Barcelona knows this is Rakitić in a nutshell:



Terrible vision, poor awaraness, poor under pressure, majority of passes to the back

Obviously lack of movement in the team doesn't help but he's not an A midfielder like De Jong, he's a B- on his best days.

by far the worst Barcelona poster.

what a dumb dumb

No personal insults.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

futbol_bill wrote:

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:


I'm struggling to see the difference

Of course you can’t. You’re the guy that doesn’t watch games anymore, so of course you can’t see it!

Pretty embarrassing that you do and can't see what i then isn't it?

They've won 8 La Liga in a decade so what's the difference lol.

I don't know why you're insisting on comparing with La Liga specifically, but in France, the only real threat to PSG winning the league, was a short-lived challenge by Monaco, and they've fallen off a cliff since. Lyon and OM arent as strong as they were in the past, and they don't have the funds of Real Madrid or Atletico Madrid to get them back to where they should be. PSG have, on occasion, been playfully toying with their opponent teams, because the lack of challenge allows them to do so. There are matches when their players look sluggish and disinterested, but they streamroll most of their league opposition. I watched PSG quite a lot in 2018-19, and Neymar looked so dominant on occasion, that it was almost as if he was playing against kids. Is this another one of your "I disagree tbh tbf"?

Not that Barcaforum is an indication of anything but they watch the games and they know.

http://www.barcaforum.com/showthread.php/16890-Do-you-want-Rakitic-to-stay

Rakitic is 31, that's the only major reason why getting rid of him is no big loss.

Also he does fulfill an important role on the right side by covering Messi but Sergi Roberto could probably do it better at this point given the age difference.