Ronaldinho is no longer the future of Barcelona
“Ronaldinho is no longer the future of Barcelona.” When hearing this, one would say, “DUH!” However, I would argue that Ronaldinho has a much larger hand in the future of the Catalan club than most people think.
Ronaldinho is still one of the top players in the world, but that isn’t the argument. His explosive play and ankle breaking moves are no longer the dominant trait in his play. Passing and free kicks seem to be his key contributions so far this season. But the best thing Ronni will bring to the squad this year is experience and leadership.
With the uprising in the Barca rankings that is currently taking place, led by Giovani Dos Santos, Bojan Krkic, and Lionel Messi, Ronaldinho’s investment in these three youngsters could lead to whether or not Barcelona can climb to the top of La Liga.
The arrival of Messi has revolutionized and uplifted the attack, especially after all the criticism thrown Ronni’s way as he recently lost his title as the best player in the world.
Despite the truth that Ronni is on the decline, Barcelona may be as poised as ever to be a shining example of the beautiful game. Dos Santos and Messi are committed to the Catalan club, and due to their devotion, Barcelona should be set for years to come regardless of Ronaldinho’s future.
Dos Santos, 18, has been receiving nothing but rave reviews since he cracked onto the first squad. His father Zizinho, a former Brazil international, said Gio is currently talking with Barca about extending his current contract, and his dream is to succeed at Barca.
Meanwhile, little Lionel is as committed as anyone to the Catalan giants. At age 11 he was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency, and his family was unable to pay for the treatment which cost £500 a month. FC Barcelona noticed his potential and picked up the bill for the medicine he needed as long as he agreed to move to Spain in order to train at the FCB facilities. A few years later, he was placed on the B squad where he scored 35 goals in 30 games.
Frank Rijkaard’s job security is in question for the time being, but if Dos Santos, Messi, and Bojan continue to blossom, it’s easy to see why Barca, and Rijkaard, will be alright if Ronni can’t seem to break out of his slump. It’s a definite fact that if Ronaldinho invests in building up Dos Santos, Bojan, and Messi, FC Barcelona will regain it’s status as a powerhouse and give Real Madrid a run for their money as the Champions of La Liga.
The future of Barcelona is in it’s youth, and with their young stars, it will continue to pursue its title as being ‘mes que un club’ (more than a club).
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- 10 reasons why Barcelona have lost it all…
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In barca, the work of Ronnie is now been bestowed on Dos Santos. The future of barca depends on how well Frank utilizes this super gifted youth and not Ronnie
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Barcelona sell Ronnie sooner rather than later if a good offer comes along. I think this could be his last season here. Barca have a history of making good deals with their star players once they have peaked and then gone off the boil slightly - often to their arch-rivals Madrid. I agree that Messi and Dos Santos are the future, but I hope they work Ronnie to try to get him playing well again, then sell him on for a good profit and invest in improving the defence a bit.
I wouldnt agree that he was shining example for players like Bojan and Dos Santos to aspire yes I will agree with you about on the pitch but off it he is rumoured to live a wild life style and could be a bad influence on the younger players. I would say the future of Barcelona may well be on Ronnie’s shoulders but not by what he does but what the club gets for him when they do decide to let go. Rumour has it him and Kaka will swap clubs next season and I feel that would be a cracking piece of buisness from the club as they would be able to play Messi, Eto’o, Henry and Kaka at the same time they cant really do the same with Ronnie
What a propogandistic article, good lord.
By the way Karmashark, that was a pretty inane analysis.
They have a good record of what?? Hah. Yeah.
Such as Maradona, Schuster, Laudrup, Figo, Ronaldo? All players who left at or before their prime. All who went on to win major titles elswhere.
Lo que hay que leer.
“Lo que hay que leer” - sickening arrogance. If you don’t want to read it, don’t. Or write something better.
Players winning major titles elsewhere does not mean that the selling clubs have been on the end of a bad deal. I’d argue that the deal for Ronaldo was a bloody good one - he had one consistent season at Inter before his career was wrecked by injuries and he never returned the same player that he was that season at Barca.
In fact, the deal for Figo was similar. He may have had a blistering first season but his level then dropped off. Selling your players one season before they begin their decline means that you get the best market value for them - evidenced by the dramatic decline in Henry’s value at the end of the 2006-7 season and the relatively meagre £16 million fee his transfer commanded.
Man Utd sold Ruud Van Nistelrooy the year before last, he went on to win a title at Real Madrid but many argue that the decision to sell was the right one for Manchester United as a club - it offered more unity in the dressing room, happier times for Ronaldo and better, free flowing football (especially with Saha at his ebb). The year after AC Milan let Sheva go (and he’d just had a fantastic season), they won the Champions League whilst Chelsea won nothing.
The difference in this case is that Barca have players more than capable of replacing Ronaldinho and so can afford to let him go at the right price.
Sickening arrogance. Haha.
The deal for Figo was good?? Who are you trying to delude, other than yourself? You contradict your own logic.
Upon selling Figo Barcelona promptly spent the €50m on two players who were utter failures there, Overmars and Petit, not to mention going into a -6 year- trophy drought, incredible institutional instability, massive debt brought on by the constant scrambling to catch up with Real Madrid after the blow received, and a long etc.
However in the following paragraph you justify Man Utd’s sale of RVN by saying that Man Utd’ improved after his departure.
So let’s see: Figo’s sale was good, because they received a massive fee, but turned out to be a catalyst for one of the worst periods in Barcelona’s history. RVN’s sale was good, despite receiving what in hindsight was a small sum, because after his departure they were successful. Which criteria are we supposed to apply when and where, or is this simply a case of justifying whatever point you want to make with whatever evidence exists whether its logic is completely contrary to an identical point *you just made*?
And among this tripe you challenge me to write something better? Who’s arrogant here?
And one more thing: “if you don’t want to read it, don’t”. This reminds me of the “love it or leave it” attitude a lot of nationalists bandy about in times of societal schism.
If I, or any/everyone else, only read what we wanted to read, all debate, exchange of opinions, or debunking of those less informed or intent on misinforming would drop dead in their tracks. The reasoning that underlies that statement is lazy and defeatist. And not slightly arrogant itself.
The fact that the deals for Overmars and Petit were unsuccessful does not make the deal for Figo a bad one. Barca could theoretically have taken the world record fee for Figo and invested it better, therefore making it a good deal; equally, Petit may well have signed regardless of the Figo deal as they were hardly competing for a position. Chelsea let Jiri Jarosik go at the end of the 2006-7 season, and have not won anything since. The two aren’t necessarily causally related.
“If I, or any/everyone else, only read what we wanted to read, all debate, exchange of opinions, or debunking of those less informed or intent on misinforming would drop dead in their tracks”.
And yet you have the indecency to laugh off the accusations of haughtiness. No comment I have ever seen you post on this website has been constructive to any degree. Your passage through this website is an exercise in self-indulgence, in no way hoping to provoke any sort of debate or exchange of opinions seeing as your opinion is either clearly dogmatically settled or patently unfulfilled by what soccerlens has to offer. Instead of writing an (apparently) well-informed and disinterested article yourself, you flit through the archives of soccerlens intent on bullying those who you feel are either intellectually or sapientially your inferiors. We could be talking about bridge and I expect your manner of speaking would be no different.
The use of RVN as an example was there to prove that the issue is not a black and white one and to refute your manicheistic argument according to which a club has clearly lost out if one of their players is sold and goes on to win a trophy at another club. Sometimes it is possible for a transfer deal to benefit both clubs, as in RVN’s case.
Chelsea have not won the league since Jarosik’s departure, is what I intended to write.
guys, guys. this is a playground, agreed, but this is my playground, so behave
avrv - if you have an opinion contrary to what the author has said, try proving it by sharing your views instead of shooting it down with a snide remark.
hugo - let it go man, you got better things to do.
don’t make me break out dem guns…
Good morning! Much to respond to, so let’s begin. I’ll start with Hugo.
Concerning Jarosik: that comparison is specious.
Jarosik was neither Chelsea’s best player, nor at the time, their most influential, nor one of their captains. He did not depart to join Chelsea’s century-old arch rivals, nor did his transfer signify a sea change in the fortunes of the two biggest clubs in the country. And I could continue.
I’ve never come across such revisionist thinking on this website as someone trying to argue that Figo’s transfer was “good” for Barcelona (for the multitude of reasons I mentioned). Yes, Barcelona “could have” spent the money in some other way, and not signed players which were dismal failures. But this didn’t happen.* However this line of thought also implies the existence of a patently false assumption: that Barcelona at any point wanted to, or had the slightest intention to, sell Figo (especially to Real Madrid). You paint the picture that Barcelona’s transfer dealings were undertaken with the conscious idea to get the maximum price for a player before his value drops. This is completely untrue. Figo was not “sold” to Madrid as much as he was hostilely “taken”, thanks to the existence under Spanish law of recision clauses in the contracts of highly paid employees.
The exact same points apply with the example of Ronaldo. When he was sold, it was because (as has happened numerous times with world-class players at Barcelona, a partial list of which I already posted) he was unhappy at the club and wanted to leave, and Inter paying his release clause, not a case of Barcelona getting maximum value for a player before his decline (again this point is arguable). No one could have foreseen the two terrible knee injuries he would suffer a couple seasons later - or are you so enamored of Barcelona’s transfer dealings that you also believe them capable of divination?
The explanation is much simpler. Barcelona has always suffered from falling outs between its top stars and its board. Why this happens is more complicated to explain, perhaps it has to do with the weight that the club identity carries, which comes into conflict with the ego/celebrity of players on the top of the their game. Maybe it is down to the internal division/politiking within the club, where factions have favorites - a current example being the situations with Eto’o and Ronaldinho. This could make an interesting topic. But it is not a case of a coherent transfer strategy like the one you and KarmaShark suggest, which was the original point I attacked and one that could only be made if important facts are ignored in order to employ erroneous assumptions.
You accuse me of dogmatism yet twist or ignore facts at your leisure in order to justify your argument. Hypocrisy. You accuse me of bullying in my comments and yet fill every response with ad hominems, while overlooking the fact that I only respond to the ad homs you first used against me. I called KarmaShark’s -analysis- inane.** In other words, lacking in sense or substance. Which was clearly the case. At no moment did I attack him personally, nor have I ever attacked you for anything outside what you have written in the two posts to this article, and in the terms you first employed. You, on the other hand, have directly labeled me as “sickeningly arrogant” and “indecent”, among other things. Hypocrisy. And yes, I “indecently” laughed off accusations of “haughtiness” because the accusations themselves were haughty, as I pointed out in post #8. This again is called hypocrisy.
You also failed to address your glaring contradiction in logic, instead using converse accident (your like or dislike of my previous posts is irrelevant here) or simply ignoring the contradiction. There was nothing manicheistic about my argument; in fact in post #5 it wasn’t an argument -as I understand the definition of argument- at all (this I’ve given in the following posts), it was a basic counterpoint to what KarmaShark said, which was:
“Barca have a history of making good deals with their star players once they have peaked and then gone off the boil slightly - often to their arch-rivals Madrid.” (also, by the way, simply a statement and not an argument, and just as potentially “manicheistic” as my follow up, but you conveniently never took him up on that; nor did you take the author of the article to task for the preposterously propogandistic tone used, yet seem to be on a crusade against me for tones you find disagreeable; double standards.)
To which I responded: “Such as Maradona, Schuster, Laudrup, Figo, Ronaldo? All players who left at or before their prime. All who went on to win major titles elswhere.”
His statement was flawed, my statement was intended to expose that flaw, and anyone who remembers the ways and contexts in which the players I named left would not require further explanation.
Finally, RVN’s transfer may indeed have benefitted both parties. This was not the original point, nor the point you tried but failed to make in your first post. The reasoning behind the qualification of his transfer as “good” undermines the reasoning behind the qualification of Figo’s transfer as “good”, and vice-versa.
The the basic argument here is ad hoc, and demonstrably false. And you have no moral high ground. It would seem that what I have to say, or how I say it, displeases you. Maybe you should take your own advice in the future to avoid things like this?
*As a sidenote, it is also ironic that Barcelona selling a player a year before his “decline” (I don’t agree with this either) - which was a good thing - was then mitigated by also buying a player in decline.
**In hindsight I realize I shouldn’t have deemed it an analysis, except in the broadest definition of the word. It was a statement.
Ahmed -
That’s exactly what I thought I was doing. But as you said, this is your website, and if you consider my writing snide and don’t want it here, fair enough: I’ll be happy to move on. One point I’ll gladly concede to Hugo is that regardless of the subject discussed, be it bridge, religion, football or the price of fish, I’ll use the same style. Moreso if I encounter what I consider to be malinformed or misinforming statements, such as the case here.
avrv - you’ve been around for a long time, and I like having you around.
The point is not that you shouldn’t criticise, but that when you do so, you provide your reasons for it as well. You’ve done it here and on the other post, thank you for that, and I hope you’ll be writing those match reports week in and week out for real madrid
…just going back to the Ronaldinho issue…!
People are too quick to write this guy off - if you believe the media, he had a shockingly bad season last time out, which lead to Barcleona failing to win anything.
“Despite the truth that Ronni is on the decline”
The truth? If you look at the facts, he managed to put away 21 goals in La Liga last season, compared to 17 the season before - in decline? I think not.
Barce’s failures last year were down to their lax defence and the distinctly average 11 goals that Eto’o contributed. If it hadn’t been for the goals Ronaldinho scored last season, Barcelona wouldn’t have even been in contention and at the age of 27 he’s surely just coming into his prime… the future’s bright, the future’s Ronaldinho.
just remembered that Eto’o was injured quite a bit last season, so I guess 11 goals in 19 games is pretty decent!
Just for the record, I rushed headlong into the Figo “argument” as I was still flushing after avrv’s description of Jonathan’s analysis as “inane”. I had not intended to defend the Figo transfer, and ended up doing so almost as a personal challenge, to combat what I saw and still see as arrogance on the part of avrv.
You are entitled to make your points and some of them (the majority, for that matter) I believe to be well-founded and well argued. That is not my problem. If you disprove me, as you have done with the Figo transfer (though I little believed what I was writing at the time, even if I don’t think my premise is intriniscally flawed), I will happily retract my opinions. HOWEVER, there is one line in particular which I would like to address, and which led me to respond in such an impassioned manner. “Lo que hay que leer”, you wrote at the end of your post. Whilst we clearly differ in terms of our approach to the media - you feel it is your duty to ruthlessly correct those who are less informed - I could not and cannot see what debate such a remark could possibly spark, other than the one we are currently having or I am having with you (against your will). Hence my accusing you of self-indulgence, an accusation which I feel in this case stands.
And by “that is not my problem” I mean “that is not what bothers me” rather than “it doesn’t concern me”
Okay, I’m going to sit down. I’m too young for this.