Heâs rarely been wrong
he knows his football, thats for sure
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Good article on that game
Mr Trapattoni managed Fiorentina then .
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Jesus
That was a savage good set of players .
It was that good it would actually give you a little semi going through it
Vialli and Mancini, Skhruavy and Aguilera 
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Genoa played Liverpool that year and destroyed them.
Didnât Branco, the Brazilian left black, play for them?
Aguilera spent some time in jail in Uruguay afterwards I think.
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Enjoyable alright
Spurs with Bale, Modric and Van Der Vaart under Redknapp
Argentina World Cup 06â, led by Riquelme
Deportivo early millenium, Valeron et al, dumped Milan
Tipp hurlers, 16â
La Rochelle, Rugby current
Kevin Mitchell, Boxer
Rory, Open 22â Golfer
Una Healy, Throuple participant
Kanye, Kardashian and mainstream society participant
Ferguson should be in The Hague for what he did to Veron
There will never be another player like Sergio Busquets
May 14, 2023
20
He played with his shoulders slightly hunched like he was hiding a secret and, in a way, he was. Even after conducting two of the great club and national sides of all time, even after winning everything there was to be won by the age of 23, Sergio Busquets remained overlooked and underappreciated, forever positioning himself just beyond the blurred edges of our vision.
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The secret â to Barcelona, to Spain, maybe to the game itself â was him.
When he slipped into Barcelonaâs senior squad in 2008, Busquets was famous only to Pep Guardiola, who had coached him at Barcelona B. The teamâs starting defensive midfielder was the hugely gifted Yaya Toure, who tore up ground like a tractor, but Guardiola saw something in the willowy kid from La Masia. He saw the future.
Busquetsâ genius existed in a sort of negative space. It was about what didnât happen. Because he was always in the right place, he avoided pressure. Because he used his body to carve out space, he rarely took a stray touch. Because he checked his shoulder, he didnât turn into trouble. Because he already knew where the ball would go, he didnât need to dribble. Because his passes were simple and clean, he didnât lose possession or play a teammate into a tight spot. Because he anticipated turnovers, he didnât have to chase down counterattacks or make a show-stopping tackle. Because he blocked passing lanes, danger never materialised.
A jewellerâs idea of perfection is the absence of flaws. That was Busquets. He was so good sometimes he was almost transparent.
âThe work you do in this position is rarely noticed, even though it needs anticipation and intelligence,â Busquets explained. âI spend the whole match calculating. I think about how many guys are playing on the right, how many down the middle, who supports from midfield if the striker pulls wide. The key to this role is logic. You need to judge things well.â
Thereâs a famous line attributed to Vicente del Bosque: âWhen you watch the game, you donât see Busquets; but when you watch Busquets, you can see the whole game.â The former Spain manager didnât say that. A bloggerâs wife did. It seems about right, though, that Busquets would be remembered in the words of an anonymous poet while someone else gets all the credit.
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His coaches didnât just love to watch him â they wanted to be him. âIf I were a player, I would want to look like Busquets,â the real-life Del Bosque said. Guardiola agreed: âI would like to reincarnate myself in him. Heâs the best player in the world.â
By doing the basics impossibly well, Busquets transformed the way his team played. Barcelona already had two exquisite midfielders in Xavi and Andres Iniesta, but it wasnât until they plugged in Busquets at the base of the triangle that the tiki-taka apparatus began to whirr and glow. They built from the back the way Guardiola dreamed of, pinballing through pressure with short, acute passes at impossible speed. They swept the game into the opponentâs half and trapped it there in a fine mesh counter-pressing net.
Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets: footballâs perfect midfield trio? (Photo by Denis Doyle/Getty Images)
Playing fast in tight spaces meant that Busquetsâ fundamentals had to be flawless â and they were. That was his invisibility cloak. But the constant danger from all directions also let him workshop a few tricks that became his trademarks.
There was the pullback, where he would show the ball like a matador waving a cape and then roll it back with his sole at the last second, turning to play a simple pass while an opponent sailed past. There was the heel turn, where he would receive the ball on his back foot and chop it behind his ankle to dodge an onrushing tackle. The way Busquets barely seemed to notice the bigger, faster players crashing all around him was key to his whole style. Cool guys donât look back at explosions.
The most famous part of Busquetsâ game was his disguised passes, where he would open his hips to shift the defence one way and then fire an unexpected pass through a crack in the lines. That was his first coachâs favourite trick as a player, too. âI had to lead the line of five astray â move it about, shake it up, introduce disorder, trick it into thinking that I was about to go wide again,â Guardiola explained, âand then â boom! â split them with an inside pass to one of the strikers.â
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The other thing Busquets had in common with Guardiola was his defending, which was too slow to cover large spaces but unbeatable in small ones. The whole point of Barcelonaâs short-passing game was to make sure they would never be too far away to press a lost ball and, more often than not, that job fell to the pivot. Busquets didnât have to win a footrace or outmuscle someone to cut out a counter. He simply read the game faster than everyone else and stuck in a perfectly-timed toe.
Over the years, that intricate Barcelona unravelled. Xavi and Iniesta left. The balance of power shifted to the forward line, encouraging the team to play faster. When Xavi came back to coach, his modern version of positional play only made the team more stretched out, more direct. The game sped up as Busquets slowed down.
Busquets in action last month â his powers waning, the invisibility cloak losing its strength (Photo by Eric Alonso/Getty Images)
In the end, he lost his power of invisibility. The Busquets of the last few years became noticeable not for all the little things he did right but for what he couldnât do. Some fans who only saw that Busquets might remember him as a limited player.
But right up to the end of his 15 years at Barcelona, coach after coach found that he was irreplaceable. It wasnât for lack of trying. Javier Mascherano, the captain of Argentina, said it was âalmost impossibleâ to oust Busquets in midfield so became a centre-back instead. Frenkie de Jong, signed to be his successor, spent years in the wilderness because he couldnât do what Busquets did. No one could. The team just wasnât the same without him.
A lone pivot that perfect becomes visible only by his absence. Weâll miss all the things weâve seen Busquets do for Barcelona, but more than that, weâll miss what we never saw at all
Poom for Roverâs is quite similar, it appears to me that he doesnt do much, but to those in the know he is the fulcrum of the side
You really have a wicked sense of humour. Thatâs one of your best yetâŚâŚPoom - By GodâŚâŚ.
Are you in the protected clique mate?