Are Barca & Real The World’s Two Best Clubs?

This could lead to a heated debate as the impli­ca­tions tran­scend beyond choos­ing the best club to include the com­pet­i­tive nature of some of Europe’s top leagues (namely the Eng­lish Pre­mier League, the Span­ish la Liga and Ital­ian Serie A). Eng­lish and Ital­ian fans may dis­agree but Barcelona’s play­ers have clearly staked a claim to the title of the best club in 2009 con­sid­er­ing they have won the tre­ble– la Liga, Copa del Rey and Cham­pi­ons League of course.

The Cata­lan club’s ranks include the likes of Lionel Messi, who recently won the Bal­lon d’Or, Swedish star Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic, Spain’s Xavi and Andres Ini­esta as well as France’s Thierry Henry not to men­tion club cap­tain Car­les Puyol. All these play­ers would talk into any team at any cho­sen time given their achieve­ments and form. Barca’s play­ers are key com­po­nents in one of the most enter­tain­ing teams in the world not just now but per­haps over the decades given the fact the team plays slick pass­ing, scores from dif­fer­ent sources and through var­i­ous play­ers, and of course has Lio Messi.

As for Real Madrid, the man­age­ment has spent stag­ger­ing amounts on restart­ing a new Galac­ti­cos era after the pur­chase of Cris­tiano Rolando, Brazil­ian Kaka, Xabi Alonso and French­man Karim Ben­zema. Los Blan­cos may lack the dis­ci­pline and the free-flowing foot­ball approach of their bit­ter rivals Barca but this is due to the fact the new play­ers, most of whom are stars in their own right, will require a nec­es­sary period of adjust­ment to gel with the other squad mem­bers. On any given night, for­mer Man­ches­ter United star Ronaldo can score an aston­ish­ing goal or San Siro icon Kaka can cre­ate some­thing mag­nif­i­cent out of what appears to be ordi­nary. Those two play­ers need lit­tle intro­duc­tion and are by far the club’s biggest names, but atten­tion must be paid to some of the other club play­ers such as Xabi Alonso.

Alonso had a great sea­son with Liv­er­pool prior to his sum­mer move to Madrid and since his depar­ture the Reds have stut­tered and been quite incon­sis­tent. His move away from Anfield is obvi­ously not the only rea­son for Liverpool’s strug­gles but even by cap­tain Steve Gerrard’s admis­sion Alonso was one of the club’s main pro­tag­o­nists and a key com­po­nent in the charge to sec­ond place in the league in 2008-09.

Both Barca and Real are com­pet­ing for la Liga title and are still in the run­ning for the Cham­pi­ons League tro­phy. Barca have yet to lose in la Liga while Los Blan­cos suf­fered two defeats, includ­ing the El Cla­sico  in the Camp Nou. Clubs such as Man­ches­ter United, Chelsea and per­haps Ital­ian league lead­ers Inter may argue against label­ing the two Span­ish giants as the two best clubs at the moment but Barca prop­erly dealt with Inter head-to-head in the Cham­pi­ons League group stage. Man­ches­ter United and Chelsea have been incon­sis­tent and at the moment are not on the same level with the two Span­ish sides.

At least for the moment the Cata­lans appear as the World’s best and as long as they remain in con­tention in la Liga and con­tinue to chal­lenge in Europe then there is lit­tle to be said or writ­ten about Barca’s sta­tus. As for Los Galac­ti­cos, they are begin­ning to work bet­ter together and once they gel the play­ers will form a lethal threat to any team in Europe and the world. One must remem­ber the club missed Ronaldo and Kaka has yet to hit top form.