How to improve Barcelona’s starting XI?

With Barcelona romp­ing to the 2008-09 La Liga title and strong favourites for the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League, it is dif­fi­cult to see how Pep Guardiola’s men can get much bet­ter. Even com­pared to the 2005-06 dou­ble win­ning team star­ring Ronald­inho, the cur­rent mob look much more solid while main­tain­ing their flair and cre­ativ­ity which has seen them score an incred­i­ble 88 goals in their first 31 La Liga matches.

How­ever, as with all foot­ball clubs, no mat­ter how good you are, if you stand still you go back­wards so Barca must look to inject some fresh­ness into their team this sum­mer. It’s dif­fi­cult to see where — with Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol, Henry, Eto’o and Gud­johnsen just some of the stars who grace the Nou Camp pitch, it’s easy to see why Barcelona jer­seys are among the best sell­ing kits in world football.

One name con­stantly linked with a return to the Cata­lan club is Arsenal’s Cesc Fab­re­gas, but do Barca really need him?  That the Spaniard is a tal­ented player is unques­tioned, but he couldn’t break into a Euro 2008 win­ning mid­field based around Xavi Her­nan­dez and Andres Ini­esta, so what makes him dis­lodge either of the duo in the Barcelona start­ing XI.

Going for­ward, Barcelona’s goal return sug­gests they are doing just fine and so while it may be pru­dent to bring in a young backup prospect to cover for injuries to Eto’o and Henry, it is per­haps at the back where the weak­nesses of the Barcelona side are uncov­ered when they meet the more robust style of the Pre­mier­ship teams in the final stages of the Cham­pi­ons League.

Barcelona do have some­what of a soft cen­tre and it will be inter­est­ing to see how they cope with the phys­i­cal pres­ence of Didier Drogba in what promises to be a fas­ci­nat­ing clash with Chelsea in the com­ing weeks.

Goal­keeper Vic­tor Valdes is also sus­pect and has made a num­ber of errors this sea­son which have largely been cov­ered up by Barca’s amaz­ing attack­ing strength. 

The La Liga news head­lines con­jur up all sorts of star names seem­ingly bound for the Nou Camp from Fab­re­gas to Kaka to Yohan Gour­cuff but some­times, adding big names to a suc­cess­ful team can do more harm than good (Dim­i­tar Berba­tov any­one?). It is the opin­ion of this writer that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it and a lit­tle tweak­ing should be enough to ensure Barcelona con­tinue their suc­cess into future seasons.

Writ­ten by Danny Wat­son, a pro­fes­sional sports writer who blogs about foot­ball news.