Ibrahimovic and Maxwell to Barcelona

After a sea­son bor­der­ing on per­fec­tion, a refresh­ing thirst for change is in the air around the Camp Nou. It is good to see that Txiki Begiris­tain and the clubs board have learned from the mis­takes made in the lat­ter parts of the Rijkaard era. Instead of hold­ing on to some of the more frag­ile ele­ments that drove the club to the tre­ble this past year, the right moves have so far been made this sum­mer in antic­i­pa­tion of the upcom­ing season.

Eric Abidal, although solid, never quite added the amount of attack­ing flair on the left flank that the club had hoped for when they bought him from Lyon. He slot­ted in well and gave his all while in a Barca shirt. Yet his fail­ure to add speed to the flank attack, as well as his inabil­ity to take play­ers on in one on one sit­u­a­tions led the club to seek a replacement.

Maxwell, a man who is no stranger to injuries, is one of the most com­plete left backs in the world when healthy. After suc­cesses in the Nether­lands and in Italy, Maxwell is ready to put his injury prob­lems behind in order to set­tle him­self into an auto­matic first team role to push towards finally win­ning that first Brazil­ian cap that has eluded him so far in his career. In addi­tion, his added abil­ity to play as a winger will give Guardi­ola new options when he is forced to rotate the squad this upcom­ing sea­son. A great sign­ing for the club.

How­ever, the real act of genius is the sale of Samuel Eto’o. No one can, and should ques­tion his com­mit­ment to the cause while at the club. 130 goals in 200 games for Barcelona speaks for itself. He has been one of, if not the most con­sis­tent top level striker in the world over the past 5 sea­sons. So why ship him off to Italy, as well as a giant bag of cash to bring in the tal­ented, yet ego­cen­tric ques­tion mark that is Zla­tan Ibrahimovic?

For one thing, the fault of the club to not ade­quately regen­er­ate them­selves after their first Cham­pi­ons League title of the decade in 2006,  helped to show the dan­ger of stay­ing com­place­ment. Teams come and go in cycles, and Frank Rijkaard failed to rec­og­nize this, which ulti­mately led to his demise as Barcelona man­ager. Lessons seem to have been learned, and a squad regen­er­a­tion has been put into effect this go around.

With the arrival of Ibrahi­movic, it would appear that Barcelona have cho­sen to add another wrin­kle to their attack, as opposed to find­ing a direct replace­ment for Eto’o. The goals of Eto’o will be missed, but if any­one can find more goalscor­ing within their squad, it has to be Barcelona. This past year at Inter was the first sea­son in Ibrahimovic’s career that he has man­aged to break the 25 goal mark in all com­pe­ti­tions. But the man from Swe­den offers so much more than just goals. Zlatan’s abil­ity to hold up the ball, take defend­ers on and to use skill and lit­tle tricks to get the ball to team­mates will add a whole new dimen­sion to the prod­uct on the field at the Camp Nou. It’s this new unknown fac­tor that Barcelona are capa­ble of show­ing this sea­son that what will strike fear all across Spain and the rest of Europe. Chelsea showed how to beat last years Barcelona over 179 min­utes, but this sea­son that game plan will be much tougher to pull off with a player like Ibrahi­movic in the side.

Zlatan’s inter­gra­tion into the squad is far from a sure thing. There is always the chance he will unset­tle the bal­ance of the side. His antics off the field, as well as his inflated opin­ion of him­self on it, hold the poten­tial to cause a major dis­tur­bance within a seem­ingly very happy club. But this is a gam­ble worth tak­ing. If all goes well, a front line of Ibrahi­movic, Messi and Henry is one step fur­ther into total foot­ball transcendence.

Tagged as: FC Barcelona, Internazionale, Maxwell, Zlatan Ibrahimovic