Why is Martino getting barca to play long balls?

Im not talking about quality long passing. Im shocked at how many aimless hoofs barca have been doing this season. When the ball drops to the ground they are still the kings of short passing, so I don't get why he is doing this.

Unfortunately I havent watched barca every week but in most of the games ive watched they play long a lot more than they used to and a lot of it is pointless. In a game I just watched recently from earlier in the season Valdes was hoofing it the entire game lol

I think because there is a confusion and perhaps misguided belief between Martino's idea of more direct play (which is a good thing in certain situations) and the loss of the fundamental ideology of the past teams.

Add in some level of niavity of how bad it looks aswell how ineffective it is.

Yeh I'm wondering that too. Barca are just like any other team nowadays. Possession isn't as good, nor is the pressing. Not to mention they still lack a plan B. Crossing just for the sake of it doesn't help either. Defense hasn't improved, Xavi not as good as he was before etc etc.

Being top of La Liga doesn't mean they've still got it. Barca/Real Madrid would always top La Liga due to their superiority.

Pep's team shouldn't be associated with this side.

Not sure if this is the right thread for it, but is it true Martino is leaving Barcelona at the end of the season?

You must have watched either the game against Ajax when almost the entire team was missing and didn't give a crap or some away game on third division-esque painted grass (Rayo Vallecano?).

If Martino specifically instructs the players to hoof, explain this in the last La Liga game:



A game in which Barcelona played 888 passes. In Barca's last CL game they set an all-time CL record if Twitter stat freaks are to be believed, scoring a goal after 40 passes.

The fact they are capable of that is why I don't understand why they use long balls as much as they've been doing.

Using whoscored, back in 10/11, barcelonas "prime", valdes played 190 long balls out of defence from 35 league games, this season hes played 13 games and already 122 long balls. And I don't think its just valdes either

Valdes was already hoofing it last season. 242 long balls in 31 games which is almost as much as his current rate. He's doing it ever since he got dicked by Di Maria in the Supercopa last season, nothing to do with Martino. One of the reasons why he is leaving Barcelona IMO ("psychologically exhausted" he said). Must be very annoying to be such a fundamental part of Barca's passing game yet when it inevitably results in a high profile mistake once in a while when trying to play it out of the back he looks like a total clown and is branded that for a long long time, even by the own fans.

Whoscored actually disproves the "hoofing". 88.6 % pass success rate in La Liga. 90.6 % in the Champions League. In 10/11 it was pretty much the same. It's not possible to "hoof aimlessly" but keep the same passing success rate as ever. You've watched some games where Barca played shit, that's it

Because he is kinda clueless

Because Martino is trying to diversify the way we play. In order to break down buses we need to become less predictable and this includes the occasional long-pass. Now Barca are a team in transition and we have not quite figured out when to use long passing and when not to. It personally frustrates me when we do it vs possession teams when we used to just be able to beat them with the Plan A without any problems whatsoever. But I don't think this is quite the last version of what Martino has in mind.

Long passing is not the same as long balls. Under Martino we long pass more, but we long ball like 1000 times more.
What I dislike the most is that we ONLY use long balls vs. teams that press us. We used to beat this teams passing the ball from the back without having to long ball. We can't cope with pressure under clueless Martino.

This thread

Yohan Modric wrote:Yeh I'm wondering that too. Barca are just like any other team nowadays. Possession isn't as good, nor is the pressing. Not to mention they still lack a plan B. Crossing just for the sake of it doesn't help either. Defense hasn't improved, Xavi not as good as he was before etc etc.

Being top of La Liga doesn't mean they've still got it. Barca/Real Madrid would always top La Liga due to their superiority.

Pep's team shouldn't be associated with this side.

That's not true...

Barcelona have (68%) average possession this season the same average they have with Guardiola, 2 more than with Tito (66%)!

free_cat wrote:Long passing is not the same as long balls. Under Martino we long pass more, but we long ball like 1000 times more.
What I dislike the most is that we ONLY use long balls vs. teams that press us. We used to beat this teams passing the ball from the back without having to long ball. We can't cope with pressure under clueless Martino.

I don't think Tata is the clueless here...