Barcelona are going to dish out several players they consider a deadweight and their captain has alerted an under-performing entity.
Barcelona have been at their worst in recent times and are probably heading for the most lacklustre season they’ve had since the 2013/14 campaign under Tata Martino. They are not among the favourites to win the Champions League, and more importantly despite leading La Liga, Real Madrid are favourites considering their squad depth now that the campaign will get busier.
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With that said, neither of Barca’s players have matched expectations apart from their saviours on each end of the pitch- Marc-Andre ter Stegen and Lionel Messi. While the goalkeeper has made an endless number of saves to bail the team out in crucial moments, the attacker has popped up with the goods upfront when it matters most.
Antoine Griezmann, Ousmane Dembele and Luis Suarez comprise a list of players who have let down in the final third, whereas the defenders and midfielders are not deserving of too many plaudits either. Recently, it was said that besides ter Stegen, Messi and Frenkie de Jong, everyone else was saleable in the upcoming transfer window.
However, in a new development from Diario GOL, it has been stated that the Barcelona captain has asked de Jong to pull up his socks or be ready to leave the club soon. The former Ajax Amsterdam midfielder has been one of the better players at the Camp Nou, but he has not yet justified the 75 million euro price tag paid for him and at a club of such high calibre, nobody gets too much time to prove their credentials.
Lionel Messi has been very vocal in his conversation to de Jong, but at the same time, he showed faith in the youngster insisting that he has the quality to match expectations set on him and potentially become one of Andres Iniesta or Xavi, who has been likened to very often. Barca have resumed training and it will be good to see how the players respond after a long break in proceedings.
Quique Setien’s men will most probably face RCD Mallorca at the San Moix Stadium when La Liga resumes, conditionally in the second week of June. It is a relatively easier trip, but the players have to be aware that since most of them are aged, they may not be fit and fine and also that their hosts have scalped Real Madrid earlier on in the campaign.
Hypothetically speaking, how much would you charge a team interested in signing Frenkie de Jong?