How Barcelona will shape without their superstar Lionel Messi
Now that Lionel Messi has officially left his boyhood club, Barcelona, it remains to be debated, how will the team lineup next season without their main player, and their captain? While we all knew that the Argentine wouldn’t play at the club forever and that Barca would have to prepare for his ultimate retirement, no one predicted him to leave this early. This leaves a giant hole in Barcelona’s team, and Ronald Koeman must think long and hard about his new line-up.
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The 34-year-old legend was a regular starter for the Catalans last season. Even though he was the oldest player in the squad alongside Gerard Pique, no one could displace him from the starting lineup. Barcelona played only a few games without their captain, and they did quite poorly in those matches. This shows that although the Catalans have a lot of talented stars, Messi was the one who was bringing all of them together.
Koeman already had his work cut out for him, however, after the announcement that Messi will be leaving, his workload has doubled. These are tough times at Barcelona; however, they cannot cower down due to this loss, they must embrace the future. Thus, today we will be looking at the possible lineup for the next season, presuming Koeman uses a 3-5-2 formation. The 3-5-2 or 3-1-4-2 lineup is exactly what Koeman used when he was managing the Netherlands national team which transitions into a 3-4-3, and with Frenkie de Jong and Memphis Depay set to be the stars for next season, it won’t be surprising to see him move in that direction.
We will not be looking at the 4-3-3 formation today, although that is the traditional Barca lineup, that is due to the fact that Ansu Fati and Ousmane Dembele are both injured, plus they loaned out Francisco Trincao to Wolves for the next season. Having said that, the return of both Fati and Dembele will most likely result in Koeman moving back to Barca’s traditional 4-3-3 lineup with a frontline of Fati, Depay, and Dembele with both Griezmann and Aguero filling in.