Hiku said:
Goatseye said:
Are sure it wasn't Marquez? Sylvinho was a left back and Milito barely played. Counter-Attack is an issue to any team that press high on pitch; Barca, Porto, Bayern, etc...
Mascherano in as a CD plays better than a lot of actual CD.
Dmytro Chygrynskiy was a center defender. Post Pep Barcelona doesn't acquire any CD, it has to fulfill their soccer phylosophy.
Barca did not buy Song and Mascherano to play CD. Mascherano just happened to be a phenomenal multi-talented player in at atime when Puyol was debilitated.
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Ah yeah, I meant Marquez. Mixed them up. And Milito didn't play much, yeah. But the problem was that when someone gets injured, Barca only had players of Milito's caliber on the bench, or they move other players down from their natural position into defense. Barca's defensive problems over the years basically came down to two things. Puyol's increasing injuries, and Pique's stagnating form. (He's been good this season, though.)
When Barca won CL last time for example, Puyol didn't even play half the CL games, and the ones he did were primarily in the group stages. With the substitutes Barca have, that's quite scary when moving on to the knockout stages. And that's what I've come to get used to over the years. Of course he wasn't there when Barca got slaughtered by Bayern two years ago either. Instead they had to use the very young and untested Marc Bartra.
And I was never fond of Mascherano in defense. He's usually late in challenges, awarding clumsy cards and penalties. He's a fantastic central midfielder though, as we saw in the World Cup. But I'm always worried when he plays in defense. Same with Song, Busquets, or whoever else gets forced to play there.
As for why they bought Mascherano and Song, since Mascherano and Busquets basically played the same amount of games each season since he came to Barca, and they played nearly all of their total matches, Mascherano spent the vast majority of that time in central defense, since Barca don't play two defensive midfielders at once.
Perhaps the primary intention was for him to be Busquets substitute, but it was barely ever neccesary, and instead he was constantly needed in central defense. So you'd have to ask yourself why Barca didn't buy a central defender for so many years when it was obviously much more needed than midfielders or forwards, who they had an abundance of, both from signings and from the youth system.
As for Song, I think in his case a big reason for why they bought him was to turn him into a CD, because with a midfield lineup of Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Cesc, Thiago and also potentially Mascherano, his chances of getting to play there weren't very high.
I always found that signing very strange.
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