Ernesto Valverde needs to overhaul Barcelona

Barcelona announce Ernesto Valverde as their manager to replace the departing Luis Enrique, but he will not be walking into an easy job.

Barcelona have confirmed that Athletic Bilbao manager Ernesto Valverde is set to become the new manager of the club replacing Luis Enrique who is departing from the club on his own terms. The news of Valverde becoming the new manager was not shocking as he had been one of the favourites for the job since Enrique announced that he was leaving the club and with the news of Jorge Sampaoli deciding to join the Argentina national team, there was only one choice to replace Enrique who in his three years at Barcelona won nine trophies including a treble in his first season which saw the club win their second treble in less than a decade.

It is not surprising that Valverde would take the Barcelona job as it is one of the biggest jobs in the world with the opportunity to manage the three best players in the world in Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez, very few managers in the world would be foolish enough to turn down the job with so many opportunities of success to be held at the club.

The level of success that is expected to be achieved at the club is one of the reasons why Valverde will find himself walking into one of the hardest jobs in football today. When Valverde walks into his first training session in July to begin his job as manager of Barcelona, one of the biggest clubs in the world, he will find himself at the helm of a club that needs major reworking in order to sustain the levels of success that will be expected of them.

Despite the incredible amount of success that Barcelona have had under Enquire, they are currently a club in transition with an aging team that’s midfield needs to be improved with younger players, political infighting at the top of the club within the board, numerous players facing trials for tax evasion and a club that is bleeding more money than they should be on wages and bonuses for star players that will eat away heavily on transfer funds.

While Enquire may have had incredible success during his reign as Barcelona manager, he will not be remembered as somebody who has left the club in a strong position. Both Andres Iniesta and Ivan Rakitic are both aging and younger reinforcements will need to be brought in, with Andre Gomes proving this season that he is not good enough to play for Barcelona with the club also desperately needing to find adequate replacements for both Xavi Hernandez and Dani Alves, as while Sergi Roberto is a decent squad player he really isn’t starting material for Barcelona.

The success of Enrique’s Barcelona peppered over the cracks that have been appearing at the club since the departure of Pep Guardiola in 2012. Barcelona’s midfield is weakening and their over-reliance on their attack has covered up the holes in their team but this season has fully exposed all of this with abysmal performances against Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus in the Champions League and losing out in the league to Real Madrid with only a Copa Del Rey to show for this season.

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The famous Barcelona identity of playing possession football and promoting youth players from the youth academy are long gone as their current model seems to focus on buying established star players that can already be thrown into the team ahead of younger players, which seen the club sell Thiago in 2013 when he would have been the perfect candidate to succeed Xavi, along with the playing style of the club rapidly changing away from what Pep Guardiola wanted them to play with Barcelona moving away from playing possession football into playing more long balls from defence that bypass the midfield.

The biggest challenge of course for Valverde and Barcelona will be their biggest rivals, Real Madrid, who on Saturday night could add to their first La Liga trophy in five years by making history in becoming the first club since 1989 to win back to back Champions League trophies when they face Juventus, who quite comfortably eliminated Barcelona in the Quarter-finals. Long gone are the days of Real Madrid being an unstable club that splash out large amounts of money on big name players with little to no squad building and always a sense of uncertainty around their managers but this changed in the last year with Zidane in charge of the club.

Madrid have done a brilliant job in building an actual team that works together and plays together while having depth that has helped them throughout the season which Barcelona do not have. When you compare the bench between Real Madrid and Barcelona, you can see the stark differences between the two clubs with Barcelona lacking the depth on the bench that is necessary to sustain competing on all fronts like Barcelona are expected to do.

Valverde is definitely capable of fulfilling all of these tasks, he is a great manager and one that has been approached by Barcelona twice before. But he won’t be walking into an easy job, not by any stretch of the imagination and Barcelona will be facing an uphill task to keep their hold on La Liga while competing in the Champions League but there is major work to do for Valverde this summer as Barcelona can no longer afford to pepper over the cracks anymore.

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