In order to move forward, Barcelona cannot look to the past

With rumors of Barcelona being interested in former players, the club needs to avoid the temptation and move forward.

Barcelona finds themselves in a bit of a crossroad. The club is coming off consecutive humiliating exits from the Champions League and ‘only’ managing to win the league in Ernesto Valverde’s second season as manager.

When the season ended after a Copa del Rey loss to Valencia, many those inside and outside the club felt it was time for a change. However, not everyone seems to agree exactly what type of change is needed.

There are those who want to remain the course and simply tweak a few pieces. There are those who believe Barcelona have lost their identity both on and off the pitch. They want a return to the glory of days of Pep Guardiola and when the ‘Cruyff way” was the way to do things.

The former also appears to want to return to the past. The clearest example of that is the heavily rumored return of Neymar to Barcelona. Every day there seems to be a new rumor linking him back to the club. The latest rumor, according to Sport, is that Neymar has been in contact with a few of his former teammates to “stay calm because he’s coming.”

To add fuel to the fire, Brazilian teammate Filipe Luis, who has also been linked with a move to Barcelona, has said that he’d like Neymar to go to Barcelona because he’d be happy there.

Now, with Dani Alves declaring that his time at PSG is up, rumors surfaced that he wanted to return to Barcelona and put up feelers to see if they would want him back. Fortunately, at 36-years old, Barcelona does not see him as an option. But there were supporters who would have welcomed him back despite his age.

Nostalgia is a very powerful sentiment. It reminds people of their childhood or a time when things were better. In Barcelona’s case, both inside and outside the club, nostalgia appears to be slightly driving some of their thinking in terms of planning for the future. At a certain level, from the outside looking in, bringing back Neymar is an attempt of getting back what once was.

It’s going back to 2015 when Barcelona won a treble with that front three of Messi, Suarez, and Neymar. A time when Barcelona’s style of play was evolving but still had remnants of the Guardiola days and their identity remained intact.

The Dani Alves rumor would have taken it a step further. Since Alves left, Barcelona has had a tough time finding a suitable replacement. Their first choice still is Sergi Roberto who is not a right-back but a midfield. In this case, it represented going all the way back to when Guardiola first took over and Alves revolutionized the role of the modern full-back. Perhaps even more than Messi, Alves was the most important piece to the golden years of Barcelona.

The thing that both sides need to understand is that there is no going back and reclaiming that. Bringing back Neymar and signing Antoine Griezmann isn’t going to solve Barcelona’s problems. Neither is going back to the “Cruyff way” because they don’t have the likes of Xavi or Iniesta and Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets, and Gerard Pique are all older than 30 and the latter two only have a few seasons left at the highest level. The way the current club is structured, it resembles more of the Luis Enrique side than Pep Guardiola’s.

What they do have is a few promising pieces that can play the way Barcelona used to play. Carles Aleña, Arthur Melo, and Frenkie de Jong represent the future of Barcelona. They also have Riqui Puig coming up the pipe that should give people someone to look forward to. But they need to be given a chance to play. People need to have patience with Ousmane Dembélé. It makes no sense to want to get rid of him and at the same time want Neymar who has spent the same, if not more, time out with injuries the last two seasons.

Barcelona cannot let nostalgia dictate their future because it would appease the broad majority of people. But they do need to change the way they operate especially in the transfer market. Splashing the cash year after year is not the way to fix their problems. They’ve tried it after the sale of Luis Figo and they’ve tried it when Neymar left and it hasn’t worked.

They need to prepare for the long-term and develop some of the players they do have both on the first-team and in the academy. As mentioned, their core is coming up on their last legs and Barcelona was ill-equipped to deal with the losses of Puyol, Xavi, and Iniesta. Pretty soon they’ll need to deal with the losses of Messi, Suarez, Pique, and Busquets.

Barcelona needs to find a need to adapt and find a way to move forward. Finding inspiration or ideas from the past is not necessarily a bad thing. But those thinking that going to the past or signing past superstars is will make everything better, they may be in for a rude awakening.