Yesterday, Spanish football expert, Guillem Balague, made a bold statement and said that Barcelona's era of Tiki-Taka football is dead. Do his claims have any substance?
"It's generally an idea of his to play more direct," Balague said about Luis Enrique.
He summed Enrique's style of football in a few sentences saying that, "Most of the attacks come from the wings and the full-backs. The forwards play together and inside, and the centre midfielders are also very close to each other."
But are his claims supported by the statistics?
In descending order, our most crosses per game this season have come from Ivan Rakitic, Dani Alves, Adriano, Lionel Messi and Jordi Alba. Against Rayo Vallecano, Alves and Mathieu were the widest players in terms of average position and Busquets, Xavi and Iniesta were all playing mostly through the centre of the pitch, along with Messi. Neymar and Munir played in wide positions, but still closer to the centre than to the flanks.
Tiki-Taka football is best known for high possession statistics, with an equally high number of passes. In the Rayo game, we had 59% possession and completed 466 passes. These statistics, while still very favourable, are not exactly the same as the heights we reached under Pep Guardiola, where we often held upwards of 70% of the possession and made in excess of 900 passes per game.
So, perhaps, Balague has a point. The style of our game has changed and we are slowly moving towards a more direct approach. However, it doesn't matter, because results seem to be going our way and surely the results are more important…
Do you think Barcelona have abandoned Tiki-Taka as a footballing philosophy?
