Barcelona, ​​50 games without a goal on a free kick. Without Messi no one scores …

Barcelona enters history through the wrong door. 50 games without being able to find a goal from a free kick. The statistics, reported by AS, show how and how much the club culé has changed in recent months. The last goal scored from free kicks is, ça va sans dire, by Leo Messi, on the occasion of a match played with Valencia.

TERROR – Whenever the referee whistled a foul on the edge of the opponents’ area, the Camp Nou normally went into fibrillation. And for the goalkeeper they were moments of real terror: over the years Messi, Neymar and Suarez have alternated in set kicks. And before that, Schuster, Maradona, Koeman, Stoichkov, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho. In short, for the team that has historically been a specialist in standing solution.

CONFUSION – Sic transit gloria mundi. Any punishment for Barcelona, ​​in recent times, instead generates chaos already to understand who is in charge of kicking it. In contention, Dembélé, Dani Alves, Jordi Alba, Piqué, Depay. Not exactly snipers. And the results testify to the difficulties. Also because the detail is evidently not escaped even to the opponents who often and willingly use the tactical foul on the edge of the area with a certain … serenity aware that the risks of conceding goals are lower.

STUDY – Xavi, guilty only minimally of this record, which is also his own, is looking for solutions, but it is not easy also because there are no specialists. Ferran, Aubameyang do not play free kicks exactly like midfielders. Xavi, who has surrendered with Busquets and De Jong, is working on Pedri and Gavi to make progress on the matter. And in the meantime he works on alternatives. There will be no set piece specialists, but there are several players skilled at exploiting dead balls. And it is no coincidence that many goals have come indirectly from free kicks and corners with Piqué, Araújo or Luuk de Jong himself.