Barca's Month of Madness: A Timeline of Trouble
Losing three strikers, two coaches, the LaLiga leadership and potentially the star player - how Barcelona have limped from crisis to crisis at the start of 2020
Tim Stannard
It's a true philosophical test to ascertain whether the start to 2020 for Barcelona has been one giant crisis or a series of mini-crises all strung together.
Either way, what should have been a fairly quiet period where Barcelona under Ernesto Valverde navigated a series of simple games to consolidate a lead at the top of LaLiga has seen the club accidentally fire one coach, struggle to find another, lose an entire forward line, royally upset the team's star player and hand the balance of power to Real Madrid in the standings.
That takes some skill. Here's how a month of madness unfurled at the Camp Nou.
Saturday 4th January 2020
A simple start to the year for Barcelona in theory with a visit to take on Espanyol in a Catalan derby that Barca have dominated over the years.
However, a sending off for Luuk de Jong and late equalizer for Wu Lei in a 2-2 draw saw the then league leaders dropping two points to the team at the bottom of the table. Those two points were precisely the same amount of lead over Real Madrid that had now been lost.
Thursday 9th January 2020
Barcelona had a simple mission in the semifinal of the Spanish Super Cup - defeat Atletico Madrid, a task the Catalan club had been doing with aplomb for some time.
Instead, Barca contrived to throw away another lead and were defeated 3-2 by Atletico, an apparently prolific side that went on to score just a single goal in the following five matches in all competitions.
Sunday 12th January 2020
Seeing as Barcelona were in the region, the club's sporting director, Eric Abidal, and CEO Oscar Grau, travelled to Qatar to offer Xavi Hernandez the role of new Barcelona coach, even though Ernesto Valverde currently held that position.
The Al-Sadd manager and former midfielder turned down the job offer saying it was "too soon."
On the same day, the club announced that Luis Suarez was set to miss the next four months of the season after knee surgery, news that was going to have some blowback in the weeks to come.
Monday 13th January 2020
The first big peak in the month of madness for Barcelona.
News broke of Xavi's polite - and eventually very public - decline of the Barca head coach job, leaving Ernesto Valverde's position at the Camp Nou as completely untenable.
Valverde was sacked. But that was the easy part. The announcement of the worst kept secret at the Camp Nou was held off until late into the night in Barcelona while the club labored to find a replacement.
The new manager was a niche figure to say the least - former Betis boss Quique Setien, a man with a reputation for pleasing football but not much else on the resume. A further report suggested that Setien was the sixth attempt to find a new manager to replace Valverde.
Tuesday 14th January 2020
Quique Setien was presented at the Camp Nou and to enforce the feeling that his appointment was somewhat 'out there' and rushed, the new Barca boss admitted that the day before he had been "walking around my hometown with cows around me and now I'm here at Barcelona managing the best players in the world."
Wednesday 22nd January 2020
In Setien's second game in charge, Barcelona were mere seconds away from being taken to extra time in a Copa del Rey clash against third-tier Ibiza. Antoine Griezmann scored in the 95th minute in a 2-1 win.
Saturday 25th January 2020
Barcelona gave up their perch at the top of the LaLiga table with a 2-0 loss against Valencia in Mestalla, where Ter Stegen's goal was peppered forcing the German keeper into five saves in the first 25 minutes of the game.
"We made a lot of meaningless passes just for the sake of it," admitted Setien, echoing an early criticism of Barcelona's toothless stylings under the new manager.
Friday 31st January 2020
Barcelona's bosses went into the final week of the winter transfer window suddenly realizing that a replacement for Luis Suarez was needed.
After attempts to sign Valencia's Rodrigo Moreno, Richarlison from Everton, Willian from Chelsea (not actually a striker) Barca ended up picking up an unknown young winger, Francisco Trincao, from Sporting Braga for $34 million, a player who would not be joining until the summer anyway.
The club then opted to double down on not signing a new forward by letting another one go. Carles Perez joined Roma on loan.
It's akin to someone going to the store to buy milk and coffee and coming back with a hamster and a pencil.
"It's good to have a smaller squad," claimed Setien, doubling down.
Tuesday 4th February 2020
The club's sporting director, Eric Abidal, does a series of interviews with the Barcelona media to talk about the state of the club.
But rather than keeping to the topic of transfers (or lack of them), Abidal weighs in on Valverde's sacking claiming that "a lot of players did not work too much" as one of the reasons for the Spaniard's dismissal.
Abidal also claimed that Xavi Hernandez was never offered the job of Barcelona manager - "If he's got one, let him show it because I haven't seen it."
Once these bombshells were published, the normally reticent Lionel Messi took to Instagram to call out Abidal and to urge his former teammate to name names rather than implicate the whole squad in his allegations.
Wednesday 5th February 2020
Instead, Barcelona have just Lionel Messi (reportedly playing with an injury), Antoine Griezmann and the 17-year-old Ansu Fati as the team's frontmen to confront a Copa del Rey, LaLiga and Champions League campaign in the upcoming weeks.
Thursday 6th February 2020
Hopes of a treble (however unrealistic) officially come to an end with a stoppage-time Inaki Williams header putting an end to the Catalans' Copa del Rey title ambitions.
The one piece of silver lining: Real Madrid were dumped out of the competition hours before by Real Sociedad. You gotta take your victories where you can find 'em.