Will he regret ever leaving Liverpool?

Liverpool midfielder Javier Mascherano’s acrimonious move to Barcelona at the beginning of the season had an air inevitability to it. The well trodden path of Premier League stars departing for La Liga’s hegemonic duo of Barcelona and Real Madrid remains an attractive proposition that few are capable of turning down. However, after departing for pastures new, Mascherano appears to have made one fatal error – he has seriously underestimated his new employer’s preference for a local lad.

Barcelona are a club that, rather arrogantly at times, revels in the quality of its youth system and they often laud the strength of their system and their relative superiority over Real Madrid‘s with nothing short of youthful glee. It is thought by many that a long-held association to the club can often triumph over even the best of players – and this appears to be a trap that the Argentine captain has fallen into.

Mascherano is to my knowledge, currently the greatest exponent of the holding midfield role in world football. When on form and fired-up, he can be devastatingly destructive. His distribution skills, while not as consistently excellent as his tackling, are an area often overlooked for praise. In short, Mascherano’s move to Barcelona, on paper at least, made a lot of sense as it was thought that he would help add a steeliness, urgency and aggression to the Barcelona midfield that has at times been lacking.

The tippy, tappy stylings of this Barcelona side are the thing of legend. This current Barcelona side will go down as one of, if not the greatest club side of all time, yet there is a school of thought that persists in suggesting that this side have a soft underbelly at their very core. A side of Barcelona’s character that is often overlooked in favour of their breathtaking brilliance is that they are sometimes left resorting to acts gamesmanship and other less savoury tactics in an attempt to gain a significant edge over their opponents – attributes that I happen to think are integral to the makings of a successful side. Mascherano typifies this and upon completion of his move it was thought that he would help add a new dimension to the Barcelona engine room.

It remains extremely difficult to stifle this Barcelona side, but Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan side laid a blueprint last year whereby they turned Barca’s greatest strength – their passing ability – into their greatest weakness. In essence, Mourinho’s risky plan meant that Barca stifled themselves with their sideways passing and stilted movement.

The loss of Samuel Eto’o up front hit the side greater last season than they could have imagined. He often acted as the first line of defence and his phenomenal work-rate often forced opposing defenders into making rash clearances and stray passes.

Last season Barcelona took that little bit longer in winning back possession from their opponents than they would have liked. They missed Eto’o’s presence as a defensive force leading the line and because they appeared to lack a degree of urgency up front, it heaped too much pressure onto the midfield and so reinforcements were called for in the middle of the park. This at least sets the context for the Mascherano move and from a Barcelona point of view, it appeared a logical step.

Mascherano was expected to take the place of Sergio Busquets in the Barcelona midfield – something which has yet proved to be the case. Busquets is a player that quite often divides opinion, but something tells me that he’s a player that will be revered more in years to come than he is now. People underestimate how essential Busquets is to Barcelona’s style of play and indeed Spain’s.

Busquets may not possess the technique of team mates Xavi or Iniesta, and he may not possess the tenacity or aggression of Mascherano, yet he represents a halfway house between the two and is ideally suited to the holding midfield role in the Spanish league – a league that often values intelligence of movement and speed of thought above all else, attributes that Busquets routinely displays with ease.

The former Liverpool player, much like in his final full season on Merseyside, has been forced to play at right back at times instead of his preferred central holding midfield position. Mascherano has been involved in only 18 of Barca’s 28 league fixtures to date so far this season and the player will no doubt be surprised that he is not as integral to the first-team line-up as he would have perhaps previously anticipated upon signing for the club. It would seem that all Mascherano has done is to replace Yaya Toure as Busquets’ understudy and he is looked upon as a squad player rather than an essential component of the first-team.

While Mascherano may feel surprise at his role on the fringes, his failure to make his mark thus far will have come as no surprise to most football fans who realise that Barca value their’s and the club’s identity above all else. This identity is often best personified by the graduates of the club’s Cantera – Barcelona’s famed and highly successful youth system.

Barcelona fans love a local lad more than anything else, yet they are aided by the fact that their youth team and B-team players happen to be of a sufficiently high enough standard that they actually merit their chances in the first-team squad and the opportunities that are granted to them to establish themselves.

Barcelona have a unique system of blooding in youngsters that very few clubs on the planet are able to replicate. The club’s identity remains it’s most powerful asset. Locality triumphs ability in the minds of many Los Cules and Mascherano appears to be the latest victim of the club’s preference for local talent over foreign imports.

Mascherano has been linked with a move at the end of the season to Italian duo Juventus and Inter as well as Chelsea. Moving to either Barcelona or Real Madrid remains the pinnacle of any footballer’s career, however very few of these moves have happy endings as Kaka will no doubt testify to.

With a little else other than a role on the periphery secured at Barcelona for the time being, with Busquets’ status as a guaranteed started under no immediate danger, the Argentine could very well by forced to depart Barcelona at the end of the season in search of guaranteed first-team opportunities elsewhere, after being confined to an unfamiliar role on the bench at times this campaign.

If by chance he does happen to move to Chelsea – not an entirely absurd notion in itself – then there may be a few Liverpool fans, just a few, that may allow themselves a wry smile at the move; this would not come from the identity of the club he is joining, but the fact that the player is being forced to return to our fair shores with his tail wrapped firmly between his legs.

The article was written by James McManus for FootballFancast.com. Make sure to check out the latest news, blogs and podcasts at FFC – ed.

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