Aug 7, 2013
Will Barca sign a Center-Back this summer?
"Experience suggests that it's not easy to find the center-back for Barca" - Gérard Pique
What should Barca fans read from the statement of their star center back? If there wasn't enough confusion already about Barca's strategy in the transfer market; this statement has compounded that feeling. All courtesy of the great work or the lack of it is done by Andoni Zubizarreta. If I say we are absolutely clueless about signing the center-back; that would be a glorious under-statement. For the record we can't blame the management for not signing the center back by now. We had or better put, they had dreams of signing first Thiago Silva, then Marquinhos , then David Luiz and now Daniel Agger; the list may not end there. So like the fans dreamt, the board and the Sporting director Zubizarreta also dreamt; incidentally it looks like he is paid to dream! Thanks to all this we are seriously looking at the prospect of seeing what happened last season repeat all over again.
Aug 6, 2013
Does Andoni Zubizarreta deserve to remain Barca's Sporting Director?
Andoni Zubizarreta, the legendary Spanish and FC Barcelona keeper was the choice of Sandro Rosell to head Barca's sporting area. The choice looked pretty reasonable at that time and was deemed to be a sure shot winner for Rosell. Andoni was doing a good job at Athletic Bilbao and his stature as a club legend would have only made it easy to pick him. But after 3 years as Sporting Director one needs to seriously question the wisdom of him continuing in such an important position. In order to go in detail to the issue surrounding Zubi, we first have to really understand what exactly a Sporting director's job is. A "Sporting Director”, more technically phrased "Director of Football" acts as a link between the Board and the Manager. The influence exerted by a Sporting Director varies very much depending on the country. For example in England the Sporting director will be in charge of looking the add-on functionalities in the footballing arena - like setting up facilities, running the academies etc. But the manager will have a bigger say in all other activities like transfers, contracts etc. But this does not hold true in La Liga. Here the manager is expected to focus solely on on-field performances and every other activity like transfers, contracts, performance appraisals, etc. are all done by Sporting director. That was the main reason why Mourinho got Valdano fired as he wasn't getting a say in a lot of club's football related activities.
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