Rodri, Gordon, but no strikers: FC Barcelona head into unpredictable new season with significant squad gaps

Just over a month after eight FC Barcelona players won the World Cup, attention turns to a new season, where they will be hoping to deliver the club’s first Champions League title in over a decade. 

One of those World Cup winners has since left the club in acrimonious circumstances, but another has joined the ranks in the form of one of the undisputed best players in the world. 

Yet serious gaps remain in this Barça squad on the eve of the new campaign, although sporting director Deco may not yet be finished in the transfer market. 

World Cup hangover

We can probably expect a slow start for the league champions, as we could for any big club, so soon after the end of the World Cup. Pre-season has been short, fitness is at a low point in the year, and new teammates are still bonding. 

Plus, without a striker in the squad, manager Hansi Flick is probably still working out how the team shape out.

Lamine Yamal finished last season on the sidelines and gradually came into the Spain team during the World Cup while nursing a muscular injury. He’s undoubtedly one of the best players in the world, but while he was important in Spain’s victory, he wasn’t fit enough to be the difference-maker he can otherwise be. Don’t be shocked if he starts the season at slower than top pace. 

New signings

The headline signing of the summer has been midfielder Rodri, who, for a long time, was expected to join Real Madrid. Spain’s World Cup captain is so good he’ll improve any team he plays in, while he’ll also be able to guide the younger players around him. 

Now that he’s forging his links with the club, this is a potential future Barcelona manager in the making, such is his intelligence on the field, as well as his experience as the jewel of Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering Manchester City team. The former Atleti and Villarreal player is like a Sergio Busquets 2.0, with added physicality and intensity capable of dominating the Premier League. 

The signing shows the extent of the club's ambition this season, as well as perhaps a new level of financial recovery after the disastrous way the Bartomeu era ended. 

Another deal done earlier in the season that caught many people off guard was the arrival of Englishman Anthony Gordon from Newcastle United. Generally used to playing as a wide forward, his arrival was seen as a replacement and perhaps improvement on Marcus Rashford, albeit not a cheap one at a reported €70 million price tag. 

Squad gaps

Despite the undeniable quality of the arrivals, midfielder and wide forward were not positions that the Catalans needed to reinforce. 

There remain significant gaps in the squad at centre forward and centre back, after the departures of Robert Lewandowski, Ferran Torres, and Ronald Araújo. 

Barça’s summer in between the World Cup and the signing of Rodri was dominated by the Ferran melodrama. The forward became the ire of many culers this summer for wearing a ‘Make Spain Great Again’ hat at the World Cup celebrations, wearing a Guardia Civil wristband interpreted by many as politically charged, and going on a media tour of the United States telling of his disappointment in the club not having made a gesture to him in the shape of an improved contract. 

The club have generally seen him as a top-level backup rather than their starting striker, perhaps with the exception of the past season in which he was competing with a 37-year-old Robert Lewandowski who now plays in the MLS. For this reason, they weren’t ready to go all-in on the ex-Valencia man, and let him join PSG for around €50 million. 

With those two departures go the sources of a combined 40 goals last season, with no direct replacement signed. 

The blaugrana flirted with Atletico Madrid forward Júlian Álvarez for much of the summer, but the colchoneros dug their heels in and not letting him go to a rival for anything below his €500 million release clause. 

Likely, the Catalans will have to reevaluate what the focal point of their attack will look like this summer. Either an stop-gap signing will arrive in lieu of top-level talent like Álvarez that they hoped for, or else a creative solution will be required, such as reappropriating someone like Dani Olmo, Anthony Gordon, Fermín López, or even Lamine Yamal as a central false nine type player. 

18-year-old striker Hamza Abdelkarim could see some playing time in the position too, having netted four times in pre-season for Barça. 

In defence, Flick is left with only Pau Cubarsí, Andreas Christensen, and Eric Garcia as senior centre backs to choose from, although Garcia has been deployed at right-back and in midfield at times last season. Gerard Martín and Jules Koundé could play centrally too, but neither are perfect fits there, preferred instead as left- and right-backs respectively. 

Champions League ambition

This is Hansi Flick’s third season in charge, and the German has definitely overseen a step up in output from the squad, coming agonizingly close to reaching the Champions League final in his first campaign.

Two league titles have already been delivered, but signings of the quality of Rodri can only mean that the ambition is to take the continental crown, despite the lack of a striker in the squad. 

There’s no doubting the level of talent among Yamal, Raphinha, Olmo, Gordon, Fermín, and another new signing Karim Adeyemi, and if a PSG-style rotating front line of three nominally wide forwards can be replicated at the Camp Nou, there could be magic.

But if whoever plays centrally can’t get to grips with the new position, the flaws will become painfully evident quickly. Plus, a lack of reinforcements in defence in a backline that was already vulnerable last season could hamper anything they try to do at the top end of the pitch. 

This is shaping up to be another season where FC Barcelona could beat anybody in Europe, or equally be beaten by anybody.