Barcelona without Lionel Messi : How far can it go?

Barcelona,the powerhouse of spanish football is feeling heat of Argentine Messi’s absence and is on the scanner of lot of critics who believe Barcelona’s overdependence on Messi can ruin its case in future fixtures.Barcelona lost to Ajax 1-2 recently and has few tricky matches lined up in next few weeks.Ever since Lionel Messi’s injury was confirmed,  the fixture against Athletic Bilbao is being touted as being the trickiest in the Argentine superstar’s absence.Athletic Bilbao have made their new stadium a fortress so far this season and remain unbeaten at the new Estadio San Mames.Does Messi’s presence matters so much to Barcelona?I don’t think so.Recently they thrashed Grenada 4-0 with Iniesta and Fabregas filling up for Messi’s presence brilliantly.

Messi has not been able to fully repeat his Talismanic performance this season as he did last year because of succession of injuries. He has scored just 21% of Barca’s league goals (eight of 38), having accounted for almost double that figure in last year’s title-winning campaign (46 of 115 - 40%).Barca’s success so far this season without their inspirational Argentine has provided the perfect answer to suggestions that they had become over-reliant upon their number 10 - ‘Messidependencia’, as it was dubbed by the Spanish press.Those criticisms reached a peak in the spring, when Messi, hampered by injury, was well below his best for the Champions League semi-final against Bayern Munich and the Nou Camp club appeared to have no alternative approach as they sank to a 7-0 aggregate hammering.That defeat against Bayern was a watershed moment in Barca’s recent history, provoking an unprecedented level of soul-searching and a long debate over whether their famous possession-based short-passing game, universally known as tiki-taka, needed to be abandoned or, at least, significantly amended.

Barcelona has a lot of great players besides Messi and with likes of Neymar,Xavi,Iniesta and Fabregas in the side ,team is capable enough to put up a great show even in absence of Messi and Valdes.Neymar is Brazil’s figurehead star ahead of the 2014 World Cup, while Barca boast World Cup winners in the likes of Xavi and Andres Iniesta.The team has kept on winning regardless - even against Real Madrid, when the goals in a 2-1 victory were scored by Neymar and Alexis Sanchez, while Messi played a peripheral role in an unfamiliar right-wing position.We can observe a clear change in Barca’s playing strategy and changes have been made to the traditional tiki-taka approach.They are adopting an alternative style of play and now ball doesn’t need 18or 20 passes to reach the opposition goalkeeper.One consequence of these new approaches has been less of a reliance upon Messi. The more direct approach has allowed other players to come to the fore, with Neymar and Fabregas becoming pivotal figures in the team’s attacking play. Also notable is the fact that Pedro and Sanchez have already combined for 13 league goals this season, having managed just 15 in the whole of the previous campaign.

No doubt,Messi has been the spearhead of Barca attack since a long time but winds of change can be felt.New players along with the new tactics are changing the definition of football for Barcelona and adapting quickly to the highs and lows of football recently played by them.