Deco Goal

The success of the current FC Barcelona is explained through a review of the level of their substitutes: against Getafe they were Pedri, Cubarsí, Fermín, Adeyemi, Cancelo and Marc Bernal, among others. A luxurious waiting room with world champions, German starters, young people with a captivating future, mature guys who refuse to be mature, and all this discounting Raphinha, who is out because he is not injured but in reality he is (unfathomable mysteries of modern football), and De Jong, a valid footballer who has not yet killed anyone although in Barcelona and its surroundings it may seem like it.

After a time without the League that has seemed eternal (they say that in Barça's last game at the Camp Nou there were no cell phones and normal people could buy an apartment to live in), Hansi Flick's team returned so recognizable that it brought us back to the present suddenly. Suffocating pressure, constant mobility of the players, intensive and vertical possession of the ball and a carousel of scoring opportunities with Getafe in front, a team that in other times had a hard time unraveling between so much leg. Well, in half an hour Gordon had scored one and Gabriel Jesus another.

And those two goals lead us to talk about Deco. The first because the Englishman scored it from outside the area after a rebound, a style of scoring that the current sports director patented during his time as a Blaugrana player. And the second because Gabriel Jesus signed it, the Brazilian icing on the cake in a flawless transfer market.

Hit. That is the fetish verb of sports directors, which from time to time they conjugate and from time to time they don't. That is why we are faced with a highly unusual event, what happened this summer. Deco has got practically everything right, not only in the suitability of the signings, in connivance with Hansi Flick (from the German coach are the requests of Adeyemi and Gordon, for example) but also in the economic balance resulting from the operations.

The price paid in May for Anthony Gordon (70 million, plus 10 more in possible variables) drew attention, perhaps, with everything to do, but the Englishman's performance, and his rapid adaptation to a style of play that usually requires psychotechnical examinations among his compatriots, has dispelled doubts. The rest of the hirings are an exhibition led by Rodri (60 million), the best midfielder in the world, a footballer who seems like two because of so much he does and covers; Adeyemi (22 million), fast and creative winger of the first order; Gabriel Jesus, who fits into the fashionable concept of “market opportunity” and whose price (10 million) is so low that it borders on countercultural in Barça, and Cancelo (free) and Livakovic (2 million) to finish completing a squad that perhaps lacks a left-footed center back, but it is known that Flick told Deco not to insist any more on the matter. And he has obeyed.

Sales have done the rest. Let's review them for delight: Ferran Torres (48.5 million), Ansu Fati (11), Tommy Marqués (10), Héctor Fort (8.5), Jofre Torrents (6) and Iñaki Peña (3).

Taking into account that at Barça there was a time (with and without mobile phones) when there were presidents who haggled backwards and spent, under suspicion, not so long ago, fortunes on unopened melons that turned out to be figs, Deco's work deserves attention and the highest praise.