Barcelona: 4 youngsters who can lead the club in the post-Messi era
.Every team in the world of football, traditionally, have some players around whom the entire structure of the team is built. You can call them the pillars of the team or, more formally, fundamental players of the team. Think of Neymar and Mbappe for PSG, Antoine Griezmann for Atletico Madrid, and Lionel Messi and Sergio Busquets for Barcelona.
Talking about Barcelona, the Catalans are currently in their golden period, with the likes of Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets, Gerard Pique and others. This all started when in 2008 former Barcelona President, Joan Laporta, decided to put his stakes on Pep Guardiola over Jose Mourinho as the next Barca coach.
Guardiola had brought with him a new brand of football, a combination of Johan Cruyff's philosophy with his own variation, and this bet of Laporta had proved to be successful. In fact, it has been so successful that today, this Barcelona of Guardiola is not only considered as one of the greatest Barcelona sides but also as one of the greatest teams the world has ever seen.
Pep's Barca is built around Lionel Messi as the lynchpin, but one player was never enough. The team's philosophy is based on moving the ball and looking for space, and one player cannot do that alone. But luckily, in the same era of Lionel Messi, Barcelona also had one of the best midfield trios to ever grace the game.
The duo of Xavi and Iniesta along with Sergio Busquets was the identity of the beautiful brand of football that Pep's Barca is known for.
But that Barcelona was not for all eternity. Age caught up with Xavi and the midfield maestro left Camp Nou in 2015. Not long ago, Iniesta also left to spend his final years in Japan. The other two, Lionel Messi and Sergio Busquets, who are currently captain and second in command respectively, are already on the wrong side of 30.
The void left by Xavi is currently covered by Ivan Rakitic, and he is doing an admirable job but he is not from the same mould and on top of that, he is already 30 years old. And on the other side, Ernesto Valverde is currently fluctuating between Arthur and Vidal to fill the space left by Iniesta.
So a natural question that arises is how are Barcelona going to respond to the post-Messi era? Who will cover the space left by these four heavyweights?
To answer these questions, here is a list of potential long term replacements of Xavi, Iniesta, Sergio Busquets and Lionel Messi.
1) Xavi Hernandez -> Arthur Melo
If there is one player for which Barcelona has done a commendable job in finding his successor, it's Xavi.
The former Gremio midfielder, Arthur Melo, came to Barcelona in the summer transfer window of 2018 and has surprised the teammates and supporters alike. His playing style is so astonishingly similar to the former maestro that many players, including Messi, had admitted that he does play like Xavi.
Arthur came up through the ranks of Brazilian club Gremio before moving to Barcelona last season. Although his playing style is strikingly similar to Xavi, the Brazilian prefers Andres Iniesta as his benchmark and even inherit the Barcelona and Spain's legend no. 8 jersey after the latter had moved to Vissel Kobe in J1-league last summer.
Although his career is just started, the signs are positive and if everything remains fine, there is nothing stopping him from becoming a vital cog of Barcelona midfield in the future.