ESPN FC’s Julien Laurens joins Dan Thomas to react to the Atletico Madrid and Barcelona’s victories in La Liga. Laurens says Atletico Madrid’s victory vs. Alaves is the type of result that shows Diego Simeone’s side’s drive and motivation to lift the La Liga trophy. On the other side of things, Laurens says Ronald Koeman’s Barcelona was «not great» and he was «not impressed» by Barca’s performance vs. bottom-of-the-table Huesca.
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I still don't understand why we sold Suarez. Could we not afford his wages or to give younger talents like fati a chance? Anyone know why?
Luis Saurez is the best striker of the last 10-20 years if we exclude Messi/Ronaldo (Lewandowski comes close but Saurez's 13/14 season was one of the greatest individual season's ever)
The only team can stope Atletico is either Real Madrid. Messi is finished.
The board that pushed him away need to be probe because no one throws away his only shoe when he has no new one?????
Sliva old he’s age starting to show
The fact Real Madrid won it last year make it extra special when we final Win!!! League It’s been while ??⚽️ 2013
Suarez has shown that Koeman and many pundits are idiots.
I think suraez is getting revenge on the manager from Barca showing how good his doing
Yes
It was soo stupid for Koeman to let him go, Suarez is the top goal scorer with no penalties and Griezmann, Braithwaite and Dembele have not even gotten close to them. Barca should have dropped points against Huesca, they didn't play well
Barca are stupid for giving away suarez for free
get rid of COutinho, Griezmann and Braithwaite bring back Suarez…. Dumb Bartomeu :-/
When Suarez was in barca he spends half of the season injured… Griezman spend so many years at Atletico Madrid he never faced injury….& Currently Barca facing problem with injury so barca need to set his medical stuff Frist… current ones are useless
Real Soceidad??? they were running
Barca have been decimated by the clueless, corrupt and spineless clown – Bartameu. The good news is he is out of the door.
I think it's easy for people – especially those who don't watch La Liga regularly – to dismiss Barcelona's decision to release Suarez as poor (with the gift of hindsight no less), but it isn't that simple.
Barcelona kept hold of an underperforming Luis Suarez for a few years, so it's not like they just got rid of him after one bad season, and they did release him for a reason.
First (and the most obvious) was his wage bill. He cost a fortune and Barcelona are in serious financial trouble (made much worse by the Covid situation). He (and others) had to be taken off the wage bill (and I'm sure the club would have wanted to remove other players too but weren't able to).
Second is the way Suarez plays. Yes, prime Suarez was a beast. Yes, Suarez scored hundreds of goals for Barcelona. But, the reality was that he wasn't performing at the level the club wanted for quite a few seasons. Without Lionel Messi there to assist, he wouldn't have gotten half the goals he scored. He became unreliable (and I don't mean to discredit him, he will always be a phenomenal player in the history of the sport), but worst of all his off-the-ball work diminished. At Barcelona, you had both Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez walking around the pitch – not pressing, nor defending. Now, with just one player doing this it's not so bad, but with two players it causes a significant defensive weakness. This weakness was exploited in europe on multiple occasions (notably, by Liverpool and Bayern – especially in the Bayern game where Barcelona were unable to get the ball away from their penalty area and Messi and Suarez just stood on the half-way line doing nothing to help). In this scenario, one of the players needs to be off-loaded for a younger, fitter, more dynamic player who will press (a player like Ansu Fati is turning out to be). In this scenario, you're either choosing to lose Suarez or Messi, and as good as Suarez is we know who wins this fight.
Third is the way Suarez conditions a team. One of the most telling things has been Diego Simeone's comments on Suarez in interviews. In one such interview, when asked about why Atletico seemed to be playing higher up the pitch this season, Simeone made the claim that Suarez conditions the way a team play. Simeone made it clear that, because of Suarez' fitness and age, the player is not suited to defensive/counter-attacking football. He either needs to wait up the pitch for a long delivery, or he needs a high-line with lots of possession in the opposition half. This is one of the reasons why he was released – Barcelona's weakness is clearly their defence, and they are also in the first stages of a new project to renovate the club (which will take a few years) through the use of young players. Suarez was too limiting in this capacity and so the club chose to lose him in the short-term in order to benefit long-term. Meanwhile, this hampers Atleti significantly. Simeone, with Suarez, is unable to play the same football he is comfortable with and has been forced to play more expansive. It's dangerous for Simeone and it's easy to exploit if you have the quality. This is exactly how Real Madrid were able to easily defeat Atleti in the recent Madrid derby. They cut off all access to Suarez by keeping the ball in Atleti's half (knowing that Suarez lacks the pace to counter) and ended up demolishing Atletico. All credit to Atleti for being where they are in the league, but I think people who don't watch them are looking at their league position and significantly over-hyping the team. We have a season where the two traditionally best teams in Spain are dropping a lot of points (a trend seen all throughout Europe and no doubt fuelled by Covid and all of the restrictions that have come with it). I believe that, playing as they are, in a normal season Atletico wouldn't come close to being top of the table. They do drop points – they went through a string of 2 or 3 0-0 draws earlier this season – and they aren't playing nearly as well as everyone thinks – they got torn apart by both Real and Bayern, and only beat a Barcelona everyone is critical of because of an error from Ter Stegan, in a match that deserved to be 0-0 – and so to call Suarez' performances with the team impressive in this context is a bit rich. I don't expect Atletico to get very far in the Champion's League.
Now, I am happy for Atleti and for Suarez for what they're doing, but I think people do need some sense of perspective. I don't think Barcelona regret releasing him at all.
Suarez waste the last threee years of his career at Barca. I'm glad he's at a team where he can play better.
A lot shows how messi was not that important and Suarez was
Atlético needs another 9 , who better than Darwin Nunez a young Cavani.
Suarez was garbage the past seasons, this is ridiculously revisionist. Most big chances missed every season.
The PROBLEM was selling him to a direct rival and not replacing him, Bartomeu masterclass.
316th comment
Massive mistake selling Suarez and messi knew. Simple
Well if ESPN are right there’s another tenner going to me! Now Messi stay at Barça and then I get 3/5th of the bets right and £30 in the bag!
Standing applause for Koeman for his strategic move of selling suarez. Barca management should give him support so that he will lead this team to glorious B league.
No Suarez, No Ansu Fati, again No Cotinho for 4 months, No Pique and an Overpaid Griezman
How stupid were barca to transfer Suarez to a club competing for the same title?
Bartameo masterstroke!
Barca is not missing him.
Same barca fans wanted suarez out .
Whether you like him or not Suarez is a winner.
We're not even half way through the season, we have a long way to go before any team is crowned king of Spain, not saying atleti won't win it, not alot of people thought liverpool were going to draw so many games in the last couple of weeks either… But they did
This transfer was completely BS. I mean Both Suarez & Messi knows each other ! Which could result in Many goals
i'll say it. barca let the wrong guy go.
I can't find anything in this video that talked about suarez. does anyone have a min and sec marker?
Atletico will be beast if a new striker come in