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FC Barcelona and Leo Messi

By my count, it has been 18 months. 18 long months that feel like Groundhog Day. I'm talking about the by now way too long period of time that our club, FC Barcelona, has been playing without an identity. The Spanish have a good saying for it called ''jugando a nada''. That's where we are at the moment. Estamos jugando a nada. At least relatively speaking. We are still one of the strongest clubs in world football and the fans of less priviliged clubs are surely already waving their proverbial fists at me, shouting how dare you even complain when your team wins 80%+ of their matches over the course of a season. Yet, we are winning those games in a way that is just not as... fun as it used to be for me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's a difference between watching Barcelona of the past 18 months and watching the Barcelona of 2008-2012.

Whoopdy-do, hello Mr. Obvious, right? Yeah, but I'm not even talking about the titles . I miss one, core element of those days and it's not the titles or the big game wins. I know football is a game that allows teams to be dominant only for a short period of time no matter how good you are. What I miss is, that when I turn on the TV and sit down to watch my Bara, to know that they are a team with an identity. Win or lose, play better or worse, but to be able to say: ''They believed in themselves and in their idea of playing. They are my team and I am damn proud of them.'' I'm not trying to say that feeling has gone completely. It will NEVER go completely. But nowadays, it is so rare, like a gust of wind in a scorching summer's day. There was a time where I felt it all the time and it made me giddy like a fool to just sit down to watch a game. Now, like one of my good Twitter friends @Jnicee17 (must follow if you're a cule - you can thank me for the free publicity later bud ) said, it's just November and it's already a bit tedious to watch some games. I miss the unmissable identity we displayed every time we ran out onto the pitch and I think we've traded that for a... let's call it neediness, a constant neediness of one player. Lionel Messi.

For anyone who knows me both personally and over Twitter, it is no secret whatsoever that I consider Lionel Messi my personal sporting hero and idol, the player I will always hold in the very highest regard. I don't know how long I'll live, but there will never be anyone more precious to me than Messi. Sometimes I consider just how abnormal my reverence, for a man who I will most probably never meet, really is but I can't help it. Whenever I have the chance and find the time to write like this, which is rare nowadays, I want to remind every Cule, no matter how obvious it might seem, that in the grand game of Football Poker, we have been dealt the Ultimate hand. No one will ever beat our single carded Royal Flush that is Leo Messi. I know I'm not the only one who sees him in this way and I'm so very happy for that, but I am afraid that not enough Cules do. It's why I'm so very picky with who I follow on Twitter. It's selfish but I don't care, because with the limited time I have I only want to read opinions of people who know to value what they have. I think Pep Guardiola was like that, just another fan like us, except he was a genius and he exploited Messi to those heights we will never, ever forget. And then he left, and Messi was left alone. He had his teammates, but he didn't have the presence to keep guiding him at all times.

Tito Vilanova realized he could never have a Barcelona as great as that which his friend Pep and him created. Bless his soul wherever it may be, Tito put all his faith in Lionel, the boy who he trained when he was just 13. And it paid off for him at the start, because Tito's Barca was, but for a brief spell from Dec 2013-Jan 2014, all about Messi. He was scoring for fun, he managed to score for 19 LIGA MATCHDAYS IN A ROW, at his pomp. And then came that cursed day, the date I abhor. 30th March, 2013, Parc des Princes, Paris. Paris. The day Leo's body said basta, no, I can't do it anymore. It gave way once and in the coming months way too many times more. The system and identity in Pep's times were all about teamwork, positional play and sacrifice for the team so that Messi could make the inevitable difference. Tito changed that to a variant of: ''If Pep couldn't motivate you to play like before, then neither can I. So, we all play for Messi because his talent is enough to take us anywhere.'' Until that day, he was right. Whenever we were in trouble, Messi was there. For me the best example of that was his absolutely insane goal against Milan, the first one. It is definitely in my top 3 for the most absurd things I've ever seen a player do on a pitch. The speed and accuracy of his decisions in a space where a mouse would feel claustrophobic... it just perfectly described the absurdity of Lionel Messi, his almost divine superiority over mere mortals when it came to all things football.

So, as I've been saying, ever since Pep left we've moved to a ''Messi first, Messi last, Messi all the time'' system. We look to him for everything. And until his body could sustain that, it worked. Since that damn day, Leo can't be Superman for us anymore. He's lost very little, but just enough. One step of his once supernatural dribble. He has to come deeper to connect our inexistent midfield positional play at times. So the next time you shout and possibly even curse at him for missing a chance he once would've scored, remember that now he has to run 40 metres instead of 20 to get to the goal. He probably has to start and finish the play himself. If you've ever played anything close to pro football, you'll know just how tiring that becomes, both physically and mentally, let alone for somebody with Messi's body type and musculature. Yet, he still does it, You can sometimes see in his body language he's not enjoying it, not as he used to enjoy himself, yet he does it. He always tries, he's always there, he never hides. The current Lionel Messi can't solve all of the numerous problems FC Barcelona is plagued with at the moment. And yet we keep asking him to do it, every game and he must inwardly sigh at the amount of responsibilities that is unneededly laid out on him every 3 days.

That is why I say I don't have as much fun as I used to watching Bara games. Because sometimes you can see their faces before a game and you just say with a bit of resigned certainty: ''He's going to have to do it all on his own again, won't he?''. I'm not trying to undermine our other players, but it is too often the case. Leo is 27 years old and he still has a lot of joys to give us. But not until the day FC Barcelona finds itself again and stops relying on one man to fix problems no one should ever have to fix alone. Until the day a manager finds a way for the team to support him and have us play with a clear identity (whatever that may be), I will sit in front of the TV and when things go bad, I'll wait for a miracle from Him. Because if anyone has ever made me believe in miracles, it is Lionel Messi.

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