Barca wars good news for Reds

Last updated : 19 February 2007 By Amy Lawrence, The Observer
If preparation is any kind of guide to the flavour of a big match, then Rafael Benitez is right to travel to Camp Nou with the quiet confidence of a man who fancies his chances. Liverpool spent most of last week on a relaxing winter break in Portugal. Barcelona, meanwhile, were wading through a maelstrom after Samuel Eto'o, Ronaldinho, Frank Rijkaard and several million other people with an interest in Spanish football involved themselves in a well publicised bitching session.

Make no mistake, nobody bought the suspiciously choreographed kiss-and-make-up images beamed from the training ground hours after a rift between Eto'o and Ronaldinho reached its bitterest point with a midnight blast from the Cameroonian on the radio. Then, later in the week, the turmoil changed direction as the story focused on rumours that Rijkaard would leave the club at the end of the season. 'Please stay,' implored the front page of El Mundo Deportivo on Friday, amid whispers that the coach has an escape clause in his contract that would enable him to leave when he wants.

And so Liverpool returned from Portugal to quietly hone their tactics at Melwood over a free weekend as they have no more interest in the FA Cup. Perhaps they might spend this evening with their feet up watching on television as their opponents face another potential grilling. Barca undertake one of their toughest assignments of their domestic season, a trip to Valencia, with all sorts of pressure on their shoulders and without Eto'o, who is rested ahead of Wednesday's game.

Little wonder Benitez has taken this opportunity to opine that Barcelona are not in the best possible shape to resume their defence of the Champions League: 'When the draw was made people were saying Barcelona are the best team in the world. After two months we are a lot better and they have had some problems.' And how.

Benitez's lucky charm appears to be working its magic yet again. What looked like the trickiest tie for any of the group winners at December's draw has turned into a winnable situation. Barcelona are not in the habit of losing home games, but could there be a better time to tackle the European champions on their patch? In addition to a patently fractured camp, form has been sketchy for a couple of months and Benitez might be right in suspecting that Barcelona need to rush Lionel Messi and Eto'o back from the long lay-offs that have been such a loss this season. At least Messi is back in good shape, but Eto'o is clearly still injured in both mind and body.

His outburst last week was extraordinary. Fair play to him for being honest instead of just trotting out platitudes, but Barcelona have an unwanted predicament on their hands now that it is widely speculated that either one or other of their most valuable attackers will move on at the end of the season. The big tips are AC Milan for Ronaldinho and Chelsea for Eto'o - though both are debatable considering the San Siro club will struggle to find the necessary millions, and unless Jose Mourinho is long gone from Stamford Bridge Eto'o would rather leave the business of impressing the Chelsea manager to Andriy Shevchenko.

Barcelona's bonfire of the vanities was lit last weekend, when Rijkaard mentioned to the press that Eto'o, back in contention after five months on the sidelines with a knee injury, had refused a substitute's appearance in the latter stages of a 2-0 victory against Racing Santander - a match, incidentally, won by two acclaimed goals from Ronaldinho.

The situation provoked two serious questions. Why did Eto'o refuse to come on? (Answer: because he was cross an agreement to give him a much needed 25-minute run-out had been ignored and he was only offered 'junk minutes' at the end.) And why did Rijkaard bring it to public attention when he had a perfectly reasonable excuse, in that he needed to replace an injured right-back, or indeed could have brushed the press off with any old guff? Instead he smiled and willingly intimated that Eto'o can be a pain sometimes.

The media duly rushed off to the Brazilian matchwinner for a quote about the furore and were rewarded by a little pearl from Ronaldinho about the need for individuals to put the team before themselves. Easy. Now stand back and watch the flames.

Eto'o kept his counsel for two days, until the moment came to unleash his frustration while he was on duty as an ambassador for his country as a book about Cameroon was launched in a town outside Barcelona by the appropriate name of Vilafranca (if ever there was a place to be frank).

'When a colleague comes out and says, "You think about the team," well, he's the one who should think about the team,' he seethed. 'Anyone who comes out to the press and says Eto'o has refused to play is a bad person,' he added. Eto'o later tried to deny these were direct attacks on Ronaldinho and Rijkaard, but it was impossible to infer otherwise. His third thinly disguised target was political infighting between the president, Joan Laporta, and former vice-president - and Ronaldinho's spokesman and official pusher for his whopping contract extension - Sandro Rosell. 'I'm in a war between two people and its not my war, but I'm taking the hits,' Eto'o lamented.

More barbs were then broadcast on a popular late night radio show Larguero (The Crossbar), and the striker challenged any of his team-mates who wanted 'clarity' to talk to him inside the dressing room. A little ironic considering how much talking he was doing in public, but powerful stuff none the less.

Barcelona's PR department reacted swiftly to reduce the heat. As well as the notorious televised embrace between the team's battling divas, captain Carles Puyol was wheeled out to explain that they had talked everything through and everyone was happy. 'In the squad I can assure that we are all together and we all want what is best for Barca,' he said soothingly. 'We have to be even more together now as there are so many hard games coming up. The two of them have a good relationship and it was a one-off thing.'

Really? Eto'o has a famously volatile personality and it is nothing new that he has problems accepting Ronaldinho's special status at the club. The Brazilian earns considerably more, gets away with a lax attitude to training and is not punished if he bends rules others respect. He returned two days late from Barca's winter break with no excuse and escaped censure. 'If I was called Eto'odinho, I might be a bit more appreciated,' said Eto'o last year.

In the end, the Cameroonian goal machine did not choose the best people to take on in an FC Barcelona popularity contest. The footballing icon with the winning smile and the self-deprecating coach who has brought tremendous success are virtually untouchable.

But that is not to undermine Eto'o's importance to the club since he joined in the summer of 2004. Arguably the hottest predator in world football, and a voraciously hard-working team player, his goals and speed have been sorely missed this season.

Even though the team are top of the league and in a reasonable position to emulate last season's exceptional league and Champions League double, performances have been unconvincing. Rijkaard, who stuck to his best team as much as possible in the past two title-winning seasons, has rotated and experimented with uncharacteristic regularity of late. That in itself emphasises how difficult it has been to cope without the penetration of Eto'o and Messi.

For all Barca's glitz they operate with a small and relatively inexpensive squad. Liverpool have bought 28 players, spending more than £55 million, since Benitez arrived in the summer of 2004. In that time Barcelona have signed 10 players for a third of Liverpool's outlay.

Considering how stretched Barcelona's attacking options are this season it is surprising Rijkaard did not handle Eto'o's return more carefully. Although Ronaldinho has an impressive haul of 15 league goals, no other member of the squad has more than five to his name. Javier Saviola had a scoring spree in January but is not one of Rijkaard's most trusted favourites and Eidur Gudjohnsen is likelier to figure in the Champions League because Rijkaard is touchy about his small side being muscled out of games against Premiership teams full of hulks. As he famously said after one of the tussles with Chelsea, 'What do you want me to do? Get a stepladder?' Over to you, Peter Crouch.

Eto'o hopes to figure against Liverpool but is cautious about his chances. 'My knee is a bit strange at the moment and I can't guarantee that I will be ready for the game. I hope to be there and if I am I will be very happy, if not I will be supporting the rest of the team,' he said.

Of course a little crisis is no guarantee that a team is about to implode. Nor is the fact that Barca must develop some kind of short-term siege mentality necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, there are plenty of examples of the kind of rest Liverpool have enjoyed actually making it difficult for teams to wind themselves up again the moment they step on the pitch.

As long as Barcelona do not waste any time winding each other up, we should have a thrilling game on our hands.