PSG Hammering Signals the End for Luis Enrique-Led Evolution at Barcelona – Bleacher Report

CHRISTOPHE SIMON/Getty Images Tim CollinsFeatured ColumnistFebruary 15, 2017

Thomas Meunier looked up, and all he saw was empty space. For 70 minutes, he and his Paris Saint-Germain team-mates had seen little else, so he put his head down and ran and ran and ran, all the way from right-back to the other penalty area where Edinson Cavani was waiting for the baton, poised to blitz the final leg.

Thrashing the ball into the net, Cavani set off, first toward the corner flag and then past team-mates, beyond his own bench and past opposition manager Luis Enrique, covering more distance with more speed than every Barcelona player on the night combined to embrace those in the stands at the other end.

In the background, the scoreboard read 4-0. It may as well have read "The End."

Cavani's goal was the nadir in a nightmare for Barcelona, but it was also so much more. This was the goal and the brutal treatment the Catalans have been trending toward all season. Every warning that's been dealt, every concern that's been voiced, they'd all fixated on a moment and a night such as thisone that had felt as though it was coming, one when the consequences of drift would crystallise.

Even if the extent of Tuesday's hammering at Parc des Princeswas surprising, the nature of the performance wasn't. For those who've watched Barcelona closely this season, this wasn't anything new. Instead, it was more of the same; only the strength of the opponent was different.

Watching PSG harass and trample the Catalans was essentially the maxed-out version of the type of contest we'd seen a handful of times before. Rewind to the clash with Celta Vigo in October and you'll see all the same themes; rewind to the games against Valencia, Manchester City, Sevilla, Real Sociedad and Real Betis and you'll see them, too.

On Wednesday morning, the cover of Catalonia-based Sport read, "This is not Barca." You knew what it meant. In a broader sense, this isn't them: the identity, the philosophy, the strength of the collective. But Sport's cover was also wrongthis is what this Barca have become.

It is Luis Enrique of course who has steered Barcelona down this path. The period of evolution led by the Asturian since 2014 has been both necessary and highly successful, reaping a treble in his first season and a domestic double last term. But evolution has now become regression, with the process having gone beyond the outer limit of its effectiveness and the team having moved too far along the spectrum. Tuesday signals the end of such a shift.

"It is difficult," the Barcelona boss said afterwards. "They were superior to us from the start. It was a disastrous night for us in which we were clearly inferior.There's not much more to say. PSG did what we expected them to do and produced their best version and we were at our poorest."

Nowhere was that more evident on Tuesday than in midfield. Once the cornerstone of Barcelona's dominance, the central third at Parc des Princeswas the area of the game's greatest discrepancy. Marco Verratti was sublime for the hosts, the conductor behind the athletic enforcers in Adrien Rabiot and Blaise Matuidi.

That trio swamped Sergio Busquets and rendered an underdone Andres Iniesta irrelevant. Gone, then, was the control so characteristic of Barcelonathe command of possession, the metronomic quality of the ball movement, the domination of territory, the suffocation of the opponent.

The effects of that were felt everywhere. Angel Di Maria attacked the space between a besieged midfield and a backtracking defensive line, Julian Draxler tormented an exposed Sergi Roberto and the vaunted front three had no supply line.

"I was there for Barca's 5-0 win over Real Madrid and was left with a similar facial expression right after it as they have now," Di Maria told beIN Sports (h/t Marca). "Surely, Barcelona have been finished."

The collapse, though, of Barcelona's central foundation is more consequence than cause. The erosion of the club's midfield supremacy has been the casualty of the Luis Enrique-led evolution as the team's definition has changed, with the emphasis moving to the forwards.

In Lucho's first season, the club's march to a treble was due to the calibration of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar falling into place largely within the existing framework. There was a degree of compromise, as the manager's desire for explosiveness met midway between it and structure. But since, that shift has continued unabated, taking Barcelona away from what they were and to where they are now. Luis Enrique will pay for that.

"[Johan]Cruyff built the cathedral. It is our job to maintain it," Pep Guardiola once said. The problem is not the cathedral; it's still there. The problem is that they've drifted too far from their own religion.

For that, Barcelona's players will have to take their share of responsibility. But they'll also get their chance to make amends. Luis Enrique likely won't.

The man who played at the Camp Nou for eight years around the turn of the century has a contract that expires in June, and he has been non-committal all season on his future. Tense and often prickly, the Barca boss has regularly exuded the feeling he's tired of the demands, tired of the scrutiny and political swirl. His position consumes even the greats, and you sense that strain has taken its toll.

At the beginning of the campaign, this writer suggested that this season would present stiffer challenges to the 46-year-old: "Just as testing will be the necessity to continue feeding his players' drive. Astutely, he'll need to keep pushing his stars, challenging them, appealing relentlessly to them as competitors for another year after already doing so for two."

It's this that's seemingly escaped him, and it's not unusual. The great Hungarian manager Bela Guttmann used to argue that the third season was the point at which methods grew stale, messages lost their punch and at which opponents worked out the riddle. "The third season," went his famous line, "is fatal." And so it looks to be proving.

Back in November, when Barcelona were ambushed and run over by Manchester City,Sport likened the Luis Enrique incarnation with the way Liam Gallagher once described Oasis: "Like a Ferrari: Great to look at. Great to drive. And it'll f--king spin out of control every now and again."

Under the club's current manager, years one and two were full of great driving. In year three, they've been gradually losing the back end before entering a high-speed spin on Tuesday. There's a pole not far in the distance.

Almost certainly heading out of the Champions League, Barcelona are three weeks from their earliest European exit in a decade. They're also one point back of Real Madrid in La Liga despite having played two more games.

"Desastre," said Mundo Deportivo on Wednesday. Sport added: "Shipwrecked without a manager." It's not quite true, but it likely soon will be.

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PSG Hammering Signals the End for Luis Enrique-Led Evolution at Barcelona - Bleacher Report