The Fans Football Blog3

Barcelona assistant coach Tito Vilanova talked in an interview with Catalan sports paper El Mundo Deportivo about the team and the season so far.



The technical staff takes the responsability for not having signed a winger?
You have wing players but they are not on the market because Barcelona cannot transfer them. They are playing at top clubs who don't want to sell. Not every player can play at Barcelona, only four or five players can and those are already with the best clubs in the world. A new player should be really good. If that kind of transfer is not possible, we have the players from the B team who always have given a lot to the club. We're the only club who produces wingers.

The 4-3-3 system is too rigid for the players?
You can use the 4-3-3 in several ways, you can even make it look like a 4-4-2. When your centre forward drops back to midfield it's actually a 4-4-2, like we have tried once during the pre-season. What is very specific for us that we always have possession and we are always playing without any space. That's something that only happens to us, not even the other top clubs have to deal with that.

You can re-educate Messi so that he doesn't cut inside too much?
Leo is an incredible quality player. Close to the box, he's the most decisive player in the world. He has only done few training sessions with the group and you really need to have to be able to coordinate a series of movements depending on the zone where the ball is. But these are simple things and he already did that in pre-season, so there aren't problems.

Whose fault is it that Alves is not always covered when he goes forward?
The attack is not the problem. The problem arises when the centre backs and the attacking wingers are opening the pitch and the central defenders are doing the same trying to create something. When you then lose a ball, you have fifty metres in your back and the team has to reorganize quickly. Alves went forward 20 times and the Numancia left midfielder only was able to take advantage of that two times with one of his crosses leading to the goal. So you can't really say that there's a problem at the right wing because that player could make two runs. We all now that Alves always has the intention to go forward. If that wouldn't be the case, he wouldn't be the Alves we know.


You can read the first part of this interview here. Later you'll have the other parts of this interview with Vilanova talking, amongst other things, about the position of Thierry Henry and the choice between Touré and Keita.