Piqué: “Barcelona should not be trying to deceive the public”

Gerard Piqué spoke about the current situation at Barcelona in a talk with Ibai Llanos in which he emphasized that the future of the club is in the youth academy and rejected the premise that the club should make promises of projects that are not within the team’s reach.

Barcelona need to be truthful about the current situation

“What Barça people want is to know the truth and face it. They need to hear what is true and face that reality head on - that needs to be said. What you can’t do try to deceive people by saying that we are going to win the Champions League and then you don’t have the money to compete... I don’t know the situation the club is in currently, from what I can gather, it doesn’t look very good. But I think what the club members want is to face the situation, be open and transparent about it. If you told them: ‘Look, we don’t have a single penny and for the next two-three years we need to run La Masia at full capacity’, the people will understand,” the former defender reasoned.

Piqué added: “The message should be that we trust the players who are coming out of La Masia, who are very good and talented people. That they work hard and that we are going to try to compete to win the league. What you can’t do is say ‘Ok, we’re going to sign Haaland’, which is great, but how do you do it? I mention Haaland as an example but I could easily say Mbappé too”.

Barcelona are currently eight points behind leaders Real Madrid with 11 games left to play in LaLiga and one point behind Girona in third. It would take a drastic change of events to put them firmly back in the title race - essentially, they would need to win all of their remaining games and hope that Madrid lose three. Considering that Ancelotti’s team have only suffered one defeat in the league this season, that looks highly unlikely at this stage. Barça were also eliminated from the Copa del Rey by Athletic Club in the quarter finals meaning their chances of domestic success this season are now practically nonexistent.

That leaves the Champions League as the only hope of silverware and that is a tall order at the best of times. The Catalans head into next week’s Round of 16 tie at sub-strength with Frenkie de Jong and Pedri both ruled out for the next month. It leaves Xavi with just four midfielders for both legs of the tie: Oriol Romeu, Ilkay Gündogan, Sergi Roberto and Fermín López.