Barcelona 2019/20 season review: Even Messi can't carry them now | OneFootball

Barcelona’s domestic season has come to an end and it was one to forget.

Here’s what we made of their 2019/20 campaign.

Player of the season: Lionel Messi

Of course it is. After all these years, we didn’t think Lionel Messi could do anything we haven’t seen from him before. And we were wrong.

For the first time ever, the Argentina racked up over 20 goals AND over 20 assists in a LaLiga season. No player in Spain’s top flight even came close to his tally of 25 goals or his 21 assists.

Now 33, even Messi’s heroics can’t make Barcelona the most feared team on the planet. But that doesn’t make his performances less impressive.

Rising star: Ansu Fati

Riqui Puig was been Barça’s leading light after the restart but we can’t not give this to Ansu Fati, who shone so brightly early on in the season.

With Messi and Luis Suárez both injured, Fati was thrust into the side. He took to it like a duck to water.

At 16 years and 304 days old he became the youngest LaLiga goalscorer in Barcelona history. He became the youngest goalscorer in Champions League history (17 years and 40 days) against Inter a few months later.

With eight goals across both competitions, this was a spectacular debut campaign.

Flop of the season: The big summer signings

It’s hard to choose between Antoine Griezmann and Frenkie de Jong, so let’s group them together.

Both players are clearly enormously talented, but they  were supposed to arrive and help take the team back to another level and it simply hasn’t happened. Both haven’t adapted well to no longer running their sides, as they did at Atlético Madrid and Ajax respectively.

Griezmann enjoys playing on the counter as a striker and as a creative player from wide, but with Messi in this side his talents weren’t needed and weren’t exploited. As for De Jong, it will take at least another year or two before Sergio Busquets hands him the keys to the midfield.

Next year must be better.

Rate the manager

Which one? Ernesto Valverde’s Barcelona won plenty of games, they were top of LaLiga when he was sacked, but they looked weak in the big moments and they didn’t look anything like a Barcelona team, more a collection of organised footballers who let Messi win games for them.

So Valverde went out and Quique Setién came in.

Barcelona kept the ball better, but they lacked movement, they lacked creativity, and they haven’t won enough games under him. When they did win it was, again, invariably because Messi stole the show.

Not good enough from either of them and a change is needed.

What comes next?

Immediately: the Champions League. After that, things get tricky.

This Barcelona team is old. Really old.

Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez are 33 and were the only players to score more than nine LaLiga goals this season. In fact, only 29 of Barcelona’s 86 league goals in 2019/20 were scored by players under the age of 30 and nine of those were from 29-year-old Antoine Griezmann.

Adding Miralem Pjanić, 30, for Arthur, 23, seems an odd deal from the outside.

Where is the next generation? What will Barcelona look like two years from now?  If they’re not careful, this could just be the start of a long decline.

Rating the season: 4/10