The Legendary Old Guard, and their Continuity at the Club : Gerard Piqué

A certain group in the Barca fanbase have been begging for the discontinuity of Gerard Piqué at the club. Meanwhile another says he should say, simply because of said ‘experience’ and ‘icon status’. Ultimately, it should always be a player’s level of quality that determines their continuity at this club. Experience, along with raw talent and a solid work ethic, helps define a player’s level of quality. However, you can still have players with 10 years of top-flight football under their belt but could never evolve past mediocrity.

Getting older

Would this be enough of a reason to conclude that Gerard Piqué has absolutely no role in the squad anymore? Absolutely not. We can often be misled by the hype around our ever-so-talented crop of youngsters. It gets to the point that we turn a totally blind eye to the importance of leaders, in the form of seniors in the squad. Pique is well past his prime. But not so past his prime that he should be hanging his boots just yet.

Like Eric Garcia, Gerard Piqué has been deployed as the ball-playing centre-back in a back 4 a number of times off to the left, partnered with a defensive monster in Araujo. It’s safe to say that, as talented as Garcia is, he’s not ready to take on the starting role by the scruff of its neck. Misjudging and mistiming tackles, turning his back to the player, and caught out of position. All sounds like flaws that will be fixed with experience, something Pique has a lot of and has proven to translate that onto the pitch even now.

Pique’s issues mostly concern the stage of the career he’s at. He’s often gets beaten for pace, delayed reactions and slowed ball distribution are among those issues. That is why Pique is no longer a guaranteed starter in this team (which has been known for some time now). However, you can see Garcia for example goeing through a rough patch of games. In that case having a guy like Gerard Piqué to step in and clean things up. That doesn’t sound like a very bad idea. Add that to the leadership qualities on display on the pitch, and presumably in the dressing room too. And you have a player still of great value to this club.