What a few months it’s been at Barcelona.
In fact, the entirety of 2020 has to have been one of the worst years for the club in living memory.
Lest we forget that at the start of the year Ernesto Valverde was sacked whilst the Catalans still led the La Liga table, Barca appointing Quique Setien in his place, a move which turned out to be an abject disaster.
Results, including the 8-2 humiliation against Bayern Munich aside, there was also the Barcagate scandal, the news that the club had almost been bankrupted by Josep Maria Bartomeu and the coronavirus pandemic to deal with.
No wonder Lionel Messi made it perfectly clear that he saw this future elsewhere during the summer.
Once everything had settled down, and the Argentinian had finally decided to end his self-imposed exile, he has got on with the business of doing his best for the club.
To that end he deserves great credit, because he has still been Barca’s main man, even if his goals output hasn’t been as extraordinary as normal.
Though Barca have also been struggling in a lot of games, Sport note the emergence of ‘Messipedrismo,’ the connection between the captain and 18-year-old wunderkind, Pedri.
It’s as if the two were born to play together, and in the short space of time Pedri has been at the club, it’s clear the pair are on exactly the same wavelength.
Against Valladolid on Tuesday and Valencia on Saturday, there was a total of 22 passes between them over the two games, and the joy Messi gets from having Pedri alongside him is obvious.
With Ansu Fati still to come back into the side too, the emergence of a new generation could well be the reason why Messi decides to stay beyond his current contract, which runs out at the end of the 2020/21 campaign.