Fútbol Club Barcelona: It's all about velocity

FC Barcelona was defeated handily by Chelsea yesterday evening. FC Barcelona's only real weakness, insufficient speed in its mid-fielders and defense, was the probable cause. Two fundamental strategic truths were made evident Wednesday night.

1) Outstanding opponents exploit your weaknesses; 2) Organizations must respond to changes in the competitive environment.

Football, we have argued on several occasions, has changed dramatically in the last decade, with stronger and faster players, like Chelsea's Drogba, coming to dominate the game. We saw this in American football in the 1960's and 1970's, where two great running backs, Jimmy Brown and O.J. Simpson, and a bevy of wide receivers brought Olympic sprinter speed and power to the offense. Inevitably, defenses countered by bringing in players with the same skill set to the defensive back position.

FC Barcelona has not reponded to this change in the competitive environment. A number of commentators, include myself, warned about the lack of speed on defensive last spring when Henry made life miserable for Barcelona. To make matters worse, the loss of Eto'o has deprived Barcelona of its only real scoring forward, whose speed also placed limits on opponents ability to counter-attack.

Barcelona's loss yesterday has ratcheted up the noise about this weekend's game with Real Madrid. Real Madrid still has too many slow old guys playing a young fast guys' game. The success of Robinho, Diarrà and Reyes is vital to Real Madrid's recuperation; If they play well, that makes space for veteran role players.

So much for the obvious. We will see what happens on Sunday.