The sluggish form of Pique and Busquets also reflects a serious internal problem that currently exists at FC Barcelona: a salary cut!

During Bartomeu's tenure, Barcelona paid high salaries to its players, causing the club's annual player salary bill to rise all the way to 560 million euros, making the team the most expensive team in the world.

However, with the team's spending on recruitment, while the benefits continue to shrink, coupled with the combined influence of external environmental factors, Barcelona's finances are once again on red alert.

Messi, 70.758 million euros.

Antoine Griezmann, 45.834 million euros.

Frenkie de Jong, 20.834 million euros.

Sergio Busquets, 14.949 million euros.

Pique, 12.74 million euros.

Dembele, 12 million euros.

Umtiti, 12 million euros.

There are as many as seven players in the Barcelona team with an annual salary of more than 10 million euros.

Except for Messi and De Jong, the performance of others is not worthy of their salary at all.

Player salary cuts are an important means for clubs to reduce financial pressure.

Among them, Pique and Busquets have been up and down due to their age, and as team merits, they should be respected.

However, the president of the club has decided to reduce the salary of the whole team to tide over the difficulties, and for this reason, he also made an appointment with the team's big brothers led by Messi and Pique.

Although no specific details have been announced, the performance of Pique and Busquets, from one point of view, the amount of Barcelona's salary cut is huge.

Off-the-field factors actually affect the performance of players on the field.

In the attack just now, after Pique was attracted out, he stepped forward to block Benzema as soon as possible.

That's actually the right choice.

But he ignored that Rosie could insert the space behind him at any moment.

But if he looked to the side more, he wouldn't have stepped forward so easily.

And then there's Sergio Busquets.

His attention was overly focused on Benzema and ignored Rossi, who was speeding up from behind.

And when Rossi started, he was basically in a balanced position with himself.

But as Rossi continued to move forward and suddenly accelerated to break through, Busquets did not chase back at the first time, but handed him over to Pique to defend.

The lack of communication resulted in an equaliser.

Barcelona seem to have amassed a large number of troops in the middle and are ready to strangle.

In fact, the protection of the arc of the large forbidden area is obviously insufficient.

This is a serious and fatal problem.

Towards the end of the first half, Barcelona's defense had problems again.

When Nacho picked up the ball on the wing, all four of Barcelona's defenders were already in the penalty area, lined up, marking Rossi, who was pressing in the middle.

But outside the penalty area, Karim Benzema and Vinicius Jr. were unmarked at all.

Barcelona are in a complete vacuum in the area between the back line and the midfield.

It wasn't until Nacho crossed that De Jong rushed in and pushed Benzema from behind.

Yellow card + free kick in front.

Coman's gloomy face, his hands in his pockets, walked back and forth on the sidelines, and the anger in his heart was beyond words.

When Real Madrid finishes this free-kick attack, it will go into the break.

Koeman is thinking about how to make changes to the team.

If the player continues to maintain such a sluggish form and low possession, then in the second half 45 minutes, Barcelona will be subjected to a crazy counterattack by Real Madrid.

But what he didn't expect was that the players failed to withstand Real Madrid's offensive pressure in the last minute of the first half.

Rossi feigned a shot to attract the attention of the Barcelona defence, and Kroos passed the ball to the back post.

After captain Sergio Ramos stopped the ball on his chest, he didn't wait for the ball to hit the ground and shot straight at goal.

Neto reacted quickly enough, but couldn't keep the ball out of the net.

Inside the Camp Nou, there was once again a huge cry of disappointment.

Ramos' shot was brilliant.

But before he could shoot, no Barcelona player interfered with his defence, which made Coman get up and go straight back to the dressing room without waiting for the whistle to blow.

"Is this my pre-match tactic? The gap you have exposed, even my grandma can easily pass through. ”

"Oppressive, clinging, counter-robbing. I don't see any of these three things. ”

Back in the dressing room, the Barcelona players received Koeman's rant with a blank look.

They also knew how bad their performance was in the first half, the rhythm was always on Real Madrid's side, and they could only be led by the nose.

In such a situation, they can only pin their hopes on Messi.

This made the Argentine king a little overwhelmed.

"This is Camp Nou, you are great Barcelona players, look at your room of honour, which trophy is not won by tenacious struggle."

"In the second half, you have to tell the opponent that not only do we have possession, but we also have the most fierce confrontation and counter-attack, so that Real Madrid is afraid of us from the heart."

"Reclaim our place as the dominant player in La Liga."

After Koeman's excited roar, the Barcelona players' eyes regained some fighting spirit and they all agreed.

Messi, as the captain of the team, gathered his teammates together, put their hands on the backs of each other, formed a circle, and shouted "come on" three times in unison.

At the start of the second half, Barcelona began to press wildly.

They put the formation very high, and the fire of the battle burned to the Real Madrid half, and the attack was like a tide for a while.

Messi has been very active in attack and has repeatedly threatened the Real Madrid goal.

Defensively, he was also very hardworking, sometimes even returning to his own half and stealing Vinicius.

His outstanding performance earned him bursts of applause from the fans.

However, Barcelona did not score and the offensive quickly weakened.

Although Barcelona emphasized the aggressiveness of the scramble in the opening period, nothing changed in terms of the level of attack and creativity.

They were able to push the ball through the Real Madrid half, but in the face of positional battles, Barcelona really couldn't.

Except for the occasional flash of inspiration from Messi, who uses his personal ability to create a threat, Barcelona has done nothing most of the time.

Ooh!

A sigh was followed by disgruntled boos from the home fans.

Casemiro's tackle on Messi was not fouled, but only a throw-in in the front court.

As can be seen from Messi's slightly unconfident expression of protest, Casemiro's defense was a success.

"I'm tired!"

Just as Messi was sitting on the turf to sort out the shin guards, a large hand reached out.

He looked up and saw that it was Rosie.

Entering the second half, Messi not only had to attack, but also retreated deep to defend, and soon showed fatigue.

"Thank you!"

Messi reached out and stood up with the help of Rossi.

"Time is running out, what else do you do?" Rosie asked with interest.

If it had been changed before, Messi would have replied without hesitation.

But at this moment, he was a little choked.

"I'll beat you!"

After leaving these words, Messi quickly entered his offensive position and prepared to attack.

The problem of Barca's lack of power began with the dismissal of Suarez.

And in this summer, Barcelona did not strengthen the center forward position accordingly.

Koeman prefers to reuse youngster Fati.

But judging from the performance of this game, Fati could not support the team's attack when facing a strong team.

After the throw-in, Fati tried to stop the ball with his back, but was entangled by Casemiro behind him.

Ramos came from the other side and worked together to cut the ball off.

Shui Ye, who turned into a striker, ran all the way from the middle with the ball, and the reaction of Barcelona's defenders was obviously half a beat slower.

Pushing forward to the third third of the opposition half, Ramos crossed the ball forward.

At the moment of the pass, Rossi and Pique were still on the same starting line.

In the next second, Rossi had already thrown off a meter of Pique, received the ball and ran to the penalty area.

Goalkeeper Neto made a quick move, blocked the angle of the shot and then tucked Rossi with Pique.

As the encirclement formed by the two became smaller and smaller, the space for Rossi to shoot was also severely compressed

But he still grabbed the goalkeeper before he could save the ball, picked it up, and jumped high to avoid being tripped by the goalkeeper.

The ball also went past the goalkeeper's defence and rolled towards the far corner of the goal.

Rossi's eyes were fixed on the trajectory of the ball before hitting the ground.

Another centre-back, Lenglet, struggled to make a comeback, and when the ball was about to cross the goal line, he fell to the ground and slid a tackle, but unfortunately he was still one step short and went into the net with the ball.

【GOAL！！！！！！ 】

[Rosie, it's Rosie again! 】

[He was caught between the opponent's two defenders, and he shot lightly and scored the ball! ] 】

[No matter what situation you are in, Rosie can always deal with it in style! ] 】

[In the 78th minute, he killed the game!] 】

(End of chapter)