What Is Going Wrong for Paco Alcacer at Barcelona?
Luis Enrique is a good coach and an intelligent man, but what he has to say about Paco Alcacer needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
"Paco was as good as the rest of my players," explained the coach in his press conference, per Sport, after Barcelona's frustrating 0-0 draw with Malaga at Camp Nou on Saturday.
"There's no Coca-Cola formula here, for a player to score goals he need minutes. I'm happy with him and I hope he keeps improving. But to hope for anything else is illogical. I'm delighted with Paco and with the team."
Even his opening gambit doesn't ring true.
That's something you don't even have to watch the game to note because Barcelona's problem was scoring goals, not keeping them out, as demonstrated by the scoreline.
When that happens, the forwards are to blame. But beyond that, in fact, Alcacer was not as good as any other Barcelona player on the pitch.
A statistic from Carles Domenech of LaTdP, h/t Sport, shows that between the 10th minute and the 41st minute of the game, he didn't touch the ball.
The man was invisible, which is bad enough for any player, let alone one playing up front for a team that would consider themselves the greatest in the world, playing at home against relatively weak opponents.
When Gerard Pique went up front, he came closer to scoring in the final 15 minutes of the game on numerous occasions than Alcacer had in the previous 75.
But this wasn't just one bad performance from Alcacer. In fact, he hasn't put in a particularly good one since he joined the club in the summer.
Signed for €30 million from Valencia, Alcacer was the fruit of a summer spent chasing forwards and the man expected to make the difference when the MSN strikeforce couldn't.
The point was that Luis Enrique felt he couldn't rest his stars last season with only Munir El Haddadi and Sandro Ramirez as back-up, so Alcacer's signing would put that problem to rest.
Thus far, it hasn't proved the case. After his performance against Malaga, the coach—despite his words of praise after the game—will be reluctant to use the striker.
It is unlikely we will see him in the upcoming games against Celtic, in the Champions League, and Real Sociedad and Real Madrid in La Liga.
Alcacer's next opportunity will come against Hercules in the Copa del Rey when Barcelona travel to Alicante next week.
The coach will rest many first-team players ahead of the Clasico on December 3, and that will be a chance for the striker to grab the goal he craves.
Alcacer has not scored in the eight games he has featured in.
There are two ways of looking at the situation. One is blaming him for playing badly, the other looking at different factors that have hampered him.
The former has some truth to it, but the more sensible option is the latter. Yes, Alcacer could have done better. He has had some chances, which he should have finished better.
Alcacer perhaps should have been able to find a gap in Malaga's back five on a couple more occasions and demand his team-mates pass him the ball.
But he is still getting used to life at the club. Barcelona don't play football like any other team.
Arda Turan is a recent example of the time it takes to settle in, while even more relevant is Luis Suarez. He went six games before scoring his first goal in blaugrana, and he started all but one of those.
Alcacer has started only three games thus far and completed just one—against Malaga.
Admittedly these matches against Alaves, Borussia Monchengladbach and Malaga have been some of Barcelona's worst performances of the season, but he is not the solely culpable party.
Luis Enrique made it clear that Aleix Vidal was most at fault for the Alaves defeat, removing him from first-team action since then, while in Germany the team as a whole struggled with a change from the usual formation deployed by the coach.
Furthermore, Lionel Messi has not been in the team for any of these games, which is probably the largest factor in Barcelona's performance dips.
When Messi plays, defences rush to try and shut him down, which in turn opens up huge gaps that Suarez has frequently been able to exploit. Not having minutes on the pitch with the Argentine must be torturous for the forward, who has watched on from the sidelines as Barcelona's No. 10 lays on chance after chance for Neymar and Suarez.
Furthermore, Alcacer has never been the type of player to do a great deal with the ball, more someone who reacts lethally when it arrives.
Against Malaga, it simply didn't. Per Sport, not a single player on the team managed to pass the ball to Alcacer five times. Barcelona had plenty of possession but not in areas that the Andalusians felt were dangerous.
This could be a recurring problem. Reuters journalist Richard Martin, who watched Alcacer many times in the flesh while covering Valencia last season, spoke to Bleacher Report about the striker.
"I didn't expect him to do as badly as he has done, yet it should be no surprise that he has not hit the ground running," he said.
"He was used to playing in an intense, if chaotic and unpredictable Valencia side that would counter at speed and with few chances. Alcacer is a player who works best on instinct and has found it hard to have an impact against sides like Malaga and Granada who construct a wall around their penalty area.
"In these situations, you need someone who can untangle a defence with their footwork, an Iniesta or a Messi, and Alcacer is not suited to these situations."
However, Martin believes there is more than just tactical incompatibility and struggles against bus-parkers at play.
"You also have to account for the radical change in role and status Alcacer has undergone since the summer," he continued.
"The homegrown hero at Valencia and captain, he has gone from being a leader and idol of the fans to a mere substitute, and an ineffectual one at that. He needs a run of games to find his rhythm and adapt to Barca's style of play, and that's not going to happen with the MSN around.
"Over the summer, the talk around Barcelona was of finding a figure akin to Henrik Larsson, a player happy to play the role of bit-part player and deliver when called upon. But we should not forget that Larsson was approaching 33 when he signed for Barca, almost a decade older than Alcacer and considerably more experienced.
"Alcacer is only 23, and even though he was the captain, he was not an indisputable starter at Valencia, often jostling with Alvaro Negredo for the centre-forward role. You can see why they were looking at Kevin Gameiro, a far more experienced marksman.
"It is no secret Alcacer was not Barca's first-choice striker, and the timing of his signing, confirmed two days before the transfer window shut, gave the impression they signed him out of desperation to get an extra forward than because they had been targeting him specifically.
"It is true Barca are not playing to his strengths, but that is no surprise when you consider the team is built around the record-breaking and world-beating trident. So why would they adapt their style to suit a player only likely to start once a month at best?"
Alcacer knew life would not be easy at Barcelona when he signed, that he would be the designated "fourth forward," and that immediately put him in a corner.
Gameiro had been Barcelona's preferred option, but the striker turned them down.
"In Barcelona there are three monsters up front," he explained to RTL, h/t Mundo Deportivo (link in Spanish). "I thought I'd have more opportunities playing for Atletico Madrid."
Alcacer needs a goal, certainly, to boost his confidence. Forwards are often desperate for that first strike to break the ice, knowing that more will follow.
That was certainly the case for Suarez, who some had ludicrously written off after his slow start to life at Camp Nou, before he ended up firing Barcelona to a treble, then a double, winning the European Golden Shoe along the way.
Expectations for Alcacer are certainly not as high as that, although they are significantly higher than what he has delivered so far, which is a big handful of nothing.
That's partly his fault, but not solely his, and if he can get off the mark against Hercules, then we may see the striker Barcelona signed.
Rik Sharma is Bleacher Report's lead Barcelona correspondent. All information and quotes obtained firsthand unless specified. Follow him on Twitter here: @riksharma_.
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