Why Barcelona May Regret Selling David Villa to Atletico

There's a very clear, and quite sad, point in David Villa's Barcelona career which signaled the end of his importance to the side as it once was.

His debut season had yielded goals on his league debut against Racing Santander, his Champions League debut against Panathinaikos and then in the Champions League final against Manchester United at Wembley.

He ended that campaign having scored 23 goals and as part of a La Liga and European Cup winning team.

As a result of success on the continent, Villa was part of the Barcelona contingent which headed off to Japan for the World Club Cup in December 2011; it was there where his season and, arguably, his Barcelona career were ended.

The 31-year-old, a €40 million signing from Valencia in 2010, broke his tibia in a match against Al Sadd—he spent the following eight months out of the game.

Villa returned this past season to feature in 40 matches—although nearly 40 percent of those were from the bench—and score 16 goals. Despite being a valued squad player, his comments at his first press conference after leaving Barca suggested he needed more than that, via Goal.com:

"

Atletico Madrid have showed me the affection I needed. I'm here to help a team that is already a winning team. I was happy at Barca [but] last year I didn't play as much as I wanted. That chapter ends, and a new, exciting one begins at Atleti. I've left Barca to play regularly and be in the national team, but not because it's a World Cup year.

"

Diego Simeone will presumably task him with the job of filling the void left by the departed Radamel Falcao—Villa has already been handed the vacant No. 9 shirt. 

And despite being in and out of the Barca team, and often being deployed on the left, the goal scoring ratios of the two forwards aren't radically different. Villa's 10 La Liga goals came at an average of one every 141.7 minutes, while Falcao—excluding his eight penalties—scored one league goal every 145.25 minutes.

David Villa has always been a clinical finisher, that's what his reputation has been built on throughout his career, and although Barcelona's priorities may rightly lie in securing a defender, they could yet come to miss the option offered by Villa.

There's no doubt that Lionel Messi and Neymar are among the world's very best, but none of them are natural centre-forwards—although they both have no problem scoring regularly.

You need to look no further than Villa's performance against AC Milan in the Champions League to see what he can offer Barcelona. He masqueraded as a No. 9 to create space for Messi, while also exercising his fantastic finishing ability to add Barca's third on the night—his celebration showed what it meant to him after a tough period following his injury.

It used to be argued that Barcelona had no plan B, no big forward to lump the ball up to—not that that should ever be an option for them. The argument now, pending no further business, is that they don't have a natural striker at all.

The move might make perfect sense on Villa's level, but it could prove regrettable for Barcelona.