Thomas Vermaelen Has Pre-Season to Show Barcelona He Can Wind Back the Clock

It turned out to be among the most ill-fated statements of the year. "We have no doubt about [his] fitness," declared then-Barcelona director of football Andoni Zubizarreta at the presentation of Thomas Vermaelen last August. Sitting on the left of Zubizarreta was a talented defender, but his unveiling had quickly become a defensive exercise.

The Belgian had arrived with a thigh injury picked up at the World Cup, a tournament that had come on the back of a season largely spent on the bench at Arsenal. The season before that was extremely mixed. At 28, and with a patchy fitness history, his £15 million price tag was hefty.

Still, Vermamlen himself labeled his move to Catalonia as a "new beginning" when quizzed on his injury-plagued past: "I want to look forward not back and the desire is there to play a lot of games." But that wasn't what it would be; the new beginning became a false dawn—a further descent into darkness. 

It's almost a year since Vermaelen was unveiled at Camp Nou. In that time, Barcelona have gone from defensive powerhouse to club in crisis and from club in crisis to club in ecstasy. They've won a treble, scored 175 goals and played in 60 competitive games. Like the rest of us, Vermaelen has sat and watched it unfold. 

Thus far, £15 million has bought Barcelona 63 minutes of playing time—63 minutes in a lifeless league encounter with the title already clinched. It's almost £250,000 per minute. Injuries to semitendinosus muscles are expensive.

Vermaelen, therefore, is almost an anonymous figure in the continent's finest outfit—a player connected to something historic but not part of it. Pre-season represents the starting line in a quest to change that, and the time is ticking on a career that has stopped and started and remains unfulfilled.

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Like it was at Arsenal, the idea of a fully fit Vermaelen at Barcelona is a tantalising one. Schooled at Ajax, bred in the Barca mould, the Belgian is an archetypal Blaugrana defender. He's versatile, at ease with the ball at his feet, comfortable moving forward and quick to recover. He possesses crisp passing, strength in the air and instincts to defend through attack. There have been times when he's threatened to become truly elite.

Arsenal's 2011-12 Premier League season will forever be Robin van Persie's year, when the Dutchman scored 30 goals as a lone soldier in the Gunners attack. But close observers in north London will tell you that team functioned best when Vermaelen returned from injury in late October 2011, powering an outfit from the back through combativeness and force. It's why he was brought to Camp Nou. 

Barcelona saw a defender who, with the technical quality to fit in, could give Luis Enrique's team a different edge—an altered complexion at the back.

Yet therein lies the problem: Barcelona need that Vermaelen, the 2011-12 edition. 

Ahead of the 2015-16 campaign, the now-29-year-old hasn't played regular football for more than two years, a disastrous performance in the north London derby in March 2013 breaking his grip on a starting position at the Emirates Stadium. Form issues and injury have since crippled him, denting a once-burgeoning reputation and causing many to forget what he was. Or is it what he is? Is he still that player? It's hard to know. 

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It's difficult to envisage Vermaelen ageing like John Terry. Whereas the Englishman's game is defined by his savvy, the Belgian's has been defined by explosiveness. When you picture him at his best for Arsenal, you picture a centre-back who would put in a crunching tackle, start a move with the ball he'd won and then charge into the box to thump home a bullet header. That's the Vermaelen who changed games. 

That was three seasons ago, though. That sort of game requires health and continuity. Moreover, it requires youthful vitality. Now he's 29 and with essentially no football behind him, trying to make the jump from Barcelona Lite (Arsenal) to the real thing. Standing in his way are Gerard Pique, Javier Mascherano, Jeremy Mathieu and Marc Bartra. Competition for places is fierce at Camp Nou, especially in central defence. 

To gain a place ahead of three members of that quartet, Vermaelen has to be the player Barcelona thought they were getting. The powerful, silky, momentum-fuelled and all-action defender. Essentially, in pre-season, Vermaelen needs to wind back the clock.

His task: Prove to Barcelona that the player he once was is the player he still is.

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