Pass masters Barcelona deliver first glimpse of the Setién manifesto

Nine hundred and ninety-eight … 999… 1,000. And still it went. Jordi Alba played the ball to Riqui Puig, who played it to Sergi Busquets, who played it to Arthur Melo, who played it to Sergi Roberto, who played it to Gerard Piqué. Who, finally halted on 100, didn’t get the chance to play it to anyone else. Half an hour before his first game as coach of Barcelona, Quique Setién had sat on the bench alongside his assistant Éder Sarabia, empty seats rising around them, still barely able to believe they were here, and silently contemplated the players – his players – warming up with a ball at their feet. Two and a half hours later, standing now, collar turned up against the cold, when the final whistle went it was still there.

“I’ve seen some of the things I wanted,” Setién said afterwards and others had too, although not all of them. Above all, he had seen the thing he says all players want and always have, right back to the playground: the ball. Barcelona won 1-0 on his debut against Granada but there were other numbers that occupied everyone. Piqué was one of four players to reach 100 passes, 98 of them accurate. Rakitic had only been two away from making it five; Lionel Messi was seven away. Puig had played more passes than all of Granada’s players – and he had only been on the pitch 22 minutes. Busquets had played more than all of them put together. His 157 was a record this season.

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Barcelona had attempted 1,005 passes. They had 82.6% possession, just ahead of last season’s high: 82.5% from Betis. That’s Setién’s Betis and that’s also pretty much the point. If this was very Setién, it was also very “Barcelona”, which is what it’s supposed to be. Only two teams had ever attempted more passes in La Liga – Barcelona in 2011 and 2012, under Pep Guardiola and Tito Vilanova. Only two had registered a higher percentage since Opta started counting in 2005, both of them Barcelona under Guardiola: 84% against Racing Santander and, more recently, 83.9% against Levante in May 2011. They had played 326 league games since then. If this move was driven by nostalgia, and in part it was, there was a shot of it here, a glimpse of the future coming with it.

It’s a nostalgia that goes back a long way now; that sense of loss is long-standing and easily evoked. In September 2013, Barcelona beat Rayo Vallecano 4-0 but what remained was that they lost possession, their religion, for the first time in 315 games, since the pre-Guardiola era. Last season they had just 44% of the possession against Sevilla – they won that, too – and that didn’t go unnoticed, including among Setién’s staff. Much of the response was exaggerated: there was a puritanical edge to it, a touch of mythology. Sevilla was one of just five games in which they had “lost” possession in 410 games, according to Spain’s best football statistician. Yet, many agreed with El Mundo’s judgement that “the ball had become a foreign element”, Valverde’s team reaching a season high of 791 passes, and if there was a reason Barcelona turned to Setién, it was this. It was also because they were stuck, of course.

“I don’t have winners’ medals or a huge CV, just a commitment to an idea,” he had said, and that idea was their idea, or so it goes.

Here, he expressed it. “These are just words,” he had said on Tuesday; by Sunday, they were actions too. At the end of a week in which the question was how Barcelona would play, not the result – not least because most took that for granted – and when the talk was of identity and philosophy, Sunday brought some answers. It was too early for conclusions, Setién insisting he didn’t really know how to judge his team until he had the chance to watch the game back and analyse it properly. It was a single game and against Granada, unlikely to be replicated often. And his commitment to an idea doesn’t, despite easy assumptions, preclude variety and the search for specific solutions. And yet this was a first view of what might be, a statement of intent.

A Barcelona that lined up in something like a 3-4-3 or 3-5-2, that put Messi central. One that positioned Alba as high as Ansu Fati, at least with the ball, leaving the wing to him. “If you look at the data, I would bet that Alba’s not running more; it’s mostly in the midfield,” Setién said when asked about the demands made of the full-back. “It’s better to make an effort for 10 meters to win the ball than to have the team running back 40, 50 metres.” A Barcelona that was, Setién insisted, “brave”, trying to rob the ball high, stepping up to tackles, not turned back to make them. One with a system that may revive Busquets, the last midfield survivor of 2009, a symbol of their identity and an admirer of Setién who noted afterwards: “The feelings are good. It’s better to do your running forwards.” Setién said: “Sergio has that idea in his head: he’s the player that best understands his position and reads that part of the game.”

This was a Barcelona in which B-teamer Puig came on to play a significant part and Arturo Vidal, a player the coaching staff believe is better than people think, was decisive again. One that never went long, building every move from the back. One where he insisted on “rigour,” “mental discipline”, “90 minutes” of focus, and a collective “mechanism” to prevent them being exposed on the break. One he also explicitly linked to their performance against Atlético Madrid, before he arrived – the game that finally cost Ernesto Valverde his job. One that, swiftly, maybe a little too swiftly, brought excitement, recognition, a sense of belonging. For some, at least. “Setién makes himself felt,” declared the cover of El Mundo Deportivo. “Great hopes,” cheered Sport. His “manifesto”, they said, was clear: “Possession.”

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It was also, though, a Barcelona that struggled to find a way through; that only scored once at home – where there have been a 5-0, three 5-2s, a 4-0 and two 4-1s in the league this season – and against Granada. That didn’t get the breakthrough until the last 20 minutes, just after their opponents had been reduced to 10 men for a second yellow that Granada manager Diego Martínez rightly considered harsh. And not long after Granada had hit the post. A Barça that only had six shots on target. “It’s not easy when a team defends very deep,” Setién said, although that does make it easier to keep possession, so those stats too have to be contextualised: Granada didn’t press Barcelona high as many have done to great effect, especially away.

It is also not easy without Luis Suárez – the kind of player they’d wished they had towards the end at Betis when they struggled to turn possession into goals. Of Barcelona’s 921 completed passes, only a fifth went forward and, on a windy night and a dry pitch, the ball didn’t circulate as fast as Setién wanted. It was theirs, though. Sometimes people ask: yeah, but how many of those passes were relevant? The answer, while smartarsed, is: all of them. It is a debate that Guardiola faced too, and so did the Spain team that won the World Cup. Possession is not just about creativity; it is about control, a word Setién used pointedlyhere, about conditioning the game. Keeping the ball is a defensive approach too, denying the opposition oxygen. For Setién, it is also almost an ethical question, something deep inside him.

It’s not just about the result, he says, but it is about the result. And that came from a familiar place, Messi scoring the only goal when he finished off a lovely move involving Puig, Busquets, Antoine Griezmann and Vidal. Whatever else changes, that doesn’t, just as Setién suspected; just as he wished. He’s watched Messi from the other side, seen his own fans applaud him, almost honoured to have been beaten by him, and admitted that he felt like doing the same. On Sunday night, he watched Messi and his teammates warm up, the ball at their feet: players he has long admired, his players now. “It gives you peace of mind to have Messi,” Setién said. “He did what he’s done his whole life.”

Talking points

• When Casemiro missed the chance to score a hat-trick, he headed back to the halfway line with a grin on his face. That would have been too much, even for him. Two goals were enough to beat Sevilla; his work was done.

• Diego Simeone did the sleeping gesture and tried to shake them awake. “You’re asleep! You’re asleep! You’re asleep,” he shouted, but it was no good. “We used to gift opponents a half back in October, now we’ve done it again; we have to realise that the game starts when it starts,” he said after Atlético were defeated 2-0 at Eibar, leaving them eight points off the top. This is their worst start under Simeone.

• David López could hardly get his words out, his voice breaking and tears appearing n his eyes. “Look at them,” he said, gesturing to the 3,000 Espanyol fans who had made the trip to Villarreal to see their team win 2-1. “Look at our first half of the season. And they give us this. This is for them.” Behind him, players were throwing shirts into the crowd, embracing and overcome with emotion. “Yes, we can!” they chanted, which they had chanted when the bus arrived too, but now they really believed they can. Especially with RDT, a goalscorer here, and new manager Abelardo Fernández, who has picked up four points from six games, which is just one less than the two men who preceded him – and they had 20 games between them. That hope is for real. It’s also not theirs alone after a weekend in which Alavés and Mallorca (4-1 against Valencia!) won, Celta drew at San Mamés and Valladolid got a point at Osasuna. Of the teams near the bottom, only Leganés lost – they have also lost En Nesyri. Their hope, revived by Javier Aguirre, has taken quite a hit.

Barcelona 1-0 Granada, A Bilbao 1-1 Celta Vigo, Villarreal 1-2 Espanyol, Real Betis 3-0 Real Sociedad, Mallorca 4-1 Valencia, Eibar 2-0 Atlético, Osasuna 0-0 Valladolid, Real Madrid 2-1 Sevilla, Levante 0-1 Alavés, Leganés 0-3 Getafe