Maxi Lopez transfers and the preseason is over (oh darn)

By: Isaiah | August 16th, 2007

On the heels of Sport and El Mundo Deportivo announcing that Maxi Lopez has transfered to FC Moskva for €2million (sweet!), there are a few things to talk about. The first is preseason minutes and how they suggest basically nothing. Or at least we hope so.

I say that not based on the fact that Gio Dos Santos played quite a few (that’s a good thing), but rather because the minutes leader for this preseason was….drum roll please…Oleguer. What? That’s right, Oleguer. He played more minutes than anyone else and by quite a bit. Here’s the list according to FC Barcelona: [after the jump]

Oleguer, 520
Xavi, 479
Thuram, 450
Touré Yaya, 417
Iniesta, 399
Eto’o, 355
Zambrotta, 355
Henry, 334
Ronaldinho, 331
Abidal, 315
Giovani, 280
Valdés, 270
Sylvinho, 219
Jorquera, 180
Motta, 149
Ezquerro, 137
Deco, 135
Oier, 90
Belletti, 91
Bojan, 90
Crosas, 88
Olmo, 57
Maxi, 48
Messi, 45
Márquez, 45
Milito, 29
Valiente, 19
Dimas, 13

I fully support having Oleguer play like a billion minutes when it doesn’t matter because that way the true stars of the team don’t get overly tired playing in silly friendlies with teams like Mission Hills Invitation XI. Yeah. That makes sense to me.

So the unofficial superstars of these first 6 games (all of which FCB won, by the way) were Gio Dos Santos and Ronaldinho, the former who appears poised to make a solid run at the first team in games that matter and the latter who seems to have, for the moment, found some of his joy again. There has been no radical improvement in Eto’o’s goalscoring numbers, but there shouldn’t be much doubt that he’ll find his stride along with Henry at some point. Putting Messi in any squad will open holes in the opposition, which is definitely a positive when considering the Barcelona style of play (attack, attack, were we supposed to defend there?, attack). The more goals the better, despite the fact that the defense is looking decent enough, statistically. I still have never seen any of the new signings playing, but that’ll happen soon enough (August 26, to be exact).

So the countdown to the league begins: 10 more days! 9 if you don’t count the day itself! As the children say: OMFG

And I will try to write something more concrete about Maxi Lopez when more information comes in, but for now, it’s “adios” to the gallina (hen) as they call him.