Welcoming Seydou Keita and Gerard Pique

By: Isaiah | May 29th, 2008

Because I was away when they were officially signed and announced, here is a double post on our two newest members: Seydou Keita and Gerard Pique. Obviously most of you have heard of them — in fact, I’d be surprised if anyone reading this blog hadn’t heard of them, though that would suggest Kevin and I are reaching a very wide audience — but I’m going to doe quick profiles of them anyway.

I’ll start with Keita, who was first to be announced. His contract was purchased from Sevilla for his buyout clause of €14million euros and then he was signed to a 4-year deal. That means his contract runs through June 2012. His buyout clause has been reported at €90million, so it’s pretty damned unlikely that he’ll be leaving before his contract runs out unless the club wants him to go. But enough of the economics and on to who Keita is. He’s a 28-year old, 6-foot, Malian international midfielder who has previously played in France and also, obviously, for Sevilla. His on-the-pitch role tends to vacillate between defensive and attacking central midfielder, meaning that he brings a lot of versatility to the squad’s “engine room.” He provides a little bit more attacking capability than Yaya Toure (and yes, I realize that Toure is capable of attacking, but has been held back by tactics, but I still believe Keita is more of an attacker), but a lot more defensive capability than Deco. While he is neither as good as Toure at defense nor as good as Deco at offense, he provides a lot of much-needed depth. The best possible outcome is Keita being able to come off of the bench for anyone in the midfield or starting for them if they’re injured, but there is also a legitimate fear of him being incapable of playing with Toure, something could cause issues with both the squad and my heart.

Keita is talented, there’s no doubt about it, but he’s not the youngest player and he’s not the most attack-minded. Of the four goals he scored for Sevilla, though, I remember 3 of them being laser beams basically from the parking lot. Dude has a canon. Like a damn BFG or something. Perhaps if he starts bombing them in from range, it will force defense to step out a bit, giving our mighty mites a few more holes to worm their way through. That and it could provide Toure with the ability to step up and take his own broadsides at the net without having 7 defenders blocking his way.

All-in-all, I’m still on the fence about Keita, but I think he has tremendous potential and I’m willing to buy into the whole thing if he’s capable of co-existing rather than replacing. If he’s a replacement for Deco, he better have telepathic abilities with Messi and the capability to run into the corners while the front line shifts around. If he’s a replacement for Toure, I will need at least 4 trophies next year or it’s off with someone’s head. Period.

Now to Pique. 21 years old, 6′4″, born in Catalonia*, raised as an FC Barcelona member, played in the youth team, moved to England, ended up back in Spain on loan at Zaragoza where he had a good year, returned to ManU and idled on the bench most of the time before making the move to Barcelona for an undisclosed fee somewhere around €5million. He scores goals with his head because he’s gigantor and I like that. In fact, I’m enamored with the possibilities because what if (and imagine this in your mind, right now) when we got a corner kick, the other team shat itself instead of waiting patiently to outjump our tiny child-like attackers? That would mean we could have our cake and freakin’ eat it too because we wouldn’t need a legion of tall, ugly brute forwards like Ibrahimovic! Yay! The beautiful game wins again! Another wonderful thing is that when they get a corner kick or a solid cross into the middle, we don’t have to shit ourselves because we’ve got a 6′4″ behemoth of a man taking names and handing out free passes to the infirmary.

So, as you can tell, I’m very excited about Pique’s return to the fold. I don’t hold it against him that he left for England because I would have done the same. In fact, so would you. In a perfect world, he never would have left, but it’s not a perfect world and I think the time away has done him some good (it has, at the very least, kept us from having to worry about him developing or not and even if we paid a bunch to get him back, if it turns out he’s half the player I think he can be, it’s well worth it).

*don’t yell at me if you think it should be spelled Catalunya. I don’t know or care about the politics behind spelling things certain ways.