CN?

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^^^This. 100%. If I had to guess, I'd say this: Barca is still the youngest team in Europe, AFAIK. This ain't Inter, with gristly old boys everywhere you turn: managing a team like this, esp with 'kindness is contagious' as the loyalty/buy-in/trust engine for a team with almost no capital to spend for now, is WAY trickier a proposition than, say, Pep and his top-down doctrrines, as Zlatan's 'great philosopher' LMAO. Guessing again, perhaps that's why Flick failed with German NT: his management style hinges on organic growth...of everybody, himself included. Injuries come in waves, seems like; to me, that's all about overplaying fragile, highly tuned athletes relentlessly. Not on Flick or his staff: it's greed, pure and simple. The NT football associations must make a fortune off players (correct me if I'm wrong) when they hold the TV rights for teams comprised of guys essentially playing for honorariums. Anybody know different?Defense? Iñigo ain't irreplaceable but there's little doubt he had an almost telepathic connection with Cubarsi, who, to my eye, misses him. But IM was clear example of a reclamation project that (incl Eric and GM, at entirely different phases of their careers) succeeded because it had time to evolve. I'm getting a tiny bootstrap tech startup airborne, four talents for now..and managing change for a relatively small universe of variables day2day some days feels like climbing Everest in flipflops. Managing a crew of under-25 millionaires...some doing. All that to say, nobody knows anything, as they say in Hollywood: we shall see what's what over a very trying WC season. One last thing: like Puyol, Gavi I miss. Onward.

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