What Is Going Wrong for Paco Alcacer at Barcelona?

Luis Enrique is a good coach and an intelligent man, but what he has to say about Paco Alcacer needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

“Paco was as good as the rest of my players,” explained the coach in his press conference, per Sport, after Barcelona’s frustrating 0-0 draw with Malaga at Camp Nou on Saturday.

“There’s no Coca-Cola formula here, for a player to score goals he need minutes. I’m happy with him and I hope he keeps improving. But to hope for anything else is illogical. I’m delighted with Paco and with the team.”

Even his opening gambit doesn’t ring true.

That’s something you don’t even have to watch the game to note because Barcelona’s problem was scoring goals, not keeping them out, as demonstrated by the scoreline.

When that happens, the forwards are to blame. But beyond that, in fact, Alcacer was not as good as any other Barcelona player on the pitch.

A statistic from Carles Domenech of LaTdP, h/t Sport, shows that between the 10th minute and the 41st minute of the game, he didn’t touch the ball.

The man was invisible, which is bad enough for any player, let alone one playing up front for a team that would consider themselves the greatest in the world, playing at home against relatively weak opponents.

When Gerard Pique went up front, he came closer to scoring in the final 15 minutes of the game on numerous occasions than Alcacer had in the previous 75.

But this wasn’t just one bad performance from Alcacer. In fact, he hasn’t put in a particularly good one since he joined the club in the summer.

Signed for €30 million from Valencia, Alcacer was the fruit of a summer spent chasing forwards and the man expected to make the difference when the MSN strikeforce couldn’t.

The point was that Luis Enrique felt he couldn’t rest his stars last season with only Munir El Haddadi and Sandro Ramirez as back-up, so Alcacer’s signing would put that problem to rest. 

Thus far, it hasn’t proved the case. After his performance against Malaga, the coach—despite his words of praise after the game—will be reluctant to use the striker.

It is unlikely we will see him in the upcoming games against Celtic, in the Champions League, and Real Sociedad and Real Madrid in La Liga.

Alcacer’s next opportunity will come against Hercules in the Copa del Rey when Barcelona travel to Alicante next week.

The coach will rest many first-team players ahead of the Clasico on December 3, and that will be a chance for the striker to grab the goal he craves.

Alcacer has not scored in the eight games he has featured in.

There are two ways of looking at the situation. One is blaming him for playing badly, the other looking at different factors that have hampered him.

The former has some truth to it, but the more sensible option is the latter. Yes, Alcacer could have done better. He has had some chances, which he should have finished better.

Alcacer perhaps should have been able to find a gap in …

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