Ivan Rakitic, the Barcelona midfielder, became Ivan “Crakitic” in one of today’s Catalonia-based newspapers. The surname lends itself nicely to the evocative alteration. A “crack” in the language of Spanish football is, basically, a star.
Since he joined from Sevilla in the summer, Rakitic has rapidly made himself the midfield motor of the Spanish league leaders.
He scored in the 6-0 win over Granada at the weekend and heard a personal ovation from the crowd, when he was withdrawn after the hour mark, a rare occurrence and purely a precaution to ensure he could be fresh for Tuesday night’s Champions League encounter, a “crack” fixture with Paris Saint-Germain.
Barca will line up what has become their established first-choice trio in midfield: Rakitic, Sergio Busquets and Andres Iniesta.
No place, almost certainly, for Xavi, 34, the emblem of the club over the past decade, and the nominal captain.
Xavi described Rakitic, 26, as a “superb signing” after Saturday’s game.
No resentment there, certainly, that the Croatian has eclipsed him in coach Luis Enrique’s thinking, and a genuine appreciation from Xavi, the football purist, of the energy, authority and poise Rakitic brings to his work.
It is no easy thing to command a place quickly in Barcelona’s midfield, where the pass-and-move habits are so finely tuned and the pressing and possession strategies so crucial to the way the team play.
Busquets and Iniesta have been learning that way since childhoods spent in the club’s academy, La Masia. So has Xavi.
Back in the years when Xavi was establishing his mastery of pass-and-move, and Iniesta was showing he could add a dashing dribble to the repertoire, Thiago Motta was also contributing some of the classic functions of a midfielder educated at La Masia.
Motta, after a roundabout career path that took him to Atletico Madrid and Inter Milan, is now at PSG. He is relied upon for midfield stability and authority in possession.
The Brazil-born Italy international did not quite become a star at Barcelona, though injuries played a part in his failure to sustain the promise he showed as an academy teenager and then through 140 senior appearances for the first team.
But he can reflect that the quality of competition for places for him was impossibly intense: the Xavi-Busquets-Iniesta midfield has been one of the great combinations of the modern era.
Motta, 32, evolved into more of a Busquets than an Iniesta, a tough, tall warrior as well as an assured passer, whose collisions with Busquets, 26, are worth keeping an eye on at the Parc des Princes.
The pair have history.
In a Champions League semi-final at Barcelona’s Camp Nou, in 2010, a challenge by Motta, then of Inter, on Busquets left the younger man writhing on the pitch in apparent agony before television close-ups revealed Busquets indicating his satisfaction that Motta received a red card.
Motta was furious at the slyness of Busquets. He missed the final, and Inter’s victory over Bayern Munich, because of the subsequent suspension.
As one of a trio of dressing-room leaders at PSG – along with Thiago Silva, who will miss the game against Barcelona, injured, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who is struggling for fitness – Motta knows how closely the French club have studied Barcelona as a model for international projection and success since they set about their ambitious and expensive uplift after the takeover by Qatari investors in 2011.
They had a reminder of how close they had come to Barcelona’s standards in the quarter-final of the 2012/13 Champions League: Barca went through on away goals.
Respective form going into Tuesday night, however, favours the visitors.
The French champions registered a fifth draw so far this season against Toulouse on Saturday and, though unbeaten, are only fourth in their domestic table. Barca, meanwhile, come off a 6-0 win, and are yet to concede a goal in the league, or Europe.
With doubts over Ibrahimovic’s fitness, and the supercharged Rakitic looking to enhance his growing reputation on the Champions League stage, PSG face a night of searching questions, and probably a good deal of chasing of the ball around midfield.
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