Barcelona in crisis: Awful football, fan anger, loss of identity, spiraling debt and Koeman vs. Laporta

Barcelona are in a state of crisis, of that there can be no doubt. It is potentially the greatest crisis in the club's history -- even including the four decades spent while Spain was run by a right-wing dictator who disliked Catalan culture, banned the language and imprisoned or "disappeared" many from that city and its environs. But question a dozen different people and you'll almost certainly get a dozen different answers as to what they believe the true crisis at the club to be.

Ask the 28,000 hardy souls who watched a dismal 1-1 draw at home to previously limp, easily beatable Granada and they'll say: "Monday night's game hit crisis level."

Ronald Koeman's team, with a couple of exceptions, showed remarkable variation between being witless, embarrassing, devoid of confidence and bankrupt of ideas. It was 90 minutes of some of the worst football at Camp Nou in living memory. So poor that Koeman could be looking for his next job soon. Although, that is doubtful partly because Barcelona really don't want to have to pay off his contract and also because they are right in the middle of a set of matches where kicking out the current coach and making a knee-jerk decision about another, even for the interim, would be a gigantic risk.

For some Barcelona watchers, the headline is how this club, this squad and most notably this team copes without Lionel Messi for the first time in 17 years. Others will point out that the club's staggering level of short, mid-term and long-term debt is sufficient to finish many businesses outside the idiosyncratic, self-indulgent football world. That's a proper crisis.

And after the last week of tit-for-tat sniping and discord between president Joan Laporta and coach Koeman, there will certainly be those who'd plump for the idea that "crisis" refers to the problems that are evidently doing damage right here and right now.

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Things, if not yet terminal, are patently very far from ideal both between Laporta and Koeman. And, don't worry, there's yet another "crisis" to highlight.

When Laporta first won power at Camp Nou, in 2003, Barca had never had a shirt sponsor in their entire history. He not only used the election campaign to trial his backing for sponsorship on the shirt, he and his board chose to re-endorse the radical change with another vote at the first Annual General Meeting after winning the presidential election. Spooked by the idea of putting a gambling firm's name across the Blaugrana shirt, in 2006 they chose to invest money in humanitarian charity UNICEF so that the debut branding was unique in world football. When Gerard Pique brought Rakuten to the table in 2016-17, the Japanese sponsors injected immensely valuable sums of money.

But two things suggest that the club may soon be hawking the Barcelona shirt around the market as their deal with Rakuten comes to an end in 2022. A video showing Antoine Griezmann and Ousmane Dembele mocking Japanese hotel staff during Barcelona's 2019 preseason tour incurred serious anger from many people, including Rakuten president Hiroshi Mikitani, who demanded immediate explanation and apologies. And Barcelona are now a significantly less attractive brand than it was when Pique put them together with Asia's equivalent to Amazon -- significantly less so.

Few expect Rakuten to renew when the deal ends. Brutal timing. If the financial black hole is crisis No. 1 then it will only spiral catastrophically if Barcelona either have to sell their shirt sponsorship rights below market value or fail to attract an investor.

And don't forget another crisis: The gradual but increasingly noisy rift between the club and its fans. As the local council raises the limits of how many spectators Barca are allowed to have inside the Camp Nou amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the club is finding it hard to entice the same number of "socio" (members) to attend. At a time when the team crucially needed to feel the roar of belief and defiance from the fans, Monday night's crowd was pitiful -- 13,000 short of what was permitted.

This isn't, however, exclusively to do with fan disgust at club standards. The pandemic has changed habits, cut many people's disposable income and left some previously stalwart fans, particularly the elderly, less secure about being in large crowds. But the clear fact remains that Barcelona have a job on their hands to convince some of their fan base that what they would be coming to see (not just whether or not they'll get to cheer a win but whether they'll be entertained) is worth the visit.

Such is the dire state of play that president Laporta put out a personal video before the Champions League match against Bayern Munich last week pleading with the club's supporters (the video was subtitled in English, but delivered in Catalan) to attend and to roar with positivity. The short version of it was: "Tonight is Champions night. I ask you to motivate our players and our coach more than ever. It's one of those nights you have to come to the stadium with strength, enthusiasm, pride, and with the Barca shirt to make it clear: Barca has returned! #BarcaBayern."

Koeman set up a team to defend, to avoid a mauling and to ensure that there was no repeat of the 8-2 the last time the sides met. (Some might say to avoid the kind of humiliating defeat which would have threatened his continued employment.)

What he did not avoid, however, was the ire of his employer. Not only was there an extended emergency board meeting after the comprehensive 3-0 defeat -- Julian Nagelsmann's only complaint was that his Bayern team didn't score more goals -- Laporta's party-political broadcast to club members (culers or cules) the next day was noticeably different. The video's abridged version was: "A message for all the culers: trust and support our team. Do not doubt that we will solve this situation. 'Visca el Barca!'"

Spot the difference? Ahead of the Bayern match, it was a plea on behalf of the team and the manager. After the comprehensive defeat, Laporta's video specifically didn't mention giving support to Koeman. Read into that what you will, but two things are fundamentally true about Laporta: He doesn't like it when people don't follow his orders and he's a naturally talented, well-planned communicator. The omission of support for Koeman was deliberate.

The previous week, in talks about whether the Dutchman's contract, which ends in June 2022, should be extended, Laporta told him that a new deal would be conditional on Riqui Puig and Samuel Umtiti being given much more game time and on Barcelona playing attacking, attractive football. Laporta, ill-advisedly, then briefed the media. "I told Koeman to toe the line" was the gist of the message. Koeman objected, in public -- stating that Laporta had been shooting his mouth off. Tit-for-tat public squabbling by two of the most powerful and influential men is rarely positive for either the club, the coach or the team.

What's being obscured is that the biggest crisis Barcelona face right now is the gradual, but disastrous, loss of their modern football identity. The central value for just short of the last 20 years, during which the club lifted more trophies than at any other comparable period in its history and sparked worldwide appreciation for a new brand of football, was the way in which Barcelona believed they should play.

Messi, Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Ronaldinho, Dani Alves, Sergio Busquets, Samuel Eto'o, Luis Suarez, Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol were exceptional individuals, but what elevated their teams above the sum of the parts was the entire concept of how to play. The Johan Cruyff-Pep Guardiola concept of possessional and positional football has been consistently eroded over a number of years and, recently, abandoned altogether.