 Here's Alex Balde again one of the breakout stars of this season and a goal! Lewandowski is the player to cash in. Balde did the set up work and Balde who set up the first scored his first ever LaLiga goal. Alejandro Balde has been relegated to the bench in the last two games if the situation continues over time the debate will no longer revolve around his protagonism but the possibility of Barca considering a sale. Once arguably the best left back in the world at just 19 years old Alejandro Balde has now fallen to the wayside and his future at FC Barcelona now relies upon three questions that he must answer correctly to succeed. And because I'm a huge fan of audiobooks I'm very happy to thank Audible for sponsoring this video. Make sure you check out our link in the description to earn yourself a 30-day free trial that comes with any audiobook of your choosing and every time someone signs up using our link we'll get a kickback that helps us make more videos. At the start of the 22-23 season FC Barcelona had a bit of a left back conundrum. Jordi Alba increasingly did not meet Xavi's expectations so on deadline day he tasked the club with signing someone who could cover that position and the brilliant minds at Barcelona brought nothing but quality to the table and then realized they couldn't sign any of it and so brought in Marco Salonzo. So that's where the bar was basically on the floor leaving plenty of room for a young player to push his way through and well Balde did exactly that. When he burst onto the scene he wasn't exactly an unknown player in fact the scouting reports on him from when he was in Barcelona beat touted him as a very qualified attacking fullback with plenty of pace and the ability to put in a good cross. One even predicted that he could one day be a starter for a top European side. I just don't think he happened to expect it to come so quickly. From the day that Barcelona were knocked out of the Champions League against Inter Milan, Balde was the main starter at left back sometimes even covering for right back and the kid shined. In his first 200 minutes he recorded two assists and seems to be incredibly threatening every single moments that he was on the ball. He constantly made darting runs and hit some very decent crosses while contributing solidly on defense as well. His pace compensated for any positional awareness problems he had and he showed a good hunger and desire to fight for the badge. For this Chavi rewarded him with playing time being an uncontested cog in the system of the best defense in recent history all across Europe. One of the main reasons that team was so defensively solid was because Kunde could act as a right sided center back whenever the team was being pushed defensively while still having the threat of ball progression on the left with Balde. That ability to run with the ball allowed the team to play three center backs at one time without worrying about how they were going to get up the pitch. He was their outlet. However that's not possible anymore because of Ter Stegen's injury. I think we used to take his deliveries for granted getting upset whenever he misplaced a single ball. But now without him we are struggling to move the ball out at all. On top of that Balde seems to be having some communication issues with his teammates. In the last game against Las Palmas Frankie was seen yelling at Balde several times and actually had to get to the point where he completely directed Balde on where to run. That's okay to do at times but it also completely telegraphs where he's going to pass the ball and so it will limit the space that Balde will have eventually when he does get the ball in space. After being lauded as an incredible attacking fullback in La Masia and then also having a breakout season as an attacking fullback last year it seems wild to me that he's just forgotten how to make these runs or he's not intentionally doing it right now. I'm not going to chalk that up to being only his fault because literally the entire team is suffering so of course almost every other player is suffering but he just seems to be lost or be somewhere else right now. Again against Las Palmas there were plenty of times where Balde wasn't putting in a lot of effort to track back and that's generally okay if Chavi has him playing as an outlet as a left wingback so to say. But if he's playing as an outlet and Christensen has him covered defensively shouldn't he have the freedom to push forward and make those runs whenever necessary? Our first question we need to ask of Balde is how good does he think he is because he doesn't seem to be playing hard right now at all. Now there are plenty of instances where he seems to be playing hard but there are just too many of them that he isn't. They were desperate against Las Palmas to get a goal to create some chances and he still needed to be urged by his midfielder to make a run. I think he may be suffering for confidence because it's the first time in at least a year that he has had to compete for his position and I wouldn't be surprised if it's his first time and even longer than that. However he is still playing a ton of minutes. He still has 13 starts in La Liga and 3 in the Champions League. That's plenty of minutes. In fact halfway through this season he's already played half as many minutes as he did last year at 1500 so I think it would be a little bit immature to be upset with his playing time considering he's getting plenty of playing time. But even though he's basically on track to have the exact same amount of minutes as he did last season he only has one goal contribution so far this year while he ended with 7 last year. In fact a lot of his stats are lower but the one I want to focus on is his take on success rate. Having dropped from 52% in La Liga last season to only 45% this season. The eye test tells you that it feels like it's even worse than that and I think a lot of that has to do with him becoming a little bit predictable. As I said before Baldeh tallied 2 assists in his first 200 minutes for Barcelona last season. However in his next 2,000 minutes he only got 4 more and it seems like that form has carried itself into this season him just seemingly being more predictable. He is a kid who is fast and so I think he wants to rely on that and against big adult defenders for the first time in your life for the first time in a long time you basically only want to do what you trust and you probably don't trust your weak foot. No matter what he kept going toward the goal line and I think defenders must have picked that up because it seems like this season a lot of his attempted crosses are just going off his first defender and going out for corners. And that leads us into the next question we have to ask of Baldeh. Can he improve? Right now he has to play smarter, he has to make better runs and he has to coordinate more with his teammates. He also has to improve at taking people on and I want to give him credit because it seems like he already has improved just from the Las Palmas game because it seems like he switched something up and he was going cutting on to his right foot more like 40% of the time in that game. However even if he beats his defenders it doesn't really matter unless your crosses go somewhere effective and create a chance. But even against Las Palmas I don't even think one of his crosses met the feet of a forward a single time. But I want to highlight here that I don't think Alejandro Baldeh is a worse crosser of the ball than he was last season. I just think he's less lucky than he was last season. On top of having a worse Robert Lewandowski than he had for the first half of last season. But that is something that can be worked on. Baldeh can improve that and against Las Palmas I think we saw that there are some instances where he has the ability to do that especially when he cuts on to his right foot. Even though there is no chance he's ever shooting with that foot he has the ability to pick out certain players a little bit better that way. And to be fair we saw him play a few cool one twos at the top of the box as an inverted fullback and he hasn't really been doing that or he didn't do that last season. And so I'm excited to see that he has the capacity to do that and I'm looking forward to see what happens in the future. But the most important question that we as fans and Chavi as the manager have to ask of him is coming up right after you guys check out this incredible story about the evolution of Pep Guardiola on Audible. But shameless plug aside I've been wanting to learn a lot more about football since this channel has been growing so quickly recently and I've been having a little bit of trouble finding time to do that. Audible gave me a great way to do that. So I'm very excited to be able to offer any of my US viewers the ability to download Audible, use the free trial and get any book they want so that they can maybe also learn a little bit about football while they're at it. And it helps out the channel a ton. You can cancel any time within that 30 days without any fees or penalties. So check it out and it will help out the channel a ton. Finally the most important question that we must ask of Baldeh is are you okay with being a tool? Alejandro Baldeh is 20 years old and he's not Killian Mbappe or Lionel Messi so the team is not going to be built around him at all. It's his job to adapt to whatever situation Chavi asks him to play in or else he won't be of good use to the team. If Chavi asks him to be threatening on the left side and give Frankie Deong runs to pick out he has to do that. If he asks Baldeh to play as a center back he has to figure out how to do that. Chavi has had Gavi play in three different positions in the past year and he did that every single time pretty well. Even if that spot didn't fit him perfectly Gavi put his life on the line every single time and we need Baldeh to do that even if not possibly up to the level of Gavi because that's unreasonable to ask of your players. Alejandro Baldeh needs to accept that he might not be the main starter for the squad at every single game and that he's going to be on the bench sometime. That can be upsetting I understand and that's okay to get frustrated but you have to show up when you are asked to show up. Baldeh wasn't ready to make certain runs against Las Palmas and he desperately needed to be. He ended up making some decent opportunities in that match but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for more from him especially considering what he did last season. If he is not okay with any of those questions then maybe he shouldn't be at Barcelona right now. He is an incredibly valuable asset and even though Barca will struggle to replace him he's valuable and they can make a lot of money from it and money would help a lot of problems right now for Barcelona. Overall I'm really excited about the future. I think he is a very talented player and I really enjoy watching him. I just hope he puts a few more things into his arsenal to become a little bit more of a complete player but if you enjoyed this video why don't you check out this video about Lameen Yamal or you can check out this video about whatever the hell YouTube thinks you might be interested in but also live stream tomorrow for the Copa del Rey match but thank you all for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.