da bet nacional： This article is part of Football FanCast’s Opinion series, which provides analysis, insight and opinion on any issue within the beautiful game, from Paul Pogba’s haircuts to League Two relegation battles…
da gbg bet： It has been a long while since we’ve last seen Samuel Umtiti continuously play for Barcelona.
Just a couple of years ago, however, the 25-year-old centre-back was on top of the world and looking like he could become Blaugrana’s best defender in some time.
After all, he was receiving all sorts of praise by club legends like Eric Abidal.
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Abidal even likened Umtiti to Franz Beckenbauer and stated that his compatriot had already surpassed him back then when talking to RAC1 (via Goal).
“Umtiti is much better than Abidal. He will be the black Beckenbauer at Barca.” – Eric Abidal, 2017
But things have gone sour very quickly for the now 25-year-old centre-back.
In 2016/17, Umtiti played a total of 43 games for the Blaugrana across all competitions, starting all games in the Champions League and 24 in La Liga. This trend continued into the next season as well as the Frenchman mustered 40 appearances across all competitions, once again starting the vast majority of them.
But trouble started brewing the season after that when his knee started to give.
In 2018/19, he had to miss 28 games due to some serious injuries and now, in 2019/20, he’s already missed a total of nine matches due to an issue with his foot.
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That means that he has only played a total of 15 games since the start of the 2018/19 season.
That is a seriously worrying statistic and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that he will have to resolve his issues rather quickly or Barcelona might start looking at other options.
He might have been one of their best defenders two years ago but now, these injuries have become a serious problem both for him and for the club.
Not to mention that the Catalans are pretty stacked at that centre-back position with Gerard Pique, Clement Lenglet and Jean-Clair Todibo already available in the first team and the likes of Ronald Araujo, who made his senior debut just recently against Sevilla, banging on the door and aching for that big chance.
For those reasons, this feels like a do or die situation for Umtiti.
The competition at big clubs like Barca is always tough but it seems that there are quite a lot of contenders waiting for a chance to dethrone the Frenchman sooner rather than later.
We’ve seen the quality he possesses when he’s fit, and many of the fans obviously still believe in him, but he’s definitely walking on thin ice already, especially considering that there were some rumours of his potential exit last summer.
Who’s to say that Barcelona won’t pull the trigger the next time Umtiti fluffs his lines or suffers a long-term absence? And would it even be unfair of them to do so considering everything that’s been going on with the player?
Only time will tell but if anything, time is exactly what the 25-year-old seems to be running out of.