When Villa didn’t play in Prague and wasn’t in the starting 11 against Bilbao, it generated special interest of the media. The attention caused speculations of alleged conflict between El Guaje and Messi, and talks about difficulties which face any striker who would want to play along La Pulga. It’s not easy to be a teammate of Leo Messi, examples are Ronaldinho, Eto’o, Bojan and Ibrahimović.

The substitution of El Guaje at La Catedral against Bilbao was even more important because of formation with Adriano, Xavi and Iniesta who rested the last two games. After the match, David was praised by Pep Guardiola who underlined that he trusts him. “It’s impossible to quarrel with David. He is very good, generous, in football and in life in general. Especially with Leo.” Although, the feeling is that he plays less than in previous seasons. Villa has played in 11 La Liga games. This makes him the 9th player in the overall list of most minutes, and he is the one most subbed by Guardiola. The coach limits the playing time of his players, especially when they have problems.

Top scorer in Sporting, Zaragoza and Valencia, El Guaje transformed into a team-oriented player for the excellence of Barça. He plays more than anyone else without the ball, runs, looks for spaces, attacks, gives depth and, unlike most of his teammates, he dribbles a lot. He maintains a good frequency of opportunities to score both in La Liga and the Champions League. The only problem is not being successful. He scored only 3 goals in the Spanish league and 3 in the CL. Against Athletic, he had 2 great chances, but both were saved by Iraizoz.

He is not lucky in front of the goal, he hits the goalkeeper, the goalposts, sometimes he misses the goal because of anxiety and also because he has less time than others. The goal efficiency is better when Messi plays together with Xavi, Iniesta and Cesc, who also is a ”false 9,” just like La Pulga. In that case Villa plays on the wing, or sits on the bench. The only one with a fixed postition on the pitch is Messi. The others take turns. As Guillem Balague wrote recently “at Barcelona, Lionel Messi is the fulcrum of the attack and his teammates instinctively look to get the ball to the Argentine. For any striker, no matter who you are, that is hard to take. It would be a problem for any number nine, whoever he is, if he plays for Barcelona with Messi in the side“.

Injuries of Afellay, Alexis and Pedro made possible the debut of Cuenca. He plays a similar role to Adriano by playing on the wings and outside the penalty area with a lot of chances to play passes to Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Cesc and Villa. Cesc has five goals in Liga, Xavi has four, and Villa, only three, but he doesn’t complain. Despite his scoring nature and the fact that “Pichichis’ are usually selfish, El Guaje joins the efforts to help the team and Leo Messi (14 goals in La Liga, 5 in the Champions League). This was seen in the last play at San Mamés. As Villa says often “Messi made me a better player.”

For sure, David Villa plays a different role in Barcelona, but let’s just quote what he said some months ago in an interview to El Pais (whole article  here). “For me it was a challenge playing in this team, to play differently than I had done all my life and I am satisfied. I have had to adapt to a very different and very characteristic system and in that sense I am also very pleased. I trusted that I would adapt to the club. It is not easy to play in a team as demanding as this.” Asked how is it to play alongside Messi, David said “he is a wonder, a dream. I can always say I was his companion… From the beginning we’ve had a good dynamic. If you’re up and working, it is relatively easy to understand his movements, read him or search for the spaces he’s left. He’s the best player I’ve seen and I doubt you will see someone better. It’s a luxury to play with him.”

Of course, it’s not easy to deal with a superstar in your team, especially when you’re a world class player too. But Villa always underlined that “it must always be about the team. No one is more important than anyone else, it has always been so, Valencia, Zaragoza…We realize that we are all better if Leo is there. We are a team, it’s simple: we must play the game to bring Leo freedom, and then you find the space in which to appear. We work to make this happen, and find spaces.”  Playinng in Barcelona means that you need to adjust, sometimes change your style of play. It’s clear that Villa doesn’t score as many goals as in previous teams, but he is not really concerned about it. He underlined many times that he “always trys to do more than just scoring goals. I like to score goals when I have the opportunity, but I also try to do other things on the pitch. I know that the coach also values that type of work.” 

We don’t know what happens inside the blaugrana team, we can only guess on the basis of what players say or how they behave on and outside the pitch. Watching and listening to Messi and Villa doesn’t really show anything wrong so far. Recent speculations about bad relations between players are probably just another attempt to destabilize the Barcelona dressing room.