A lot of people have said their word on new Barcelona central defender and Uruguayan international Martín Cáceres (21) over the last days. I've picked out two.
Asked about the transfer, Manolo Zambrano, the manager of Recreativo Huelva where Cáceres played this year on loan, said on Tuesday in an interview with Catalan radio station Ona FM that Barcelona could have done 'the deal of the century': "In a year we'll all think that fee is ridiculous for a player like him. If everything goes like it should, Barcelona has a central defender for years and years."
Zambrano describes the technical and human qualities of the player: "In the 14 years that I've been a professional player, I never saw someone with so many qualities in all aspects of the game, nor did I ever see a player with that kind of motivation, willingness to work and natural intelligence. Besides all that, it's really a normal guy and the ultimate proof of that is his partner, who doesn't have anything to do with the show girls of other players." 
Barcelona analyst and former Barcelona player Òscar Garcia described Cáceres as follows in Catalan sports paper El Mundo Deportivo: "He's Uruguayan and shows that by his aggressiveness, competitiveness and winning spirit. Having a good technique, hiss main quality is his defensive strength. He's good in the air, is quite fast for a centre back, has a great positioning. And he's young, which leads to think he can develop into an excellent central defender." 
pep's opinion:
although I didn't see both of them play a lot (not to say: almost never, not to say: i might have see them play but didn't notice them anyway), my sixth sense tells me beter things about caceres than about garay. i like central defenders who are versatile and hard and (positively) agressive, which caceres seems to be. but i mainly like the fact that everyone describes him as being fast. for a dominant team like barcelona against whom everyone plays the counter attack, it's incredible that we haven't had for so long a really fast central defender. alves will bring more speed at the back too, by the way.
for some reason, i think marquez-caceres sounds like the perfect duo. together they seem to have everything what is needed at the centre back. and maybe guardiola is just thinking the same and that's why he's holding on to marquez despite good offers coming in... and for the future pique-caceres sounds pretty good too. but where would all that leave puyol? and milito?! and oleguer???!!!
Read more:
OFFICIAL: Martín Cáceres
Why did Barcelona miss out on Garay?
Guardiola wants to keep Marquez
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11 comments:
Very intriguing question about puyol.My guess is that he might be our wild card like oleguer was few years back.Just put him anywhere.Right back,center back,emergency left back etc.Only problem is,this wild card will play in every game.As a manger now,you have some real hardass conundrums in front of you.
By the way: look at his socks... Guess that freaky detail will scare off a lot of strikers.
Caceres will be good for Barca , the defence is so bad and I think serious focus should be on the defence.. I really do not see reason why Alves should be bought since he is very attack minded
Pep I am going to add your link now
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'By the way: look at his socks... Guess that freaky detail will scare off a lot of strikers.'
he wears his socks above his knees??? In the Robben one it looks like he only has one leg. lol
I like the fact that when i google imaged searche him that in nearly every photo he was crunching someone. :)
how he looks at robben, wanting to say: "what are you whining about, are you a man or what?"
the best line up for barcelona at teh back:RB-dani alves,CB-caceres along with carlos puyol and Lb silvinho.
LB - CB - CB - RB
Alves - Caceres - Pique - Puyol
this is how I would like it to look...
As for Pep's comments I would only say that you can never have enough, good, quality defenders on a team. Unlike the opposite of having too many options up front, defenders tend by in large to have less inflated egos. And let's consider the current state of affairs. Milito's coming off a serious injury and who's to say he will ever be the player he once was? Even so, he may not be "right" until sometime next year. Puyol is not an every game starter in my opinion anymore. He just can't run and cover the faster players. Even against a very anemic American side this past week he struggled getting back on the ball. Oleguer as we know is a backup and Pique's not ready to be thrown to the wolves just yet. So that pretty much leaves Caceres and Marquez potentialy partering together which doesn't sound like such a bad idea. I think they would compliment each other well, Marquez with his long ball linking up front and Caceres providing cover against the counters on the other side. It breaks my heart to say this because I've long admired Puyol, and he is truly an "icon" of Barcelona football, but seeing him out there on the pitch makes me "nervous" all the time these days. I love his passion, spirit and tenacity, but he just doesn't have the legs anymore.
Let's not forget that Abidal can also be a serious option as centre back, so I might think there's one central defender too much in the squad.
On the other hand: you probably won't have a decent back-up for Alves or Touré, so you could count Oleguer/Puyol/Piqué/Marquez in that other position.
Seems like a step in the right direction. Him and Pique both gonna be quality centre-backs. I like what I've seen of his fast and combative abilities.
I wonder about Pique going out on loan though, say in the Moutinho deal. Might work for him, considering his age, limited experience and the numbers in the Barca squad. But I thought he looked good for Man Utd on the couple of times I saw him; if it wasn't for the successful Vidic and Ferdinand pairing, he'd have been in there already. And we haven't got a solid pairing like that to keep him out.
Puyol, I think you're a great, but I think you're gonna appear 'old-guard' soon, mate.
I know, Pep, that you did not just consider Oleguer for actual playing! HE SUCKS!
Alves/Puyol/Caceres/Pique
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