Pique: Barcelona was a slave of its own tiki-taka style

 

The Spain international has hailed Tata Martino's approach and feels it's beneficial for the Catalans that they now have more options.

Gerard Pique believes that Barcelona had become predictable under Pep Guardiola and Tito Vilanova and has insisted that new coach Gerardo Martino's tactical approach gives the team more options.

The towering defender feels the Blaugrana lacked alternatives to their possession based style of play in the past few years and thinks Martino's arrival will help revitalize the players and give the team a plan B.

"We've had a number of years with homegrown coaches in charge, first Pep and then Tito," the 26-year-old told La Gazzetta dello Sport. "We occasionally tended to exaggerate our possession based stye of play to the point where we were slaves of our own philosophy. Now we have Tata as our coach, who has the same football philosophy, but also has other alternatives and that is a very positive thing in my opinion.

"If you are under pressure, there's nothing wrong with a long ball every now and then. That changes the game and could give you some rest and oxygen. You have to keep improving and developing in football or you will become predictable."

Martino replaced Vilanova at the helm at the start of the 2013-14 campaign due to the latter's ongoing health problems.