Thomas Vermaelen underwent surgery in December of 2014 as he wanted to resolve his repetitive hamstring injuries and the Belgian appears to be fully fit with no injuries but even after managing to recover from his string of physical problems, he is struggling to land a spot in the starting lineup of Barcelona’s Luis Enrique.
The Belgian is mostly being utilized as a substitute player with limited playing time. Even though Vermaelen is clearly not one of the main stars of Barcelona, the experienced defender has played and trained enough with the Spanish club that he knows what are a few of the things that makes his team so strong and dominant in the world of football and Vermaelen said: ‘’The first thing I noticed here was the intensity of the pressing. The pressure is on straight away when we lose the ball. We do a lot of positioning games, focusing on getting the ball back. The pressure the players put on you is incredible, you have no time on the ball. We always do it at the start of training, it doesn’t only warm you up but it’s a training session in itself, you try to keep the ball in possession and make the guys in the middle do the pressing.’’
When Vermaelen joined Barcelona on August of 2014, the Belgian stated that joining the Spanish club was a dream coming true for him. Unfortunately for him, this dream is turning into a bit of a nightmare as he does not truly have a significantly influential role in the team and this is certainly not the way that he would have wanted to kick-off his Barcelona career but there is a big chance that Vermaelen’s role in the team will start getting bigger as each day passes by.