The era of Barcelona's famous tiki-taka style of play is over, according to Guillem Balague.
The Spanish pundit says what he has seen from Barcelona so far this season has proven their trademark short-passing tactic is a thing of the past.
Luis Enrique took over the club in May, and Balague says he can already see the changes that have been implemented by the former Spain midfielder.
"It's a different Barcelona," Balague told Revista on Sky Sports. "Most of the attacks come from the wings and the full-backs. The forwards play together and inside, and the centre midfielders are also very close to each other.
"There is also much more direct play: 15 of the 20 goals that Barcelona have scored this season have come from five touches or less.
"It's helped by the fact that they are defending better as a unit; sometimes they apply pressure high up the field and recover the ball early. When they do that, Luis Enrique has picked fast players up front with a lot of quality who, with two or three touches, will plant themselves in front of goal.
"It's generally an idea of his to play more direct, which is to say that tiki-taka from Barcelona is dead.
"That's it - it's gone. It's not going to happen again, he doesn't want that."
The quick-pass style was most recently implemented by Pep Guardiola with great success. He joined Barcelona in the summer of 2008 and, over the course of four years in charge of the Spanish giants, claimed 14 trophies.
However, Balague says Enrique feels he needs a different method to achieve success.
"Tiki-taka was a style that suited Pep Guardiola, who was like that as a player - a passer who comes from the Johan Cruyff school - but also because of the team he had on his hands.
"Luis Enrique feels that he needs to surprise his rivals and forget tiki-taka."
One of the early triumphs of Enrique's tenure has been the clean sheets kept by Claudio Bravo over the course of the first seven fixtures of this season's La Liga.
The Chilean goalkeeper joined the club at the same time as Germany's Marc-Andre ter Stegen, but Bravo has shown himself to be Enrique's first-choice stopper for the club, says Balague.
"I've got no doubt that he is first choice," the pundit added. "Marc-Andre ter Stegen was bought by the club but Claudio Bravo was pointed out as the goalkeeper that Luis Enrique wanted.
"But defending is the effort of a unit. Everybody has to work at it and everybody has to run a lot. There is a lot more running that Barcelona is doing this season when compared to last season.
"That suits certain squads, but I'm not sure Barcelona has the squad to play the way Luis Enrique wants to all the time.
"Sometimes against PSG you could see that Barcelona didn't know if they were supposed to put pressure on up front or stay deep, and that meant they were too separated and there were too many gaps.
"Is it a work in progress? Maybe, but I'm not sure it suits what Barcelona has."
