He does. I am sure we will have Spal situation many times this season (i.e. Brozo is unfit or injured or suspended) and Barella will help us getting a lot of points. Plus, keeping Brozo 100% fit for hard matches isn't possible if he isn't rested occasionally.
Starting both him and Brozo would work too. Croatia use Brozo and Modric while the latter isn't DM either.
Depends where you see the balance between necessary squad depth and wasted talent. I don't want Barella if he's going to be rotting on the bench and not developing. I don't care about the benefits of training with better players and all that shit, I would rather
any young player we sign to benefit from 30+ games per season. But there's no way Barella (if he was used as a vice-Brozovic) would get enough game time. Perhaps you are right and Brozovic will miss plenty of games through injury, or maybe his retard mode will return, but for the time being I'm fine with Valero as a Brozovic sub.
As for using him at the same time as Brozovic, yes, it could work, but when Brozovic played for Croatia he was essentially reduced to a waterboy for Modric and Rakitic and his effectiveness is far, far reduced. I'm of the opinion that Rakitic had a really poor semi final and final. I think they'd have been much better letting Brozovic actually play some football and substituting Rakitic for Badelj, but whatever.
Either way, I'm not for reducing or compromising the playing style of our precious few top-class players simply to accommodate 'similar' players. Perhaps it's an odd way of describing it, but if my assessment of Barella (as being closest to Brozovic's role in our midfield) is correct, I wouldn't want two Brozovic's each doing a half Brozovic job on the pitch. As I stated, I think the best type of player to get the most out of Brozovic (and our entire team) would be a really good DM like Jorginho. I think Barella next to a Jorginho would be pretty good too but considering our budget, restrictions and needs to offload Joao Mario, Gabigol etc. I'd rather get the 'missing piece', which in my eyes is a DM, instead of an extra copy of a piece we already have.
Barella is extremely overrated and overvalued. Decent player for his age, but that's about it.
I'm inclined to agree. Every year there's these young-ish breakout box-to-box midfielders and they're highly rated for having a strong season, mainly praised for their maturity and all-roundedness on the pitch. Pellegrini, Cristante, Gagliardini, Kessie, Barella just to name a few recent ones. Perhaps you could stretch to include some shitters like Linetty, Praet, Pulgar, Pasalic or Murgia to the list. But I think most of them are solid at best and may lack the skill needed to make an impact at the top level. I think we might be seeing that with Gagliardini tbh. Even when he's played at his absolute best, he wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the likes Kante, Busquets, Casemiro etc. Compare that to Icardi and Skriniar. There are very, very few players in the world I would prefer to these two. Even Brozovic, I do genuinely believe he's one of the very best midfielders in the league right now. Arguably Milan have done the best with Kessie, but I don't even rate him that highly either.