2023-10-06 15:16:52
“We win and everything seems little”, said Xavi after suffering to start a key victory in Porto. It is not the first time that it bothers him to perceive that the value of a victory is being lowered because the team’s game has not been the best it could be. What he usually argues is that this requirement makes Barça the most difficult club in the world. It’s understandable that you feel this way: you’re in Do Dragão, you’ve fought head-to-head with a team with a lot of experience in the Champions League, your star goalscorer is injured, the young talent is squeamish, you’re flirting with a penalty, you’re sweating blood to keep a clean sheet, you end up playing with ten… And when you’ve managed to win despite everything, chain two consecutive wins in the group stage and display better numbers than other major teams in Europe, they come and tell you they’ve found a hair in the soup
With 100 games under his belt, Xavi’s Barça has not yet established a consistent pattern of play because the fundamentals he has worked with have been constantly changing. To begin with, he landed on his back foot in a dilapidated club; and then the sports planning has been erratic depending on the handshakes to sign up players and the power clashes in the offices. This is probably the first season in which the squad – although short – is more balanced and more in line with what he needs to develop his ideas. The big leap, in addition to the addition of Gündogan, has been the arrival of the Joãos with the competitions underway and no time to adapt. It particularly affects the irruption of the anarchic Cancelo, whom he urges Xavi to adjust because he now has two full-backs who attack and the team is exposed to too dangerous consequences.
The contextual cocktail is very clear, but let’s go back to the debate: where should the bar of the requirement be set? Tata Martino has not yet suffered that, after winning 4-0 ten years ago in Vallecas, the victory was assumed as a defeat for having lost possession. Being Barça’s coach is also this: it is understanding, as Xavi does no matter how much he complains, that there is a footballing philosophy that defines the club’s identity beyond the flag. Being purists about the neatness of the game, as is Xavi himself, should not lead us to belittle triumphs like Porto’s either. Of course, as long as we don’t start validating resultism as the trend that can define the path. The day we settle for what the scoreboard dictates, Barça will have ceased to be more than a club to be another club.
#usual #hair #Xavi #Hernándezs #soup