2023-11-30 20:02:10
Even in one of the moments of greatest happiness and relief – Barça was reaching the round of 16 of the Champions League, something that Xavi had never achieved in his two years at the club – an element of concern emerged. A serious element because it affects a strategic piece of the project, which the team has been missing for weeks.
There are few traces left of that lethal and accurate Lewandowski who guided Barcelona to the conquest of the League and the Spanish Super Cup. Now, however, he is a forward disconnected from the game, even though Xavi has explored all the ways for the ball to end up at the feet of the Polish ‘nine’.
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Just look, without going any further, at what happened against Porto, where Lewandowski didn’t even have a shot on goal. A weak header, after the hour of the game (it was the 64th minute), remains as a poor offensive balance after the coach changed the offensive wings.
Barça started with Raphinha (right) and João Félix (left) and ended with Lamine Yamal and Ferran Torres. Xavi changed the entire defensive structure. To everyone, except Lewandowski, assuming that a substitution would have implied more problems than solutions. And the Pole stayed as a spectator at the European party that the Joãos put on in Montjuïc.
Xavi: “We have to look for Lewandowski more”
Xavi is the first to know of this profound dysfunction that affects his team. Barça is looking for Lewandowski. But he doesn’t find it. And that is serious because it damages the effectiveness of the most effective forward he has on the squad.
It is, furthermore, the only pure ‘nine’ that the coach has, waiting for the winter market to provide him with Vitor Roque’s winter gift, with the risk posed by the arrival to Europe of a young Brazilian, barely 18 years old, who has never left his country. Waiting for him to arrive in January, there is only the alternative of Ferran Torres, a ‘nine’ who is not a ‘nine’.
“We have to look for Lewandowski more,” admitted the coach after the victory over Porto, aware of the existence of the problem. A problem that had already been detected at the end of last seasona, coinciding with the return of the World Cup in Qatar. But it wasn’t as serious as it is now.
Fewer goals, more isolated, less impact
Lewandowski has always been judged by numbers. It has been the end point wherever he has played: Lech Poznan (Poland), Borussia Dortmund, Bayern Munich and Barça. And his numbers, now 35 years old, are not up to par with who he is: one of the best scorers in world football. In comparison with himself, he falls largely defeated.
Goes from the 18 goals he scored at the beginning of last season in 18 matches at only eight that he has in his second year in 16 games. He has missed three with an ankle injury. But he is not found in the game.
In the last two duels (Rayo, although he caused Lejeune’s own goal, and Porto), the Pole has only shot on goal once. It happened in Vallecas. And if the focus is expanded, this crisis of inefficiency is proven because after his return from injury he has only scored two goals in the last six games. Both to Alavés.
A superb header, very ‘Lewandowskian’, which he celebrated with a gesture of rage as if telling Koundé, the author of the assist, that if they gave him good balls he would always be there. And a decisive penalty to give a valuable and long-suffering victory against the Basque team. Before, nothing. Afterwards, nothing.
Robert’s “frustration and anger”
It’s not fine. And he shows it. Not only in technical actions, controls that did not usually escape him, but also in his body language. He is uncomfortable. He was already appreciated, for example, in those reproaches to Lamine Yamal during the Barça-Alavés game just when he broke his bad streak in front of the goal.
Lewandowski needs to be supplied with balls to take advantage of his cunning in the area, which he no longer steps on so frequently. The team does not provide him with tools so that he can exploit his best virtue: the final shot. And he, meanwhile, is not lucid about the few options he has either.
This causes the circle to be vicious, which increases Lewandowski’s frustration. “It’s normal, of course. Like all forwards. I remember Villa, Messi when we didn’t pass him the ball. Or Etoo! Or Henry! Well, imagine how they were! It’s normal!” Xavi apologized.
“They want to score goals, they want to make differences, he is a competitive beast,” confessed Xavi. And the beast is angry. “It is normal for him to be angry and frustrated,” the coach acknowledged, assuming that the “footballer tends to be selfish and, especially, the striker who wants to score goals.” And Lewandowski doesn’t score. Although the problem is that he doesn’t have chances either.
What solutions does the technician propose?
The problem is already detected. Is old. It comes from afar, although it has intensified this fall. Xavi knows it. “We have an extraordinary finisher in the area, one of the best in recent years worldwide,” the coach acknowledged last Tuesday. For this reason, he also knows that he must find new ways to connect, again, the team’s game.
“We have to generate more things on the wings, make more crosses,” argued the coach, who used the four players he has on the squad for that role (Raphinha, João Félix, Lamine Yamal and Ferran Torres) in the Champions League. But no one detected Lewandowski’s figure in the area.
In Vallecas, Barça made 12 crosses (50% correct). Only six were good. Against Porto, it was even worse: 4 out of 12 (33%). They don’t get enough balls into the heart of the area, and Lewandowski is right in his complaints. “We have to generate more. We must filter more passes for the ‘nine’. He must also have the timing to come and unload,” the coach assumed.
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