Barça left the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium this Thursday in style. The culé DNA, the one in which possession of the ball is above all else, was blown up after a game in which Xavi Hernández’s men managed to win the classic by playing the opposite. From the usual tiqui-taca he went on to give up leather, to withdraw ranks in search of getting out alive and to hunt one of the few opportunities that presented themselves. The plan worked perfectly and the Barça team knows that they now have a new record ready when necessary.
“Simeone’s style is legal, but here it would not be understood to play with eleven behind,” Xavi said on February 5, 2022 before a match against Atlético de Madrid. That day the Tarrasa coach drew a line that it seemed he was never going to exceed, that of his team not being the protagonist on the pitch. That barrier was skipped this Thursday at the Bernabéu and he did it with all of the law. His team played a guerrilla clash in which they only had 35.3% of the ball possession, the lowest figure for the Catalans since records exist, and in which they ended up making only two shots on goal.
This new mutation of Barça responds to the needs of the script. Xavi has always defended that “if you have possession, the opponent cannot mark you”, an approach that against Real Madrid, and without Pedri in the engine room, entailed too many risks compared to the speed of the Vinicius, Valverde and company. The solution to avoid this bleeding was to leave the script behind and venture into the unknown. Xavi paired Araujo with the Brazilian winger again, reduced the opponent’s gap with a low block and, most surprisingly, decided to skip the pressure line of Ancelotti’s men with long balls when necessary to avoid unnecessary losses.
That approach paid off, but it was against nature for a Barça that has always preached the opposite. The first to recognize the change in course was Xavi, who assured at a press conference that he was “satisfied with the result, but not so much with the game.” The Barça coach, despite this, did not consider that there was any betrayal of the style, but rather a need to adapt to the match against a great Real Madrid. «We have not played like this, but the rival has led us to play like this. We have not betrayed any model. You have to defend well also because it is part of the game », he concluded.