Barça visits the demanding Vallecas without Gavi, its best worker

2023-11-25 07:00:54

Vallecas was Ronald Koeman’s grave and in Vallecas Xavi will try to jump from the hole in which the team finds itself after the bitter memory left by the victory – what things happen at Barça – over Alavés.

The working-class neighborhood of Madrid is not the most paradisiacal place where a sufficiently energetic reaction could be expected from the Blaugranas to clear up the doubts that the team left hanging. Beyond the invariable narrowness of the field and the permanent discomfort that the Rayista team always faces in its fiefdom, two other eventual elements are added.

Three games, zero wins

The most useless and the least influential says that Xavi has not been able to win none of the three games that they have faced Rayo: they tied at the Camp Nou (0-0) and lost in Madrid (2-1) in the previous League (the one they won) and also lost the championship match at home 21-22. It remains to be said that the previous 1-0 in Vallecas opened Koeman’s tomb. Barça has beaten Madrid more times than Rayo in the last two years.

Another issue that complicates the visit is the setbacks that pinch Barça, nothing exclusive to your daily life. The significant losses he suffers limit or change his potential, enough in any case to leave Vallecas smiling and prepare with a different spirit for the arrival of Porto, which will relive the hurtful defeat against Shakhtar.

Iñaki Peña makes his debut this season and Frenkie de Jong is discharged two months later, but will not start.

Barça visits son Marc André Ter Stegen, the best goalkeeper in the League, the current Zamora award winner, with a stiff back due to lower back pain, with Iñaki Peña, renewed last summer, which validates the trust placed in him to defend the goalposts in the event of the unforeseen. Sin Frenkie de Jong as starter, who was discharged and will reappear so that he can sweat again two months after his ankle injury. But, above all, sin Gavi, the most qualified laborer on the team, the most valuable laborer to defend the Blaugrana bourgeoisie against the Vallecano workers.

The youngest (behind Lamine Yamal) and the smallest of the team is the one who wins the most defensive actions for Barça, the one who executes and wins the most pressure and who recovers the most balls, a work, combined, that makes him irreplaceable. Xavi said it. “He is an irreplaceable player,” he proclaimed. The statement went beyond praise. It was supported by an explanation.

Xavi said of Gavi that he is “irreplaceable” and he is: he is the third with the most minutes after Ter Stegen and Gündogan.

“Vallecas is a game in which we would need Gavi,” he confessed, primarily lamenting his absence because of the influence he exerts on the game. More than Ter Stegen’s under the sticks. Gavi was essential, above all, and in this case, due to the peculiarities of the Madrid stadium and the virtues of Rayo, which promotes “vertical, aggressive, second-ball football”, and for which the brave Andalusian footballer was the best antidote. of Barça.

“Gavi is the heart, the courage, the desire of the team,” Xavi repeated, in another episode to underpin his devotion to the Los Palacios player. “I have seen very few footballers of the emotional level that he transmits at such a young age”he added, in some older words.

The course gets complicated: Vallecas, Porto, Atlético, Girona, Antwerp and Mestalla, and the farewell against Almería.

Ter Stegen, Gundogan and Gavi

With Gavi absent, the gap he leaves will be filled by the others, urged by their coach to “take a step forward” in Vallecas. They should do it even with Gavi, Barça forced to start a delicate phase of the season, with a series of tough rivals (outings to Vallecas and Mestalla and appointments with Atlético and Girona in Montjuïc) in the League, and two decisive duels in the Champions League : Next Tuesday’s game against Porto airs the qualification for the round of 16.

The data corroborates the coach’s faith in the much-missed Gavi: he is the third most used player in the squad, only ahead of Ter Stegen and Ilkay Gündogan. The two games he missed were due to suspension. He has now lost it until next season.

Chat with De la Fuente

Related news

Forecasts for a faster comeback do not exist. Less without having gone through the operating room. Xavi has spoken with his pupil and has given him several pieces of advice. Among them, do not rush back and be consistent in the rehabilitation sessions. From such a bitter ordeal he will extract a benefit, she promised him. “For me, the injury made me a better footballer, more mature, I was aware that I had to start taking better care of myself,” commented Xavi, who experienced the same misfortune as Gavi in ​​2005.

He has also spoken with Luis de la Fuente, the Spanish coach under whose responsibility Gavi was injured: in Spain’s second match against Georgia. He was one of two players (the other was Robin Le Normand) lined up in both matches. “It was a random injury that can happen in a match or in training,” he said, denying any conflict with the federation.