Xavi Hernandez He saw the play on the field before anyone else. He knew where he had to filter the pass. He knew where he would find the partner. He knew how to combine. In some ways, he had a privileged perspective. An unrepeatable player who was able to spend almost his entire career at Barça. As a coach, however, he will last just over two years. And, surely, with the announcement of his goodbye on June 30, he anticipates the decision of the sports management, which could hardly guarantee continuity after a season that is heading towards disaster. He has saved pride by proclaiming that the decision is his.
A pride that feels like it has often been mistreated by the environment. “It is very cruel to be Barça coach. You feel like they don’t value you. Wear occurs. And it no longer makes sense,” he said after the debacle against Villarreal. With his announcement, from what he said, he aspires to free himself from the fierce criticism that, to his liking, he has received with every defeat, with every mediocre game, with every excuse not very credible. Xavia complete myth, has been discredited, as before Koeman. The effect of the Barça bench is devastating. Now, as if it were Jurgen Klopp, has marked the finish line. But he doesn’t leave for lack of energy, but for lack of results. “He will help de-escalate the atmosphere,” he said. He will be seen. These are four football reasons for his departure.
The Barça that was proclaimed champion of the League (with a large advantage over the second) and of the Super Cup the previous season has completely collapsed and it does not seem that Xavi knows why. Everything he imagines in his head or on his board, he is not able to translate on the field. It is enough to look at the figures to explain the drop in performance. Last year he had 18 victories; in this one, only 13. The goals scored are the same, 43, but the big difference lies in the defense. The concrete wall that was the team in the season of league success (they only conceded seven goals), in this one is a drain unbecoming of any team with aspirations. There are already 29 points against. Iñaki Peña is not Ter Stegen, Koundé has become butter, Araujo swings with more fury than effectiveness, Christensen does not reach his ankle as much as he did last year and, in general, defensive efforts are applied ineffectively. The number of goals in the first minutes shows a major problem.
Xavi maintained a certain line of dreaminess in the press conference when he assured that the team can still do good things this season and dared to verbalize that, knowing that he is leaving, the Champions League makes him “especially excited.” Barça was humiliated in the Super Cup by Madrid; Athletic knocked him out of the Cup; The League is now within telescope distance (10 behind Madrid, perhaps 11 behind Girona on Sunday) and the Champions League, pending the round of 16 clash with Naples, is a rocky slope for which Xavi’s team has no footwear.
The Terrassa coach has often boasted that he knows the club very well, and no one can doubt that, but at the same time he has not stopped complaining about how corrosive the coaching position is. He did it before the game against Villarreal and aired it again in the unique subsequent press conference. “It is impossible for there to be an Alex Ferguson at Barça. Impossible,” he said in reference to the 27 years that the Scot governed Manchester United from the bench. «The worst days of my life have been as Barça coach. In many cases I have asked myself the question of whether it is worth it,” he said last year, expressing a torment from which he now hopes to free himself little by little until he reaches June 30.
ABSENCE OF AN IDENTITY
Although he thinks otherwise, certain that he has done “a great job”, Xavi has been criticized for not having given Barça the playing identity that was expected of him. We have often seen a crude team, incapable of producing offensive play, defective in high pressing, vulnerable at the back (not last year, saved on countless occasions by Ter Stegen) and imprecise in combinative football. Xavi the coach needed a Xavi player. Xavi is a myth, he has always been the flesh and blood of Barça’s vaunted DNA. But in this sense he has been a disappointment. He has given his all, but for whatever reason, because football is a bloody sport, a round match has rarely been seen. The first Super Cup final, the 0-4 at the Bernabéu… Very few more.