Xavi still confident despite draw without inspiration Barcelona: ‘I find it unbelievable to talk about a mini-crisis’ | Foreign football

Barcelona went down hard last Wednesday in El Clásico against Real Madrid (0-4) in the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey, after the first leg in Madrid was won 0-1 with a lot of luck.

With the odds of 18-5 (3-0 on goal) it was certainly not the case that Barcelona had no right to victory tonight, but the real inspiration and energy were hard to find in the players of the upcoming champion. The lead over pursuer Real Madrid is now thirteen points with ten rounds to go in La Liga.

Coach Xavi was ashamed of the goalless draw, but he is not worried about the rest of the season: “I think it is incredible to talk about a mini-crisis, while we are 13 points ahead of Real Madrid and 15 points over Atlético.” In addition to being ashamed, the Spaniard had also hoped for more: “We should have won and we didn’t.”

Barcelona can therefore choose the championship game in May themselves, but despite the big lead over the rival from Madrid, the 27th national title in club history will not stick with the supporters and certainly not with the fans of the game that Barcelona always played under Johan Cruijff, Frank Rijkaard, Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique.

Xavi is of course also a trainer from the Cruijff school, but the 43-year-old Catalan who succeeded Ronald Koeman in Camp Nou in November 2021, even after a year and a half, rarely succeeds in making Barcelona swing. The fact that the crowd in Camp Nou, once again filled with 75,000 spectators, chanted Lionel Messi’s name again after ten minutes says a lot about the longing for the past and can also be seen as a cry for some more entertainment on the field.

It seems that chairman Joan Laporta will do everything possible to bring the prodigal son (of almost 36 years) back to Camp Nou, although he has to juggle a lot with numbers and rules. Two years after Messi’s departure, however, a new star has still not emerged and a global brand like Barcelona should of course have that, as they also know at the commercial department in Camp Nou.

Barcelona often plays in a 4-4-2 this season and Xavi has his affairs in order in the back. The numbers don’t lie: only 9 goals against after 28 league matches. They are very good numbers, but it rarely swings in the front.

Robert Lewandowski is on his way to another top scorer’s title with 17 goals (three more than Karim Benzema), but this season the Pole is only a shadow of the top striker he was in the Bundesliga for ten years. “I’m not worried about Lewandowski. It is important that we are self-critical; the effectiveness in the front was lacking”, said Xavi about the striker who can count on a lot of criticism from the Spanish press.

The biggest chance tonight was for the visitors from Girona, slightly more northerly, but the Argentinian striker Valentín Castellanos shot ten minutes after the break next to where he should have put the ball wide on Viktor Tsygankov. Barcelona still went on the hunt for the goal, but the conviction and finesse were missing to really get Girona into trouble.

In Spain, the battle for second place is a lot more exciting, now that Real Madrid is fully focused on the Champions League (quarter-finals against Chelsea) and Atlético Madrid has been unbeaten for twelve games. In two weeks Diego Simeone’s team will visit Camp Nou, then possibly again with a fit Frenkie de Jong and Memphis Depay on the field.