Barça is in such a hurry to win that they forgot to play and ended up losing the Cup and the Super Cup in just ten days. Fast food never sat well with a sybaritic team that today is a victim of its own story, therefore unable to digest the last two titles won, the Cup with Koeman in 2021 and the last League, already with Xavi.
There is hardly any trace of those trophies left, nothing has been consolidated, and Barcelona fans have returned to the starting point, the same one from which the coach and the president left: Xavi’s obligatory challenge is to qualify the team for the next Champions League, just like when came to the bench, and Laporta found a reliable sporting project that evokes the football designed by Cruyff, Guardiola and Rijkaard, as he promised to be re-elected in 2021. Very few are betting on the possibility of renewing the league title and winning the Cup. of Europe.
Frustration sets in following the coach has been unable to build a team and the sports management, maligned by the board, has also not known how to form a squad, certainly conditioned by a harmful inheritance, especially crazy due to the erratic transfer policy initiated from of Neymar’s escape. Nobody knew how to pay or seduce Messi, nor retain Busquets, and the players parade through a scorched earth that has erased any trace of Barça’s excellence.
There is no choice but to turn to La Masia without forgetting that the last fallen symbol was Ansu Fati. Today the figure is a 16-year-old boy named Lamine Yamal who, for the moment, at least does not carry the 10. Xavi himself, who as soon as he arrived was surprised by the degradation of the training task in the quarry, has given up to Yamal and the fundraising capacity of the Masia. Yamal started in San Mamés and, due to circumstances of the game – especially injuries – Pau Cubarsí, Héctor Fort and Marc Guiu ended up playing, while Vitor Roque warmed up the bench following being incorporated in the winter market for 30 fixed million and 30 variable to pay to Athletico Paranaense.
The team that Xavi ultimately fielded in the last Cup match might very well have been the same one with which he might have started in his debut if he had not been pressured by the need to win, to be once more, to regain glory lost for years on a night like the one in which Ronaldinho’s roar woke up Barcelona once morest Sevilla. The club has invested more than 250 million in the last 18 signings in a process in which so many different people and interests have intervened that in the end no one feels the team is theirs, not even Xavi.
Improvisation, or if you want the need to act on the fly due to lack of money, has created a puzzle without any type of leadership or hierarchies due to the indolence of some veterans and the loss of footballers who have felt betrayed by their own institution like De Jong. The Dutchman knows that he was for sale for a while and cannot find a way to champion the change that the transition from the old to the new demands without losing the essence that Barça boasts so much regarding.
The transition left a League won in the areas with Lewandowski’s goals and Ter Stegen’s saves. The goalkeeper is still injured and the forward’s last goal was a rebound in San Mamés. There are no players who make a difference nor a sense of team in a club in which familiarity prevails over professionalism and whose driving force is Laporta’s optimism.
Sometimes it even gives the impression that More than playing he makes plays, a surprising orphanhood if you look at Xavi’s CV. There are no more excuses to justify Barça, threatened by a blank year if it does not correct much and soon, always trapped by the rush and helpless by the social demobilization that the move to Montjuïc has entailed. Only 17,000 members subscribed to the Olympic Stadium. The majority of the culé have become spectators of their own team until they return to the new Camp Nou. It is not known how he will arrive following having to retrace his steps and listen to the echo of those who have already left like Koeman and Messi.
“It is what it is,” said the coach before his farewell, following the Argentine had admitted as a pass prior to his departure: “It is not enough for us.” Today it is Xavi who, to combat general distrust, speaks of a team “in the construction phase” two years following coming to its rescue from Qatar.
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