Barcelona | Coutinho, Luuk and Riqui, invisible

There are two ways of looking at it. One is that Xavi must have liked what he saw against Benfica a lot because he barely touched the teamor with Dembélé (66 ‘) and a couple of residual changes at the end (Dest and Eric in 86’). The other is that the coach has little faith in what is on the bench. Players like Coutinho, Luuk de Jong and Riqui Puig were left without playing a minute in a demonstration of lack of confidence of the technician.

In his first press conference, prior to the Espanyol game, Xavi had said that the Dutch striker, for now, “suited him.” He was referring to the continuous casualties up front (Agüero, Ansu, Braithwaite). However, despite the fact that Memphis showed obvious signs of fatigue in the last part of the game, they did not have him. Every day it is more evident that Barça will try to place him on the January market, although for that he will have to count on Sevilla. He had also taken for sure that Coutinho would have minutes, but his performance against Espanyol did not tell him anything significant. Without confidence, the team was worse with the Brazilian and Riqui on the field, and they missed Gavi and Busquets. Xavi took this into account in the game against Benfica.

The Matadepera midfielder did not have minutes either. Whoever thought that, with the arrival of Xavi, his situation in the team would change, for now will have to wait. The reliability of players like Busquets, Gavi, Nico or De Jong, until Pedri arrives, leaves him with few options. He did not take advantage of his minutes in Vigo against Celta, and neither against Espanyol. That prevented him from having minutes against Benfica. Xavi expects some improvements in his positional game before giving him chances. The Coutinho and De Jong thing, however, seems difficult to solve.