BarcelonaThe Champions League of the three coaches, Koeman, Sergi and Xavi, will be decided in a final trial in Bavaria. If they want to move on, Barça will have to win in the lion’s den, in the most fearsome labyrinth of the house of horrors. Despite an encouraging staging, Xavi’s Barça still can’t find the lost goal. And without goals, in football, there is no glory. Despite trying again and again, the Portuguese wall withstood the attacks of a team that seems reborn in the collective sphere. But he misses the goal. On the last day, Barça will have to win at Bayern, where nothing is being played. Or expect a favor from Dynamo Kiev at Benfica. In case of a tie for points, the Portuguese would pass.
The match was a good summary of the fragile balance between the future that Xavi embodies and the weight of the untidy legacy that the coach has received. Xavi’s first victory, however, is to have turned everything like a sock in a few days, both emotionally and tactically. His Barça, with the sword of Damocles on his head in Europe, went in search of glory and wanted to bring down the wall of a Benfica that did not look down on a draw, although he also waited secretly for the moment to jump and suddenly hit your opponent. In the end, the Portuguese got what they wanted.
Xavi has casualties, but also finds opportunities to recover players who seemed cornered, such as the Austrian Yusuf Demir, who was empowered to play on the right. Xavi touches everything. He turns every move around, explores new paths and makes his team a very exciting football experiment. On the grass, a network of complicities is being woven, with movements between lines, free men, wide bands and so much tactical richness that it seems a lie that a few weeks ago this same team was clearly overtaken by Benfica on Portuguese soil. In a society where everything is going so fast, football is also accelerating its pace, and this makes the old tactical systems a bit outdated. And Xavi knows it, and he plays a system that was not just a 4-3-3 or a 3-4-3. Alba was more extreme than lateral, and Araujo was now lateral and now central. Depending on the position of the ball, everything was arranged differently. The ball, of course, always in the center.
Nico, omnipresent
Xavi’s Barça, while waiting to recover other players, is the bastard’s Barça. If Gavi is wholeheartedly, Nico is smarter than a ferret. Always reading what needed to be done, the Galician was a giant who controlled the middle of the field accompanied by a Busquets who seems to be comfortable surrounded by youngsters. Benfica, overwhelmed, just survived, and caused two scares after half an hour. The Ukrainian Yaremchuk, tall as a Saint Paul, won the game to a Lenglet turned into the team’s Achilles heel, but Ter Stegen denied him the goal. Yes he scored Otamendi, but the ball had come out of the bottom line before reaching the boots of the Argentine. The Camp Nou is witnessing the birth of a new Barça, but there are still old vices from the past, such as the lack of aim and the serious defensive problems within the area. And still lucky that Araujo played one of those games he seems to enjoy when everyone suffers. Imperial, the Uruguayan connected emotionally with a stadium that did not present a good entrance, after so many hours of storm over the city. The rain did not help Barça. If Araujo was the face, Memphis was the cross. The three occasions he had, he wasted. And if anyone should have a goal, it’s him. The Dutchman at times seems to play alone, drowning in the rain.
The weather didn’t help, but the weather did. With each passing day, Barça seem more proud. In the second match with Xavi, Barça learned from their mistakes against Espanyol and gained consistency by adding new ingredients to the recipe. Benfica, however, knew how to defend themselves with success led by an imperial Nicolás Otamendi. If Araujo was a wall in an area, between Otamendi and the Greek goalkeeper Vlachodimos they avoided the goal that would have given Barça the passport to the round of 16. The match was destined to be played with the cards marked, clearly visible on the table: Barça would attack and Benfica would go against it, with the fresh legs of Núñez and Taarabt.
If the veteran Jorge Jesús moved his pieces, Xavi did not stand still either, and brought in an Ousmane Dembélé who would have to do great things with the new coach. Xavi believes in the extremes, he believes in players like the Frenchman, who revolutionized the game a bit with three individual level actions. But every move by Barça was countered by the Portuguese, who were increasingly happy with the possibility of winning the Camp Nou. Barça’s latest attacks hit the hands of the Greek goalkeeper. Only Araujo, the footballer with the biggest heart in the world, managed to score, but was offside. A slap in the face for a Barça that deserved more, but that could also have fallen when in the last minute Seferovic forgave a goal that seemed impossible to miss in front of Ter Stegen.
Barça are paying the unpaid bills for the first days of the Champions League, when they were walking like a soul in pain. Now that he has regained his pride and a clear idea of play, he is between the sword and the wall. If he wants to continue crossing borders, he will have to grow up against a rival who brings back many bad memories. Where some see a problem, others see an opportunity. A good place to be reborn.
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