Xavi makes his debut in an «emergency» derby

“We have emergencies in the classification, we are ninth and you can not fail.” This is how Xavi Hernández presented himself at the press conference prior to the derby that measures his team against Espanyol this Saturday at the Camp Nou. The Catalan coach has assumed a Barça immersed in a huge game and results crisis, he wants to reverse the situation as soon as possible and there is no better therapy to start with than to beat the citizen rival in front of your audience.

Barça will experience a different derby. Xavi will be the great protagonist, the man who monopolizes all the spotlights. The Tarrasa coach makes his debut on the bench he has always dreamed of and does so in a match one dreams of winning. It will be a strange match. After decades of Barça dominance, both teams arrive at the event level on points but with very different sensations. The parrots look, why not, to Europe, while the Catalans have nothing else in mind than to change the dynamics.

That is precisely the first thing Xavi will try to do, modify a very negative trend. The Barça has become with the evolution of the parties in a team without direction and lacking self-esteem, something that the former Al-Sadd technician intends to turn around starting with his appearance before the media. «We have to go climbing positions. Barcelona has to be fighting for the titles. You have to transmit positive energy and that we are not in the position that the club deserves, “he said on the eve of the derby.

To start climbing the table, Xavi will have to start winning games with a team of circumstances. The Barça myth reaches the derby with very few training sessions with the whole group after international commitments and with a plague of injuries that mainly devastates the attack zone. The losses of Ansu Fati, Ousmane Dembélé, Pedri, who has relapsed from his quadriceps problems and will be in dry dock for another month, Martin Braithwaite and ‘Kun’ Agüero, could lead Xavi to use a 3-5- 2 that he has already used on many occasions at Al-Sadd and that would lead him to put an eleven full of midfielders into the fray.

Despite the absences, the nursing situation has improved compared to the days before the league break due to the commitments of the national teams. These two weeks have served Xavi to recover Gerard Piqué, Sergi Roberto, Eric García and Nico González, players who could be available to the coach if he deems it appropriate, although in no case would they be forced if they are not fully recovered. one hundred.

“A very good team”

It will not be an easy game for Barcelona and Xavi knows it. «Espanyol is a very good team. It can press up, in a low block, go out in transition and with physical power in the strategy, “he declared. The Egarense coach is not without reason, since Vicente Moreno’s men have settled in the last days and arrive having lost only one of the last six games. This course they already know, in addition, what it is to win against a colossus like Real Madrid, a precedent that does not resemble that of the game this Saturday at the Camp Nou. «It has nothing to do with it, neither the rival, nor the stage or anything. We will win the derby by competing, doing things very well, “said coach Perico.

Vicente Moreno’s group shows very good feelings and the Valencian coach also has practically all of his players. He only has Óscar Gil in the infirmary, affected by the patellar tendon and who will not return until 2022, and he has the doubt of Keidi Bare, touched after the international commitments with Albania. The rest of the players will be at your disposal, including a Raúl de Tomás who is in the best moment of his career and who arrives at the Camp Nou, a stadium where he already scored with Rayo Vallecano, with the gunpowder ready to explode.

The precedents in the last derbies are very favorable for Barcelona. The parakeets have only scratched one win in the last 26 games. It was in 2019 and in the Copa del Rey (1-0). To find a league triumph for Espanyol at the Camp Nou it is necessary to go back to 2009 when two goals from Iván de la Peña served to give the bell against the ‘Pep Team’. That day Xavi was on the pitch, today on the bench.