Xavi can’t explain what he was doing. Barça is getting used to the downward dynamic. He starts the games well, intense in the pressure and with clear ideas when he has possession, but he loses his color as the minutes go by. It is happening to him in this stretch of competition after the World Cup. And it even hurts him to get ahead of the scoreboard, as was demonstrated at the Metropolitano. After scoring Dembélé, and despite having four midfielders on the pitch, he was unable to continue the controlled football that had allowed him to take the lead. It seems a lie that a coach who when he was a player was a type of numbing advantages with the ball, now finds it so difficult to transmit this virtue to the footballers.
Meat of ‘cholisme’. In the 0-1 play, after the slalom iniesta from Pedri, Gavi protected the ball before handing it to Dembélé to beat Oblak. In this way, the young Andalusian prevented Reinildo from ruining the attack and caused the Matalas players, frustrated by the outcome, to ask for the goal to be annulled. Look closely, maybe they were right, because Gavi moved the opponent with his outstretched arm. From there, an appreciation and a question. On the one hand, it is very funny to see Atlético de Madrid protesting actions at the limit of the regulation: the karma Is this. And, on the other hand, how much would Simeone pay to fill the middle of the field with the Blaugrana interior? Surely all that would come from a hypothetical transfer of Joao Félix.
The last central It’s a fact: Xavi has deleted from his plans the central player who started the campaign better. Eric Garcia has accumulated four consecutive League games without minutes (before and after the World Cup) and it does not look like he will recover in the short term the prominence he had before requesting the change to Mestalla, on matchday 12. To begin with, because Araújo has back and is an essential footballer for Barça to dominate in both areas. But also for the excellent performance of Christensen, a footballer as neat as him with the ball at his feet, but who surpasses him in defensive forcefulness. The Dane, well educated in the Premier League, is becoming the best element of the battery of players that Laporta and Alemany have recruited at zero cost of late.
Lewandowski can breathe. The Pole paid the first of three penalty games at the Metropolitano and Barça did not notice it in the result. It is clear that none of the alternatives that Xavi has to occupy the position again are up to the current Golden Boot, but it is also true that the absence of such a fixed reference can make it difficult for the rival defense to maneuver . This is demonstrated by the first minutes of Ansu, who went past Ferran Torres and managed to generate two chances that, if they had ended up in the net, would have helped him gain confidence. The Hispanoguinean, more mobile than Lewandowski, needs more important periods to return to what he was. More than Ferran, of course, who in Madrid, moreover, ended up expelled for a rucka.
