He got angry at first. She got very angry. And she broke free in the end. A lot too. There is no quiet game for Xavi, The defeat in the Super Cup where Barça was seen inert against Madrid, now leaves him in a delicate situation, so each match becomes a test. Not definitive, but a test to verify if his team is really moving forward. Or it comes and goes, without weaving a stable line.
In Salamanca, more of the same for Xavi, who saw a light (“all the players have taken a step forward,” he said after the liberating victory over Unionistas), but also detected the darkness of a first half that unnerved him. The coach does not understand many things that he sees.
Years pass (they are two and two months in office) and the team sends contradictory signals. He also does not understand that his players are so conditioned when it comes to expressing themselves on the field. They feel timid and shy, something that the coach does not tolerate. And it baffles him that every start of the game turns into torture. 53 seconds into the cup duel in Salamanca, Losada had stood up only in Iñaki Peña’s area, but his shot, fortunately for Barça, went just past the left post.
“At times we have played very well and at times we must play much better,” Xavi began his speech at the press conference at the Reina Sofía stadium after leading the team to the quarterfinals of the Cup with goals invented by the defenders (the big shot of Koundé and the left foot of Bucket), which gave him a certain calm. But even then he is not calm.
“Sometimes I get desperate because we don’t do what we have to do and what’s right. That’s why when I say we’re under construction, I’m referring to this.”
Barça coach
“Sometimes I despair because we don’t do what we have to do and what’s right,” denounced the coach, who without anyone asking him used one of his favorite terms to define Barça’s current situation. “That’s why when I say that we are under construction “This is it,” he stressed before specifying what exactly he was referring to. He despairs because “it’s the game, it’s generating more things, it’s understanding what each situation in the game requires.”
And Xavi, a midfielder of enormous class, cerebral, precise, calm, who had the map of the games in his mind, gets demons when he sees certain things about his Barça. “It’s hard for me to understand why I have done it, I have trained it. And we lack that. That’s why I say that we are under construction. When I came here I was thinking about it. That’s it,” denounced the coach, who does not see in his team what he was as a player.
Individual sparks
Calm, patience, control, elements that do not appear in the current Barça full “of very young players”, as he later recalled. in reference to the debut as a starter of forward Marc Guiu (18 years old) and the debut in the first team of center back Pau Cubarsí (16).
Xavi does not recognize himself in what he sees. Not even in what he transmits. But the defenders gave him the calm that he didn’t have at the beginning. “We gained confidence, morale. But we suffered in the first half. A duel that we have not won has cost us that first chance,” said the coach, remembering that moment in which Losada stood alone against Iñaki Peña. But he was so worried that at game time, and with the score at 1-1, he ordered the ‘sacred cows’ of his squad to go to Salamanca: Lewandowski, Gündogan and Pedri.
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Although everything was resolved by a couple of individual sparks. Long shot from Koundé and a daring play from Balde. When dialing the French, Xavi snorted.. “I turned to the bench and said: ‘in games like this, and with such low defenses, with 5-4-1 or 4-5-1, we have to shoot. We have to shoot!'” the coach shouted. alluding to that quality that “Frenkie, Pedri, Gündogan, Uri…. You reject them because the other day Lewandowski’s goal in the Super Cup came from a shot from outside the area because we are occupying it.”
“I turned to the bench and said: ‘In games like this, and with such low defenses, with 5-4-1 or 4-5-1, we have to shoot. We have to shoot!'”,
Barça coach
Resources that Barça does not usually use. But they have given him two of the last four goals he has scored. “We must do things better, but it was a solid match. Yes, solvent. And Koundé’s goal is a great goal because we dared,” Xavi confessed, relieved by cross the Unionist border and demanding that their footballers have more determination to break prejudices and agreed orders. “We must dare more and we must play more liberated,” he claimed, hurt because his players seem confused.
2024-01-19 08:19:58
#Xavi #sees #light #despair #construction
