Sometimes, a story is simply too good to be true. You enjoy the warm feeling it gives you for as long as you can, consuming all media surrounding it, but inevitably the narrative always flips. You’ve seen it all before: the homegrown rookie doesn’t pan out with their beloved team, the perfect season gets dashed in the final game, a legendary player’s return turns sour, and so on.
But sometimes, on those impossibly rare occasions, the perfect story is just that-- perfect.Xavi left his boyhood club of Barcelona on top of the footballing world, winning a historic treble to effectively cap off his career as one of the greatest pure midfielders the game has ever seen and ever will see. Since then, though, his beloved club has been struggling to get back to the mountaintop without him.
Image From: Getty Images
Xavi left to finish out his playing career in Qatar after the 2015
Champions League final, and to date Barcelona have not raised the trophy
again, or even made the final. In the following two seasons after the
midfielder’s exit, Barca were unceremoniously bounced in the quarterfinals
by Atlético and Juventus. Then, in a three-season span between 2017-18 and
2019-20, they famously blew leads to
Roma and
Liverpool in
second legs and were humiliated by Bayern in an 8-2 loss (not on aggregate,
mind you, this was in one game).
After that they were swiftly beaten in the Round of 16 by PSG, and this season -- their first without Lionel Messi since he joined the senior team -- they failed to make the knockout stages at all for the first time since the 2000-01 season. To add insult to injury, Barcelona had to watch their bitter rivals Real Madrid lift the trophy three times in a row and experience much more overall success in this span.
Even their stronghold on La Liga has begun to crumble, as this season will likely be the third in a row where Barcelona will not emerge victorious, something that hasn’t happened since 2003.
Between this relative lack of success for a club of Barcelona’s stature, the club’s crippling debt and corruption at the top, Messi’s shock departure after reportedly being asked to play for free, and the horrid start to this season under manager Ronald Koeman, La Blaugrana were firmly at rock bottom.
Then, the prodigal son returned.
After that they were swiftly beaten in the Round of 16 by PSG, and this season -- their first without Lionel Messi since he joined the senior team -- they failed to make the knockout stages at all for the first time since the 2000-01 season. To add insult to injury, Barcelona had to watch their bitter rivals Real Madrid lift the trophy three times in a row and experience much more overall success in this span.
Even their stronghold on La Liga has begun to crumble, as this season will likely be the third in a row where Barcelona will not emerge victorious, something that hasn’t happened since 2003.
Between this relative lack of success for a club of Barcelona’s stature, the club’s crippling debt and corruption at the top, Messi’s shock departure after reportedly being asked to play for free, and the horrid start to this season under manager Ronald Koeman, La Blaugrana were firmly at rock bottom.
Then, the prodigal son returned.
Before Xavi came back to manage the club he used to captain, Barcelona was in a dogfight to even place in the top four in La Liga. Now, they are three points off second place with a game in hand over Sevilla. Before Xavi, Barcelona was in the midst of a five-game losing streak in El Clasico matches against Real Madrid; just last week, they drubbed Carlo Ancelotti’s side 4-0 in a triumphant victory. Before Xavi, Barcelona looked like a fish out of water in European competition and faced a tough draw in Napoli after dropping into the Europa League, but now Barcelona looks like the team to beat en route to that trophy.
Things were worse before Xavi. They’re decidedly better now.
Image From: Marca
As a product of the golden age of Barcelona’s academy, La Masia, and a core member of the Spanish national team that once won two European Championships and a World Cup in a four-year span, Xavi brings a certain winning pedigree to the table that not everyone can even fathom. Further, he learned from some of the sport’s greatest tacticians in Pep Guardiola and Vicente del Bosque and played alongside Puyol, who is often regarded as the club’s greatest-ever captain. As such, Xavi carries with him some immeasurable qualities as a manager.
His first course of action was to change the dying culture of the once-dominant club. As with any sport, when you start to lose a lot, you start to get used to it. This is an extremely dangerous mentality for any franchise and can take years, or even decades, to break out of. Xavi, however, arrived and demanded that the team should not just aim to win every game-- they should expect it.
Importantly, he also brought a strong sense of discipline that the squad has seemed to buy into; he made headlines for a list of ten rules for members of the club to follow, and even started to track players’ activity off the field. It’s easy for ploys like this to backfire and sow dissent among the players, but it actually seems to be paying dividends so far.
He’s brought a renewed sense of confidence to the entire roster, and it’s evident in the way they’ve started to play on the field. The passing is more fluid, the midfield is dictating the game more, the defense seems much more comfortable playing their way out of trouble, and after a fruitful transfer window the team is beginning to score goals, and lots of them.
Image From: FC Barcelona
It took a little while for Xavi’s tactics to take hold and for him to get some of the players he needed, but since then Barcelona have been flying. Since the start of February, when the last of their transfer business was completed, Xavi’s side have not lost in all competitions. They’ve beaten Atlético, Bilbao, and Real Madrid in La Liga and have dispatched Napoli and Galatasaray in the Europa League knockout rounds. The underlying statistics are impressive, too:
Something that was surprising to me was that Barcelona aren’t holding up
possession all that much more in recent games than when they were in poor
form. It seems, though, that they certainly are beginning to do much more
with the ball, as they are on average creating more goal-scoring chances,
limiting those of the opponent, and distributing the ball around the pitch
with precision. In their last three games (all victories, over Osasuna,
Galatasaray, and Real Madrid), Barcelona finished with a team passing
accuracy of 91%, 87%, and 89%, respectively.
Also of note is that, since bringing in some of his desired players in the transfer window, Xavi has not deviated from a 4-3-3 formation, which seems to imply that he’s finally found what works best with his squad and is sticking with it.
On a more individual level, Xavi is beginning to get strings of strong performances from some of the club’s key players. Frenkie de Jong, while solid even under the previous turnstile of managers, is playing at an extremely high level and seems capable of being the engine of the team for years to come.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, a January signing, has been absolutely unplayable since taking the starting striker spot; he’s tallied nine goals and an assist in 11 matches and has the underlying stats to boot, sporting a 0.94 xG+xA per 90 minutes. In fact, he’s already second in the club’s goal-scoring list for the season, despite only debuting in February.
The most promising case study, however, is the renaissance of Ousmane Dembélé. A club-record signing back in 2017 (a record that still holds today), Dembélé has been nothing short of underwhelming for most of his Barcelona tenure. A speedster with technique that you can’t teach and a true lack of a weak foot, Dembélé was perhaps the world’s most promising youngster at one point while at Dortmund, but he’s struggled with form, conditioning, work ethic, and injuries while in Spain.
Now? He leads Europe’s top five leagues in assists in the 2022 calendar year.
Image From: Pau Barrena/Getty Images
As a product of the tumult of his Barcelona career, Dembélé has been linked with a move to all sorts of clubs in the past few transfer windows, but given his resurgence in form, Xavi’s trust in him, and his undeniable chemistry with Aubameyang and Ferrán Torres (another masterstroke of a January signing), it seems in everyone’s interest that the Frenchman stick around for a little while longer.
Importantly, Dembélé, at long last, has seemingly flipped the court of public opinion. After being booed and whistled by fans at the Camp Nou all season, he’s finally turned his haters into believers, and this should only seek to improve his surging confidence further.
Another January signing, Eric García, has given Xavi more options at center back and provides a different skillset to this season’s stalwarts Gerard Piqué and Ronald Araújo. While more of a defensive liability, García, a former La Masia product and student of Guardiola for two years at Manchester City, is a phenomenal distributor of the football and pairs well with either Piqué or Araújo, who can provide more defensive cover to mask his deficiencies as a result.
Xavi seems to be pressing all the right buttons with squad rotation so far, something that even world-class managers like Luis Enrique, who managed Barcelona to their treble back in 2015, have struggled with. Center back partnerships are crucial to how the entire team operates, and any partnership of García, Araújo, and the ageless wonder Piqué seems to have trust in one another, can play out of the back with ease, and can cover for each other when needed.
Image From: Imago
Xavi’s squad management skills partnered with a newfound abundance of forwards to choose from has directly led to the floodgate of goals being opened in recent games. Squad depth really matters -- just look at Manchester City if you don’t believe me -- and Xavi seems to have a clear vision for what he needs.
With potential investors lining up to sponsor the club and give him assets to compete with the world’s elite clubs again, Xavi will likely soon be able to address depth in the midfield (Sergio Busquets can’t be elite forever… I think?) and the back line to allow the rotation of key players when fixture congestion becomes problematic next season. Add in the fact that Memphis Depay and Ansu Fati still have yet to return from injury and you could make a serious argument that La Blaugrana will have the best attacking depth in Europe.
Also of note is that, since bringing in some of his desired players in the transfer window, Xavi has not deviated from a 4-3-3 formation, which seems to imply that he’s finally found what works best with his squad and is sticking with it.
On a more individual level, Xavi is beginning to get strings of strong performances from some of the club’s key players. Frenkie de Jong, while solid even under the previous turnstile of managers, is playing at an extremely high level and seems capable of being the engine of the team for years to come.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, a January signing, has been absolutely unplayable since taking the starting striker spot; he’s tallied nine goals and an assist in 11 matches and has the underlying stats to boot, sporting a 0.94 xG+xA per 90 minutes. In fact, he’s already second in the club’s goal-scoring list for the season, despite only debuting in February.
The most promising case study, however, is the renaissance of Ousmane Dembélé. A club-record signing back in 2017 (a record that still holds today), Dembélé has been nothing short of underwhelming for most of his Barcelona tenure. A speedster with technique that you can’t teach and a true lack of a weak foot, Dembélé was perhaps the world’s most promising youngster at one point while at Dortmund, but he’s struggled with form, conditioning, work ethic, and injuries while in Spain.
Now? He leads Europe’s top five leagues in assists in the 2022 calendar year.
Image From: Pau Barrena/Getty Images
As a product of the tumult of his Barcelona career, Dembélé has been linked with a move to all sorts of clubs in the past few transfer windows, but given his resurgence in form, Xavi’s trust in him, and his undeniable chemistry with Aubameyang and Ferrán Torres (another masterstroke of a January signing), it seems in everyone’s interest that the Frenchman stick around for a little while longer.
Importantly, Dembélé, at long last, has seemingly flipped the court of public opinion. After being booed and whistled by fans at the Camp Nou all season, he’s finally turned his haters into believers, and this should only seek to improve his surging confidence further.
Another January signing, Eric García, has given Xavi more options at center back and provides a different skillset to this season’s stalwarts Gerard Piqué and Ronald Araújo. While more of a defensive liability, García, a former La Masia product and student of Guardiola for two years at Manchester City, is a phenomenal distributor of the football and pairs well with either Piqué or Araújo, who can provide more defensive cover to mask his deficiencies as a result.
Xavi seems to be pressing all the right buttons with squad rotation so far, something that even world-class managers like Luis Enrique, who managed Barcelona to their treble back in 2015, have struggled with. Center back partnerships are crucial to how the entire team operates, and any partnership of García, Araújo, and the ageless wonder Piqué seems to have trust in one another, can play out of the back with ease, and can cover for each other when needed.
Image From: Imago
Xavi’s squad management skills partnered with a newfound abundance of forwards to choose from has directly led to the floodgate of goals being opened in recent games. Squad depth really matters -- just look at Manchester City if you don’t believe me -- and Xavi seems to have a clear vision for what he needs.
With potential investors lining up to sponsor the club and give him assets to compete with the world’s elite clubs again, Xavi will likely soon be able to address depth in the midfield (Sergio Busquets can’t be elite forever… I think?) and the back line to allow the rotation of key players when fixture congestion becomes problematic next season. Add in the fact that Memphis Depay and Ansu Fati still have yet to return from injury and you could make a serious argument that La Blaugrana will have the best attacking depth in Europe.
The sample size is small, sure. The feel-good story still has plenty of time to take a nosedive, but for now the results are stellar, the underlying statistics seem to imply potential sustainability, and the room for improvement the club still has should make Barcelona fans giddy, and rightfully so.
My fellow pessimists out there understand the power of skepticism. If you believe something is too good to be true, you can’t get hurt when it doesn’t work out. Better still, it’s easy to pivot over to optimism once the honeymoon phase is over. But maybe, just maybe, Xavi returning to manage the club he helped build will work out in the end.
The perfect story is amazingly unlikely, but it’s never impossible. We might just be in the middle of one now, after all.
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