Barcelona
lost 3-5 against
Villarreal at the Olympic Stadium this Saturday
for
the 22nd day of the Spanish League, which Real Madrid provisionally leads.
The match was full of alternatives, with a movie ending, and
Xavi Hernández
was left in the eye of the storm.
The coach and club legend took over the coaching position in November 2021, a few months after Lionel Messi left for PSG, and has still not managed to make Barca what it was in past decades, when it dominated at the local level. and was a protagonist in international competitions.
That feeling intensified this season and more precisely in recent weeks, eliminated from the Copa del Rey, falling with Real Madrid in the Super Cup and increasingly further away in La Liga, which has its humble Catalan neighbor fighting, the surprising Girona.
This Saturday they suffered another crazy game, which once again ended in defeat.
Villarreal won 2-0 thanks to goals from Gerard Moreno (42nd minute) and Ilias Akhomach (54th) and Barcelona turned it around in a flurry thanks to goals from Ilkay Gundogan (60th), Pedri (68th) and Eric Bailly, in their own door (71).
In '84 the Yellow Submarine tied again with Gonçalo Guedes.
And the culé team felt that they had won it on the hour mark but the VAR annulled a penalty in favor of handball.
"A shame, a shame!
"
Here repeated the moment when Xavi addresses the camera to say "A shame" #BarçaVillarreal pic.twitter.com/G6njPEbNDZ
— MARCA (@marca) January 27, 2024
To add more spice to the match, Villarreal ended up winning it thanks to goals from Alexander Sorloth (90+9), after a flipper and a series of bloopers in the Barcelona area, and from José Luis Morales (90+12).
"In the end they are going to sanction me. I don't want to create more controversy. They are our mistakes, the defeat, but that play marks the game. The fourth referee tells me that it is a penalty, that it hits him in the elbow. There are the images," Xavi said after the game to justify his anger.
His comment has to do with the harsh penalties that La Liga usually imposes on players and coaches who complain about refereeing.
Beyond this circumstance, the coach took charge of the moment his team is going through, 10 points away in La Liga but still in the race in the Champions League (playing in the round of 16 against Napoli).
"I am the person most responsible. We must change the dynamic as soon as possible because the League is becoming very difficult for us. We deserved to win, coming back against a team that defended very well. We failed to make it 4-2 and then we did not know how to make a tactical foul before 3-3. It is the summary of the season. The team is emotionally very bad, but we have come out of worse situations as a club," said Xavi.
"I am a ball lover, I don't want to lose it even at home. And I want to play in the opposite field. This has to do with maturity, we lack maturity. We are under construction, they are very young footballers who need these hosts to learn "Only improvements based on chestnuts," acknowledged Xavi when talking about the series of errors that led to Villarreal's fourth goal, in time added to the regulation.
And he added, sincere as rarely in these two years and couple of months that he has been in charge of Barcelona: "Today I'm screwed. I can't say it's a great day. It's a blow. We were very good in the second half until the 3-2 and we deserved the victory, but we lost it. We have to get up. It is a difficult day to digest for me as a coach, but especially for the footballers who I have seen very screwed up. I have to lift their spirits."