The crises become more acute when in a switch of points your great adversary goes from summit to summit and in parallel it is almost not enough to reach the base camp.
The abrupt Barça recession in Europe is no longer an economic issue.
To begin with, before the waste of Josep María Bartomeu and the levers of Joan Laporta, Barça lost 220 million in 2017. Neymar left, essential in the last great Barcelona bingo (2015, Xavi's retirement course), and the club squandered the loot.
As much as the grassland left by Figo's fright in 2000. With the box overflowing, the galactic renewals of Messi and allies were perpetuated, an unbearable burden.
Relieving the financial present at the cost of an uncertain future, Barça's European hardships also have nothing to do with those claims by Xavi, so demanding with the neatness of the grass, the vulgar waste of time by rivals or his encirclement in the area.
Bayern or Inter at the Camp Nou were not locked up, nor were PSG, Juve, Liverpool, Roma... All with the grass cut to the square and bevel.
There were those who even pointed to a Messi of walking around the house as the cause of so much European depression.
The Argentine star is no longer.
There were those who pointed to a stale locker room.
Today, Jordi Alba and Piqué hardly have any weight in the game and Busquets is a few months away from going to the United States.
Ernesto Valverde, Quique Setién and Ronald Koeman did not give the European stature.
Not very convinced, Laporta saw a shield on Xavi, a fellow in Qatar.
With Xavi, Barça has one win in six Champions League games and two wins in six Europa League games.
The cantes don't stop with the Catalan on the bench either.
Xavi rightly asks for what not everyone had: time.
Not even a legend like Koeman, who haggled over every expense.
With an investment of some 160 million and several renovations to Xavi's liking, the slides continue in the Champions League.
Xavi, who did not appear to be Xavi, alluded in Milan to arbitration damage.
He had reasons, but not so long ago that kind of alien alibis were inappropriate for the Barça label.
Xavi said nothing about Dembélé's grotesque monoculture at the San Siro, with a hundred interventions, an impossible hustle and bustle.
The memory of the injured is not typical of Xavi either.
A misfortune, of course, like the losses of Benzema or Courtois, for example.
But in Munich Koundé, Araujo, Christensen and Marcos Alonso enlisted.
No trace of Piqué and Alba, unfairly branded as peseteros for collecting what they were given to sign.
It is Xavi who must act as a surgeon in his favorite subject: football, without further ado.
The coach was always good at football symposiums.
While others, more down to earth, limited themselves to merely reading the results, Xavi spoke at the front of the board.
Possession, position, the third man... Barça, so attached to its creed, has regressed and it is Xavi, the privileged guardian of essences, who must touch the appropriate keys.
He is the one who should ask himself if the Xavi player would work with this Xavi coach.
Or is it that the first confuses the second?
Why is Raphinha entangled?
Why don't they mix Pedri and Gavi?
What protection does the last Busquets require?
What is De Jong's role?
Why is Ferran behind Memphis?
Why doesn't Ansu take off?
It's football, Xavi, nothing more than football.
In football itself are the solutions, not in the nostalgia of an irreproducible past without
xavis
,
iniestas
,
messis
,
puyoles
… The vocation for style is very good, but without the superiority of that iconic team led by the great Guardiola, you have to know how to manage all kinds of matches, including the very crude ones on the European scene.
It is better to review (than not deny) the style than to die of reality year after year.
Guardiola, apostle of the Barça brand par excellence, fired Ronaldinho, greeted Pedrito and Busi in the catacombs of Tercera and, once at the top, in order not to die of success, he did a pirouette with Messi as the battering ram.
Without football remedies, it would only be possible for Barça to have its own Béla Guttmann and not find out.
The Hungarian coach, successful in Benfica's only two European Cups, was fired due to a financial disagreement.
"They won't win a European Cup again for a hundred years."
There are 60, and the Lisbon side have already succumbed in five finals.
Even against curses, football, football and more football.
Wasn't that your thing, Xavi?
What are the levers of it?
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