Barça, the three-stage season and the January series proved fatal for Xavi
Since Javi Hernandez announced his retirement, the team’s results have changed. And, as a result, the game. Barça are somewhat more reliable, and victories are not far off. Over the past month, Barça added 4 wins and 2 draws with a balance of 6 goals against and 14 for.
Average 1 goal conceded and 2.3 scored. That’s not bad at all considering where the team is coming from, with the eight-game streak being particularly disastrous. January: 5 wins, 3 losses, average of 2.3 goals conceded and 2.5 goals scored.. And this has little to do with the period of time between the beginning of the season and the end of the year. 15 viwins, 5 draws and 4 losses, with 1.1 goals conceded and 1.9 goals scored.
What happened in January, the month when the team missed out on the Super Cup and the Copa del Rey? Why did the team end up in the outback? Barça are now going against the grain to regain lost ground, a reaction that comes on the very day Xavi announced his departure.
What does this advertisement have to do with the team’s performance when the coach is the same? Was Javi’s departure a liberation for the group?Does this mean the players are happier after Xavi announced he was leaving? Is the team playing better because the coach said he wasn’t going to continue?
strange case
Obviously this is a strange situation, never seen before in FC Barcelona. And inevitably you have to think about the performance of the players, with Lewandowski being the strangest case. 13 goals in the first 32 games and 5 in 6 after the announcement of Xavi’s departure. Was the team blocked from the coach’s future presence? We won’t have answers to so many questions that arise. It could simply be the dynamics of the sport, that Xavi’s presence was not liked and there were those who gave up, bad luck or a decline in play and physicality that coincided at a delicate moment in the season.
What will happen next? It would be normal to think that Barca will be eliminated at this or the next stage of the Champions League and that Madrid will win the League. Perhaps this would be normal, but as we saw in the same explanation, nothing is normal in football.
And anything can happen. Will Barça be able to resist Madrid in the League? Yes, it can happen. This is an option if the team is able to be strong in the following (delicate) commitments. Can Barca go far in the Champions League? If there is a competition where regularity is not important, it is in Europe. And the winds, just as they blew in your face in January, can now turn and blow in your favor. What would happen if something like this happened? What should Javi do then?