Barcelona seemed a club both broken and heart-broken after talisman Lionel Messi’s departure last year, and so it was no surprise that news of Xavi Hernandez’s return, after 2,373 days away, was accompanied by waves of relief and euphoria in Catalonia’s capital city.
Both icon and ideologue, the midfield maestro was one of the driving forces behind Barcelona’s celebrated playing style and spectacular success between 2004 and 2015, when it won an incredible seven LaLiga titles and four Champions League trophies. His appointment as coach was confirmed last November, at the start of the international break. The crackle of excitement that preceded his unveiling was electric.
Xavi was the first Barcelona coach to be presented on the pitch in front of fans at the 99,000-capacity Camp Nou stadium, with the routine usually reserved for the club’s biggest signings. His attempts to thank the crowd were thwarted by the sound of them chanting his name.
“I am very excited,” he told the fans. “We are the best club in the world and we will work hard to be successful. Barca can’t be satisfied with draws or losses. We have to win every match.” He said he was moved by the welcome and chanted along with the crowd. “We need you,” Xavi told the fans. “Especially during the bad moments. We are in a difficult situation as a club. We need you more than ever.”
Xavi did not undersell the level of difficulty. Barcelona had slid down the ranks of the elite and was in unfamiliar territory. When the 42-year-old took over from Ronald Koeman, the club was ninth, six points adrift of the fourth and final Champions League spot. It had conceded more goals than Espanyol and Rayo Vallecano, both of whom had just come up from the second division. It had won none of its four previous league games, and Xavi’s first priority was — and remains — a top-four finish to ensure the financial security of Champions League football.
A quick-fix option had seemed remote, with the club still desperately trying to reduce record debts of more than a billion euros. The official club line was that “as it stands, there is nothing left” for signings in the January transfer window. Dismay at the club’s decline and Messi’s departure hung heavy around Camp Nou.
Understandably, the supporters were desperate for even the smallest sign of a revival. So it wasn’t startling that something as momentous as Xavi’s recruitment raised hopes that the club would begin a return to Europe’s elite. Several observers of Spanish football agreed that Xavi’s return would reignite the spark, through nostalgia and hope, if nothing else — but cautioned supporters to keep their expectations low.
They reminded fans of the fact that he was a largely untested, inexperienced manager and that he was taking charge at one of the world’s biggest clubs with all its attendant pressures. At Barcelona, it isn’t enough to merely win; you must win with beautiful, slick football, dominating possession, passing circles around opponents, and scoring bagfuls of goals.
Almost 120 days into his reign, Xavi appears to have lifted Barcelona out of the gloom he had found it in. The club sits fourth on the LaLiga table, up five places, with eight wins, four draws and one loss under Xavi. It may have crashed out of the Champions League in the group stages — it had lost two of its first four league games before he took over, and drew against Benfica and lost to Bayern Munich during his first month at the helm — but it has looked a little more like its old self in recent months in Europe, albeit at one level lower, in the Europa League.
Its 4-2 away win over Napoli in Europe was sandwiched by a 4-1 victory on the road against Valencia and a 4-0 rout of Athletic Bilbao at home in the league — all within a seven-day period in the last week of February. It was the first time since May 2017 that Barcelona had scored four goals in three consecutive games. Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez had claimed 11 of those goals in 2017— echoes of a different, more successful era, which Xavi is attempting to reprise.
“The sensations are getting better and better,” Xavi said. “The team has been practising very well and now the results are showing. [Against Napoli], we dominated for 90 minutes and that’s the first time we’ve done that since I became coach. It’s a win over a team which I repeat is a Champions League-level team, one which does not concede many goals and is fighting for the league title.” The win that followed was also against a miserly defence.
Athletic had the third best defence in the league — having conceded just 21 goals, bettered only by Sevilla (17) and Real Madrid (20) — before Barcelona took it apart. “Against a rival that defends well, with a medium and low block, we have scored three goals at the end, but we have had a solid game,” Xavi said. “We are going to grow. We are working with humility. It’s very good for the harmony of the fans.”
There are several reasons for Barcelona’s improvement under Xavi, but two are immediately obvious: a return to its playing roots and a smart January transfer window, which saw the arrivals of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Adama Traore and Ferran Torres, who have already contributed six goals and seven assists in 18 appearances combined. After the win over Napoli last week, defender Gerard Pique highlighted both of these facets.
“We went back to the origins, to have the ball. For a while we stopped doing it. Who was to blame? A little bit of everyone, it’s not fair to target anyone. Decisions were made that were not appropriate,” Pique said. “Now there is a base in which the team feels confident. We have reinforced very well in January, now we have real weapons up front. All that is happening is a continuous improvement in the game, which sometimes translates into good results and sometimes not, but the line is ascending.”
The fourth goal against Napoli, which saw every Barcelona player touch the ball during the course of a 23-pass move before Aubameyang found the back of the net, was a glimpse of what Xavi’s work on the training field has achieved.
“I know where I’m at,” he said. “These 22, 23 touches... that’s what people like. We want to implement the style again that made us great. We can win or lose but we want the people to identify with the style of play, that’s fundamental. We continue to work on this. I know this week I received praise, but we know next week the opposite can happen.”
Barcelona’s manager also appears to have struck a chord with his players. “We are enjoying winning, Xavi gave us a new energy and he is giving great advice to the youngsters,” 19-year-old midfielder Pedri, who Xavi has likened to the great Andres Iniesta, said. “We are enjoying ourselves right now.”
The handling of Ousmane Dembele seems another example of Xavi’s man-management skills. The mercurial talent was told by Barcelona that he could leave if he refused to sign a new contract, but bitter negotiations ended in a stalemate. Xavi has reintegrated Dembele in the last few weeks.
When Xavi brought him on as a substitute against Napoli, Dembele was greeted by screeching whistles from angry home supporters. Yet Xavi appears to have managed the situation as smoothly as possible, with Dembele scoring a stunning goal against Athletic and going over to celebrate with his coach, who gave him a hug and an approving pat on the head.
While Barcelona fans have begun to dream big, Xavi, who has received criticism for the team’s frailties in defence, offered a more clear-eyed assessment. “We still lose a lot of unnecessary balls,” he said. “We need to be embarrassed by losing these balls. We need to be responsible for our actions and defend better. Defend better from set plays. We have a lot of points we need to improve but it’s also evident we are improving a lot. In our current situation, every match is like a final for us.”
