Barcelona midfielder Xavi Hernandez has defended boss Tata Martino’s methods and called him a “natural leader”.
Martino has come in for criticism in certain quarters following the Catalans’ two straight defeats at the hands of Ajax and Athletic Bilbao but, in an interview with Catalunya Radio’s ‘Club de la Mitjanic’ programme, Xavi rushed to the Argentine’s defence.
“Tata, like Pep Guardiola, is a natural leader. He is rigid, demanding, speaks directly and has very clear ideas. The boss is rotating things perfectly and is managing our minutes played very astutely,” argued the Spain international.
“More than our style, what has changed is the dynamics of Spanish football. Now every team wants to play football and there are few that just get everyone behind the ball.
“Everyone wants to play like Barcelona and opposing teams are doing it more. That makes life tougher.”
Despite the hiccup in form of late, Xavi is convinced that Barca are still trying to play the right way.
“In the dressing room we are very relaxed about it because we strongly believe in what we are doing, although we’ve had two consecutive defeats and the demands are very high.
“People are pressurising us to play the same way we did before and that’s difficult. But inside we are calm and know we are doing things in the correct manner.
“Against Ajax we played badly, but we are self-critical and accept what has been said. In Bilbao we recovered the good feeling, one of dominating the game that we did not have in Amsterdam.
“However, we are more concerned with what we do ourselves because people tend to focus just on results. There has been some negativity and that has not helped, but we are top of La Liga and through in the Champions League, so we’ll see what happens at the end of the season.”
The 33-year-old also spoke of what the future holds for him as he enters the latter stages of his career.
“I don’t plan to do anything else but enjoy myself. I’m with the best team in the world and have renewed my contract until 2016, so I’ll try to stay here until then.
“I’m excited about what lies ahead and looking forward to getting back to my best, to doing better on a world level. They are nice challenges,” he concluded.
