Monday morning is always bad, but it will feel a whole lot worse for Barcelona manager Xavi Hernandez, his players and the club’s supporters, who witnessed humiliation on the world stage on Sunday, as Real Madrid picked up the Spanish Super Cup after a comfortable 4-1 victory in Riyadh.
Understandably, Xavi has taken most of the heat for the poor performance in the Saudi capital, and most media outlets across the world have not held back, as reported by Diario AS. Catalan daily newspaper Sport called it a “humiliation”, with Mundo Deportivo labelling Barcelona as “soulless and fragile”.
L’Equipe, as is so often the case, took the harshest approach, and they took aim at Xavi for his decision-making before and during the match.
“Led by their Brazilians and a hat-trick from Vinicius, Real Madrid beat an overwhelmed and disorganised Barcelona. Real Madrid dismantled a Barcelona side weighed down by their defensive errors and Xavi’s suicidal tactics in the Spanish Super Cup. The coach had asked his players to defend high, he was punished by the speed of Rodrygo and especially Vinicius, author of a hat-trick, who made him pay dearly for that game plan.”
The interesting thing is that Xavi has often got his tactics right against Real Madrid, so this situation comes as even more of a surprise. There’s little doubt now that his future as Barcelona manager is on the line, with big results needed in the next few weeks.
Honestly Barcelona needs to close the eyes and react on xavi methodology is better than late eg Chelsea see their team before the legendary as an individual. Barcelona is what we need collectively.
The problem isn’t the high defensive line. The problem is the defenders assuming that they can position themselves to catch the opponent offside instead of actually doing the work and marking them when they break. I’ve seen this from Kounde in particular, but Araujo and Christensen are guilty of it also. Madrid obviously noticed noticed this tendency and, I’m assuming, practiced timing it up in order to take advantage during the match.
Negative John, you avoid playing a high line against someone that can beat you on speed. An offiside trap is not 100% effective and once you get beat by a faster player it’s hard to catch up.