The first cracks of Xavi's Barcelona

• Barça The end of Xavi's flower and an "absolutely unfair" defeat

• Defeat against Betis Xavi's Barcelona also learns to lose

The

effect

seems to have faded very soon at Barça. The arrival of the new coach's first defeat has brought to light what, at first glance, could be taken as the first cracks in his project at the head of the Barça team. However, the vast majority of them are nothing more than the return to the surface of those same scars that made

work extremely ugly to the point of

turning it directly into something unsustainable. The layer of plaster and the coat of paint to try to hide them is not enough. The walls are so weak that they require a thorough rebuilding.

The lack of scoring ability

, for example, is something that has been dragging on since the start of Koeman's stage in front of the Barcelona bench. Right now, the team has scored 23 goals in 15 games. Last season, at this stage of the competition, and also with one game less, given that it would not play the duel corresponding to the first day until January, the Barça team had scored 29 goals. The jump, if compared to the last season of

is spectacular. At this point, and with the classic pending to be played, they had a total of 41 goals in 15 games.

That Barça has been losing punch in attack is obvious.

And not only because of the traumatic goodbye of

, his great offensive reference in the last 13 years.

With the Argentine still at the Camp Nou, the first symptoms have already appeared.

Without him, someone is missing who can take responsibility for offensive tasks.

is a great player, a fantastic complement, but he cannot be asked to make a difference.

That has never been his role.

The extremely delicate financial situation of the club complicates, a lot, the arrival of a real signing of campanillas.

And, furthermore, as Xavi himself has already pointed out, there is more to come from the second row.

Defense problems

That the defense has been in the water for a long time is also undeniable. With Xavi, they managed to leave a clean sheet in their first two games, although both Espanyol and Benfica had clear options to score. Right now, the team has 17 goals against in 15 games. Last year, there were 15. And, going back to the 2019-20 campaign, we found 18 goals conceded. Only the great punch that the team had justifies that it had 11 victories then, which would drop to seven last year and that, right now, there are six. The mistakes, like the one starring against Betis and which Xavi lamented so much, are still very expensive.

The insecurity of the rear has also ended up infecting a

who greatly misses those incredible saves that he used to sign in his first seasons.

Beyond that, the German is starring in multiple errors, many of them due to excessive nervousness, which do not end in a goal almost miraculously.

Recovering his best version, more from a mental than physical point of view, will also be another of Xavi's great challenges.

But despite the cracks, the image the team offers on the pitch is still very different from that of the timid team led by Koeman.

Now, it is urgent to reinforce those strengths and solve the waterways.

For the League and, above all, for the Champions League.

Munich will be the great litmus test.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

• sports

• First division

• FC Barcelona

• Xavi Hernandez

• Ronald Koeman

• Leo Messi

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