This is how Xavi built from the ruin of Barça: without 'sacred cows', new leadership and more midfielders than forwards

Xavi Hernández

is neither modern nor is he German.

Until not so long ago, that was a reason for suspicion for those who gave him the Barcelona bench after seeing in him an opponent of a scholarship in the subsidiary.

And not because he came back from Qatar with the same pointless gelled ends from his teenage years, but because he might not be able to push players accustomed to training sessions of wine and roses to the limit of physical demands.

Because he would not find a way to adapt his team to the virulent rhythm of the allegedly successful football.

Because, in the dressing room, he wouldn't know how to differentiate friendship from the passage of time, loyalty from job survival.

Or because, of course, he would impose the story on the result, as if there were a way to pray without believing.

Last October, and after

believed that he had offered Xavi additional guarantees in exchange for trading with the club's assets - the coach only missed not recruiting

-, the team still showed signs of paralysis.

The new banishment to the Europa League after the collapses against Inter and Bayern, together with a defeat at the Bernabéu, increased the emotional pressure on the coach.

Not so much because he saw his position in danger, but because he could not find a way to transfer to the field the ideology that he tried to embed in the meninges of his soccer players, sometimes overwhelmed by the excess of information.

Things are simpler than the perfect interactions in the mind and the blackboard.

The emotional stability of the group was decisive in those games in which faith overcame the game.

Nobody talks anymore about the psychological weight of the

in a dressing room in which the weight of

(seven goals conceded in the League) has grown and where

has fit like a glove as youth pastor.

got tired of training at dawn at the Camp Nou with the reservists and preferred to create his little soccer league

which is how Jota, leader of Los Planetas, baptized the Kings League).

Jordi Alba, after grimacing the first few weeks, has naturally assumed the irruption into his band of the young

.

To

he doesn't mind being the guy for anything and everything.

While with

the usual thing happens.

When the team broke and bled to death it was because he didn't run, when he never did.

And now that the lines move forward and back together under the still indispensable baton of the midfielder (34 years old and with Xavi imploring his renewal), no one notices that he is still in his place, stretching his legs under pressure and making life easier for those around you.

And there, in harmony, is the keystone of change.

From the exhibition in the Super Cup final.

Having reached 50 points in the first round of the championship.

Discourse and ideas management

Xavi is still taking the measure to the position.

There have been many slip-ups in the media pulpit for wanting to stray from the dialectical precision required by the position.

See the praise for Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the

or the assumption of the mistake in the improper alignment of the women's Barça without knowing the official position of the club.

On the other hand, the evolution in the management of their own ideas has been notorious.

If he arrived at Barça convinced that good fortune would happen through the incidence of his two extremes (the now injured

and

in unison), both the good game and the continuity have come thanks to what happens further back.

,

and

are three of the best correctors on the continent, and the last two are also essential at the start.

Added to this is the presence of the four midfielders.

expresses himself better in freedom, while

and

, we dynamo between the lines, they access the definitive zones without fear.

It doesn't even seem to matter that

continues in limbo, or that

perpetuates the debate between expectations and reality.

Xavi has known how to build in ruin.

That's what it was about.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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• FC Barcelona

• Xavi Hernandez

• Articles Francisco Cabezas