Sport360° view: Same old issues at Barca as Enrique favours Xavi

Andy West 14:58 26/10/2014
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  • Step behind: Many claim that Xavi, 34, has lost his legs.

    Any Barcelona fan who believed that Luis Enrique had waved a magic wand to make his new team’s past troubles disappear will have to think again after their limp surrender against arch rivals Real Madrid at the Bernabeu last night.

    Despite taking the lead and then creating a couple of good opportunities to extend the advantage, Barca ended the game by giving us a horrible reminder of everything that went wrong for them last season.

    Those problems can be summed up by saying that the Catalan club simply could not compete physically with their far more powerful opposition. Once Madrid found their rhythm and put their foot on Barca’s throat, the visitors had no answer and were ultimately somewhat fortunate not to concede more goals.

    Although the central defensive partnership between Javier Mascherano and Gerard Pique was far from blameless, they were by no means the source of the team’s problems and, in fact, deserve credit for several last-ditch interventions to keep the scoreline down to three.

    Rather than at the back, the chief concern for Barcelona emanating from this game is the area of the pitch that once allowed them to be so dominant: midfield. Three or four years ago, the trio of Sergio Busquets, Andres Iniesta and Xavi was simply mesmerising, playing with smooth sophistication and mutual understanding to give opponents little chance of taking the ball off them, never mind beating them.

    That magical group of players is no longer the same force. In particular, Xavi is 34 and can no longer run like he used to. Although he can still pass the ball brilliantly, without it he is a liability and offers little protection to Busquets when the opposition attacks through the middle.

    Other teams have worked this out and know that if they flood the centre of the field with bodies – whether additional midfielders or, as Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema did last night, forwards dropping deep – Barca cannot cope. The sad thing is…all of this has been said before. 

    Throughout Tata Martino’s ill-fated single season in charge at the Nou Camp, it was blindingly obvious that the midfield was letting the team down, a conclusion acknowledged by Martino himself when he dropped Xavi for the all-important title decider against Atletico – with national team boss Vicente Del Bosque following suit after Spain’s World Cup humiliation against the Netherlands.

    How strange, then, to see Enrique attempt to recapture past glories that had even been given up by his predecessor. A midfield trio of Busquets, Xavi and Iniesta was magical in 2011, but it is now 2014 and they simply do not possess the energy or physicality to compete with teams like Real Madrid.

    It was an even more baffling team selection when you consider the availability of Ivan Rakitic, who has made an excellent start to his Barca career after being signed this summer to address the very issues described above. Xavi is a true great of modern football, arguably Spain’s best ever player and a bona-fide Barcelona legend. 

    But he is now unable to perform effectively as part of a ball-playing midfield trio. Luis Enrique appeared to have already learned that lesson, before then forgetting it. He must not make the same mistake again.

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