Xavi Hernández began the season with the challenge of playing “better football”, a statement consistent with his football ideology, defender of the style of play and how to win so internalized in Barça. The League and Super Cup titles won the previous year endorsed the Barça coach. The status of winner did not prevent him from assuming that his team’s football could be much better if he took into account that in up to 11 matches he had won 1-0 or 0-1. “What does it mean for me to play better?” Xavi asked himself. “Choose better, have more patience, get to the wing and not risk it first. Go back, find superiority within. Have more inner game. “Chop the spaces at the right moment,” argued the coach.
The reference was the 1-3 that the Blaugrana achieved against Madrid in the Super Cup final in January 2023. “That would be our ideal match,” Xavi himself recalled. “Try to play the same every minute,” he insisted after recalling sections of a match whose result provoked a grandiose statement from Araujo. “A new era has begun.” The prophecy was not fulfilled, but, on the contrary, Carvajal’s prediction was imposed after losing the preseason classic 3-0 in July of the same 2023. “Let the fans not worry because in official competition we are going to beat them to go over it,” said the Madrid full-back. Ancelotti’s team has won the last four classics after the last 3-2 at the Bernabéu and 1-2 at Montjuïc.
Although he has played some good games, Barça’s football has not stabilized despite Xavi’s wishes. “We are in the best moment since I have been Barça coach,” he said in September after two 5-0 defeats against Betis and Antwerp. The coach announced later, in January, that he would not continue from June 30, hurt by the 3-5 draw with Villarreal. That decision was considered key by the coach to explain the streak that came after 13 games without losing that Barça went on. Xavi even said that the duel won against PSG in Paris was “one of the best, if not the best” since he took over the Camp Nou bench in November 2021. The Blaugrana were eliminated after the Champions League by the same PSG in Montjuïc and said goodbye to the League in Madrid.
Despite the results, a season that will end in a blank and a more irregular game than for the better, Super Cup. The objective is not less because the rival is Girona, the same team that won in Montjuïc by 2-4, the same one that has championed the cause of good play and, therefore, the opponent that has occupied Barcelona’s usual pulpit in the defense of how and style in the League. So Barça’s challenge is twofold in Montilivi (6:30 p.m., in Dazn): to win and claim their best football ever against the rival that is currently the most knowledgeable and presumptuous in the game, Girona.
The Barcelona fans currently surpass the white and red team by two points when at the start of their match in Montjuïc the distance was seven in favor of Girona. The Barça defeat sparked a long debate and a particular reflection from Xavi even though he praised Míchel’s team: “We are better, we played better and we had the victory in hand. It was a match very similar to that of Madrid. If Barça had won we would have also said it was fair. We are a team under construction and the one who hit the best won; It was the match of KO”. The history of both teams offers an equally revealing detail: Girona has only lost one game at home – against Madrid – and Barça has only lost once away, precisely at the Bernabéu.
And while Madrid continues to do its thing (a victory for Míchel’s team could give it the title today), Girona intends to celebrate its historic qualification for the Champions League against Barça. A feat for a team that came to play in Preferente and for a club that in 2011 had an owner -Josep Delgado- for whom there was a search and arrest warrant for alleged tax fraud in Poland. The transfer of the Vista Alegre field to Montilivi, inaugurated with a match against Barça in 1970, and the promotion to First Division in 2017 after years complicated by promotions, mark the high points for a fan who has gone through four years of attending to the field to see the then Barça of Messi fill it to beat Barça. Never has a Catalan team finished ahead of Barcelona with the exception of Espanyol in 1942.
The blue and whites are now competing in the Second Division to return to the First Division, so that Girona’s rivalry with Barça has been assumed by a team that until now had been more their friend than their adversary. The Montilivi event represents the culminating moment for the red and white club on its path to the Champions League. Success will also mean what is presumed to be a headache for its leaders because they will have to negotiate with UEFA adjustments in their governing and management bodies due to their link with the City Football Group – it is about avoiding incompatibilities between teams in the same group. and the approval of Montilivi – UEFA does not allow extra stands and the current stadium would go from having 14,000 seats to 9,000.
Now, precisely, it is expected to break the attendance record with this Saturday’s match: Girona-Barça, Míchel-Xavi, Dovbyk-Lewandowski (19-16 goals). Who will play better? The game is as important as the result for the League classification. “We have to end with good feelings,” says Xavi after in the league premiere in Getafe he already warned that it would be difficult to retain the title and insisted on the need to play better football as Barça has always been required and supposed to.
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