Xavi Hernández

[Garrus]

el maestro

 

[Kerrybai]

Benching Iker unfair, given that Iker is close to surpassing Raul in having status of a holy cow. It's much rather unfair for him to ignore the fact that Diego Lopez is looking better than Iker has ever since the Sevilla game in 2009 or so.

Ah fair enough, but let's be honest Xavi is always going to back up Iker.

 

[Galning]

If this situation was the other way around, Wolfe would've called it great mindgames by Mourinho and the Culés so easy to get upset. Insecure fans.

 

[spark]

Benching Iker unfair, given that Iker is close to surpassing Raul in having status of a holy cow. It's much rather unfair for him to ignore the fact that Diego Lopez is looking better than Iker has ever since the Sevilla game in 2009 or so.

Iker was instrumental in winning the world cup, euros, league and copa in the those 3 years. But 10 game Lopez looks better than he had in that time. Imagine if a cule had suggested that before Iker fell out with Mou

 

[ceefoo]

He basically plays one game every 10 days at the moment, let's hope his achilles problem is solved soon! It will be the first time in almost a decade Xavi won't play 50+ games in a season for us!

From the accounts of Guillem Balague, this Achilles problem appears to be a chronic one and it's not likely to get any better.

It has become a case of managing it as best they can, possibly until the day Xavi decides to hang up his boots.

 

[mejji^]

what shall we do with our maestro? bench him? believe in him?

as hard as it sounds, hes become a liability in my eyes

a lot of people dont realize what made xavi the best midfielder in the world in the last few years

this guy stole millions of balls, closed down space like nobody else, walked towards teamplayers to get ball, never lost a ball and was never afraid of risky passes

then late 2012/early 2013 injuries started plus he doesnt get younger anymore

he is declining much more then people want him to

horizontal passes, back passes, doesnt offer himself anymore to teammates as much as he did

and the worst thing

he doesnt press and close down spaces like he did, busquets is completely left alone nowadays

we should start to accept the fact that he will never reach his old level(i truly hope he does) and start giving thiago the playing time he needs to step into those shoes cause it will certainly take its time

 

[Clockwise]

In my honest opinion the team has fallen in quality a little as a whole not every single player after Pep left, and I have noticed this in many many games this season that our general pressing game has dropped so many levels, you can see terrible glaring proof of this in Madrid and Milan games. it is not just one player it is everyone really. and yes it is frustrating.

 

[dostoevskij]

well its not Xavi alone who gets older, every player is older than last season and before...

No seriously, we do look different this year: is it the "less pressing situation", is it the difficulty of keeping the top level year after year, is it injures to key players, bad transfers, is it Tito? don't know.

but as Xavi himself said, this generation (Puyol, Xavi,..) still has a few years in them, after they retire then we will see real changes!

 

[te amo barca]

Simply a maestro of passing

 

[oz187]

The team has not fallen in quality. Last season the team struggled in away games, this season they've looked strong. They broke the first half season record for points, is it any wonder that the team plays with less intensity when the title is already realistically won? Then you get a coach that gets cancer as well as Abidal coming back from a liver transplant. And yes, Xavi was great in this game when he came on.

 

[Irish_Cules]

He played brilliantly when he came on. Lets hope he keeps that going against Bayern.

 

[FCBarca]

Noticed he was grimacing late in the match too, wonder if he tweaked his achilles

 

[evilhita666]

It's hard to say anything bad about him, but we really need to start looking for options... He did dictate tempo, but a very slow one, and even though Bayern marking was amazing, he didn't look interested enough, passing back and forth without any urgency...

 

[DonAndres]

If you look closely at the density of the areas you can see that a huge deal of the passes were around the central area and not penetrating centrally to the defense

This shows:
-Obviously Messi was isolated from sparking attacks
-They pressed to the point where the only option was to pass around the middle and not through the middle.
-There was barely any penetration
-Even when they were attacking, it was without much promise

 

[Flavia]

Xavi and Iniesta were kept away from the final third. Bayern did a great job on them both. It was painful to see