Right but the comment was what would show that Xavi is the chosen one.
Winning LaLiga is great obviously, but for that statement it would surely be winning a knockout competition aswell. And Copa del Rey over Real Madrid in the Semi raises it's achievement.
Close game against Man UTD and we can hold our heads high looking back, but to be the chosen one you also have to show you can win knockout football too and not just the league.
I don't want to be pessimistic but tbh I think that the Xavi project is just going downhill from here.
No matter how much people will deny it our ample sample size of losing and conceding bags of goals in Europe does demonstrate the team's real level. The arguments about injuries only reinforce that belief - if a couple of your key players out derails your chances to win entirely how are you ever going to expect to win any trophy over the course of a 60-70 game season? That will always happen and not a good look that people are assigning the blame to that. The truth is, even with Pedri or Dembele or everyone fit, we have played enough terrible games against LL fodder where we have continually been lucky to scrape out wins - exactly the thing Cruyff warned against, resultadisimo, and it's not sustainable to continue to win games long-term like that.
Overall, I think our LaLiga first round has been a bit of a mirage. For a variety of factors, luck with opponents missing chances, team in great form and hardly anyone being injured (until a few weeks ago), being lucky to repeatedly grind out wins, and most importantly for me, the surprise factor of Xavi Barcelona.
We play very very differently to how we have ever used to play and all the coaches comment about it after they play us every time. About how Barca has changed off-the-ball, us being a very physical team now, much more direct, etc. That factor of surprise for me has contributed to the bounce. Teams and coaches are used to the old lazy teams where nobody would press and we would usually get outworked, but it is not the case anymore.
It's a positive but I believe as teams get acclimatised to this new version of Barca the flaws are going to be targeted and exploited just like the better coaches in Europe have done, now that data is out for us - Rubi (Almeria coach) broke our tactics down really well in his press conference last week for example. There is also another thing to consider that typically very intense teams like us currently tend to suffer a lot more in the 2nd half of the season due to fatigue and injuries piling up, especially when doing it with old or injury prone players (Lewandowski, Pedri, Dembele, Kounde, Araujo..).
So I am predicting that we have a much worse 2nd round than the first and it may not be particularly close either. We will lose enough points but Madrid will drop plenty as well so could still scrape out the title, but future prospects with Xaviball? I'm not sure.
