Hello, and welcome everyone to a new segment where I pick a match with the top teams and talk about it if it is worth talking about.
This post comes ahead of an expected win for Barcelona. Bad form or not Elche has not defeated Barcelona in a long time. Matter of fact, Elche has not scored against Barcelona in 12 matches. Today, Elche scored twice to make it clear that Barcelona is having tougher times than before.
This was supposed to be a great game for Barcelona, one where I wouldn't need to make this post. It would have been all compliments all around and close the curtains. But, it was 5-10 minutes of complete disappearance of self-trust, I call it sleepiness, left a very bad impression on the match.
If it wasn't for Nico González, this would have been a lot worse. Proving once against what I had said in a previous post that Barcelona's youth is the solution as the goals scored were by the youngsters with Gavi scoring and assisting.
And essentially that's what matters the most, three points, another win to give Barcelona more time to gather the scatters and rebuild.
We saw a lot of bravery today, with players like Gavi and Abde showing a lot of bravery with their movement. Barcelona used to be rather boring during Messi's days as everyone would wait for Messi to take the ball and move the team, rarely taking initiative. Now we saw that initiative. Gavi took initiative and was rewarded with a goal and an assist, Abde wasn't as lucky.
Considering Gavi was doing those box-to-box duties, it is obvious that Xavi had decided to give De Jong that Pirlo role and, Xavi role.
Let's talk about the positives only for a second. Today, we saw a better conversion of possession into shots that is much better than before, today possession wasn't just a number that gets up to 70% while finding that Barcelona and the opponent both had the same shots on targets. The goal of possession today was getting to a scoring possession.
It is obvious that the goals and shooting opportunities came in as a result of players' movement. The players are much active without the ball in a connected way. The players kept moving, the ball moving, and that's what makes a difference between a positive and a negative possession.
Barcelona's center attacker today had a great 90 minutes in Barcelona's match against River Plates, in this match he continued giving great movement, he was a source of distraction and annoyance for Elche defenders. He was subbed out, some might blame Xavi for that but the player is still young and sometimes you need to refresh your team with new blood.
Today we saw that formation again, there are two things to take from that.
Xavi tried every player who could play the role in that possession, all didn't work. The only logical step for Xavi here was changing the team's shape.
Upon looking at Barcelona's midfield and defense, I can't help but feel that this formation might not be the solution. Even looking at the two players on the side, it doesn't seem like the way to go. If Xavi makes it work, then I am just an idiot who is writing nonsense. This formation might be temporary.
Once Alves is back to play for Barcelona, I think Xavi will switch into Barcelona's famous 433. They just need to get through Sevilla before that happens.
Barcelona's upcoming match will be on the 21st of December against Sevilla, that match might be the stick to measure the season with. It could tell the story of the remainder of the season. It is very important for Xavi to beat a big team to give the team a positive energy boost. Winning that match might get Barcelona a whole new spirit going into 2022. If he lost, Barcelona might want to consider sacrificing this season and build their youth while offloading as many liabilities as possible.
Going social media, it seems to be all about Stegen. Watching the goals at first, you might find it hard to see that it is his fault. However, there's a deeper issue here. You could pin it on Stegen and his power of reading an attacker, but the problem is that the players he is facing have so much space from which to shoot.
When you find a player having so much space to break through and shoot comfortably once, then a player on his own heading it in comfortably, don't you see the issue here? We might agree that Ter Stegen has lost some of his shine lately, but at some point, it seems that the keeper is being asked to deliver miracles, you can't ask a keeper for that.
Maybe, he used to pull that off in the past, but at some point, it gets exhausting, especially when the results weren't rewarding his hard work. When a team's confidence drops, goalkeepers, suffer the most, that to me, is Stegen's case.
This has been magnified lately but it really has been the issue since the Roma match in the UCL, the team always looked like it could lose a comfortable lead. If you look closely at Real Madrid matches, they do get dominated like in their match with Inter Milan but their confidence makes you feel that they could steal the win at any moment. What matters now for Barcelona is that they get a series of positive results.
Today is just another reminder of a point that has become redundant, Xavi has a long way ahead. It starts with regaining confidence. The least to reach is giving an image of a team that could easily defeat lower and midtable teams.
