- Xavi will take charge of Barcelona in his final El Clasico outing on Sunday
- His Barcelona side must put on a show of rare unity against Real Madrid
- Chelsea is a ‘CESSPIT of over-inflated egos’… will Pochettino turn bickering youngsters into harmonious team? Listen to the It’s All Kicking Off podcast
It’s Xavi’s last stand on Sunday – his final El Clasico in charge of Barcelona. And things can go one of only two ways.
Win, and he plays out his time in charge in something at least resembling a title race. The gap will be five points with six matches remaining.
Fail to win and there will be no more matches that matter. His legacy as Barcelona coach will be set — more red cards than trophies.
Real Madrid go into Sunday’s game having had a day’s less recovery time after 120 minutes of defending against Manchester City. They still have difficult away games at Real Sociedad and Villarreal, plus the distraction of the Champions League semi-finals.
But at Barcelona there has been no clarion call, no tub-thumping — they have been closer to thumping each other.
Midfielder Ilkay Gundogan hung defender Ronald Araujo out to dry for his early sending off against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, saying: ‘To go a player down so early, it just kills the game. Let the goalkeeper have a chance to save us or even concede a goal,’ he said.
Araujo responded: ‘I would rather keep what I think (about Gundogan’s comments) to myself. I believe there is a (dressing room) code and there are certain values that need to be respected.’
The squad is split between those who believe hard truths need to be told, be that publicly or privately, and those who side with Araujo and are beginning to resent the big signings who have arrived in the last two years — Robert Lewandowski, Joao Felix and Joao Cancelo among them.
And managing all this is Xavi, already working his notice. It’s long been clear, in the parlance of Monty Python, that he is not the Messiah, just a very naughty boy.
Barca fans had hoped for the second coming of Pep Guardiola. Instead they have a coach whose red card in midweek was his third this season. He’s been booked 22 times since he took over as Barca coach, more than any other manager in Spain in the same time.
But despite his shortcomings, the striking thing about Barcelona’s plight is that things could get worse after him.
Don’t rule out them looking back fondly on the Xavi era in a few years from now.
After all, he delivered the title last season. This year he has had to deal with the move away form the Camp Nou.
How different would things have been on Tuesday had there been 96,000 on top of the pitch instead of 50,000, a running track’s width from it?
The 44-year-old has got things right. Last season his use of Gavi and Pedri as the top points in a midfield square gave Barcelona a different dimension.
This season his conversion of former Chelsea defender Andreas Christensen into a holding midfielder has made them more solid.
Christensen was suspended for that midweek defeat by PSG. Gavi’s been out injured all season. Xavi has not been a lucky coach.
He has made mistakes — picking his brother Oscar as his No 2 instead of a more experienced assistant seems to have been one of them. But there are lots of coaches less suited to managing Barca than the man who played 767 games for the club, and they may find that out over the next few seasons.
Barca B-team coach Rafa Marquez, who played for the seniors between 2003 and 2010, is now favourite to take over from him. Barcelona wouldn’t be able to persuade, or afford, Mikel Arteta, Jurgen Klopp or Luis Enrique.
Marquez is great friends with director of football Deco and will bend to the demands of the squad he puts together. Deco and Xavi have never been on the same page.
A win tomorrow against Real Madrid and Xavi’s last six games in charge will mean something. Lose and the bigger question becomes whether or not he even shows up for the last month of the campaign.
Dembele is Enrique’s starboy
Ousmane Dembele often wears the expression of a man who doesn’t know what day it is. Fortunately for him, every day, as far as Luis Enrique is concerned, is Dembele Day.
‘Ouse’, as the PSG coach calls him, was signed from Barcelona before Enrique joined last summer and it was not unreasonable to think the two might not get on. One loves intensity and unflinching commitment, the other loves a lie-in.
At least that was the image portrayed at Barcelona. Occasional tardiness to training made it easy for Dembele to be depicted as an immature wastrel living ankle-deep in takeaway pizza boxes and sleeping badly because of an addiction to video games.
A cartoon appeared in the Catalan press before the first leg against PSG with the caption: ‘They will be playing with 10 because they’ve got Dembele.’
That summed up the low opinion many Barcelona followers have of him. His every touch was jeered in the second game and fake 100 dollar bills were circulating outside the stadium, with Judas marked on them.
They don’t like the fact he cost £130million, was often injured, then left for half that amount. Despite the hostile atmosphere, Dembele was man of the match. He didn’t allow the animosity to bother him and here’s the crux of why Enrique loves him.
One of the PSG coach’s obsessions is that his players should have the memory of a goldfish, and be able to shrug off setbacks instantly. Dembele has that. He doesn’t care. He isn’t fazed. He barely notices the criticism. And in a perverse way, his lack of focus on everything else means he focuses entirely on the next time he receives the ball.
In that sense he is for Enrique — what they would never call him at Barcelona — a model player.
Bayern’s messy head coach quest
Harry Kane still has no idea who his coach will be next season. Bayern Munich making noises that they were ready to bring back Julian Nagelsmann only hurried up the process of the German Football Federation renewing him as national team boss.
Their targets are now as disparate as Ralf Rangnick, Unai Emery and Zinedine Zidane. The only certainty seems to be that there will be a change.
Not even winning the club their seventh European Cup would heal the bad feeling between Thomas Tuchel and Bayern’s kingmakers.
