All is not lost for Barca

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This article was published 19/11/2021 (1728 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Xavi Hernandez is returning to a very different FC Barcelona.

The club he joined as an 11-year-old from nearby Terrassa — he grew up just 30 kilometres from Camp Nou — little resembles the one he left in 2015, when he and teammates Andres Iniesta, Luis Suarez, Neymar and Lionel Messi completed a league, cup and Champions League treble by beating Juventus in Berlin.

The current team can barely beat anyone. With four wins from 12 matches in La Liga, the Blaugrana are ninth in the table and must beat Benfica on Tuesday (2 p.m., DAZN) to progress to the Champions League’s last 16. They’ve mustered just a single goal in five of their last six outings in all competitions, and key midfielder Frenkie de Jong is rumoured to be considering a transfer.

To make matters worse, the club is broke and was forced to part ways with Messi during the summer. Jose Elias, a primary financial guarantor, actually made the Argentine’s exit a condition for supporting Joan Laporta’s presidential campaign last winter — one of many examples of the broken politics at Camp Nou.

Needless to say, these are not the circumstances Xavi will have hoped to find after quitting his apprenticeship at Qatari outfit Al Sadd. The 41-year-old, who won 25 trophies as a Barcelona player, might have expected to at least take over a functional locker room and a handful of world-class footballers already playing in the club’s stylistic manner and requiring only modest guidance to be competitive.

Instead, he’s being counted on to not only represent the second coming of Pep Guardiola — the prodigy who shaped the side of Iniesta, Messi and himself — but to also do nothing less than reintroduce an identity to a club that has seemingly forgotten the best of Barcelona tradition.

To that end, he actually has some pieces to work with.

When he makes his debut as Barcelona manager in the city derby with Espanyol (Saturday, 2 p.m., TSN app), Xavi will have both de Jong and 17-year-old blue-chipper Gavi in midfield. By the time he picks his team to face Benfica, both Pedri and Ousmane Dembele should have returned from injury.

Defenders Eric Garcia and Ronald Araujo are 20 and 22 years old respectively, and 19-year-old Ansu Fati, who scored three goals in five matches before sustaining a thigh strain, will be available for selection this time next month, as will midfielder Nico Gonzalez.

In other words, there is a very young and very gifted group of players who could conceivably form the core of a very good team for years to come. In fact, one of the reasons former manager Ronald Koeman was sacked in October is that this group risked stalled development under the Dutchman’s tutelage, or lack thereof.

Koeman rarely attended, nevermind oversaw, training sessions in person, and he made himself distant from the keen, teenaged footballers who had graduated from La Masia.

In contrast, Nico Gonzalez has already praised Xavi’s personalized approach, which combines individual attention with his own experience as a Barcelona midfielder when the team was winning everything in sight.

In the short term, Xavi’s presence will provide a significant and vital boost to morale. But there is no guarantee as to results. Not yet, and probably not until the club is in a better financial position.

Too many players are currently on contracts that don’t reflect their contributions — most notably Philippe Coutinho, Samuel Umtiti and Sergi Roberto — and until that deadweight is released the new boss won’t be able to fully implement his ideas.

For example, Xavi prefers to deploy old-fashioned, out-and-out wingers. Dembele can perhaps fill the role, but his injury problems have unfortunately made him difficult to count on. Memphis Depay, too, can work from the wing, but he simply isn’t a player of Barcelona quality.

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These problems and others, such as the absence of a reliable striker, could be addressed in the winter transfer period, but the club is cash poor. The squad Xavi inherits is the one that will finish the season.

When he was last on the Barcelona payroll, Xavi was lifting the European Cup in the German capital. Barely six years later he’ll hardly recognize the club at which he became a legend.

But if he’s as patient with the situation as he was on the ball, he might just have a chance to turn things around.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

Twitter @JerradPeters