Bayern-Barça, much more than a game

Barça has been walking along the ledge in Europe for years. The Berlin crown has aged so soon that six and a half years later it seems like an eternity has passed. In Munich there is much more to play than a football match. Terrible sporting consequences are at stake (not reaching the round of 16 would mean returning to the hard years of Gasparism when Laporta, at the beginning of his first term, June 2003, ran into a team that was then playing the UEFA Cup) but profound economic consequences because the club would stop earning 20 million euros.

Although the real problem would nest, if Xavi’s team is not capable of beating Bayern (the most direct way to the eighth) or Benfica stumbles (it is worth the draw or defeat), in which Barça would be dwarfed to the max. Barça’s triumphant past is increasingly distant, looming over the precipice of losing a place that seemed fixed in the elite, while the present drowns Xavi, who appears in Munich, at the home of “one of the best teams in the world” , as he himself has said, without offensive resources, devoid of Ansu.

The ‘Dembélé factor’

It is not about “a miracle”, as the coach was asked in a brief telematic press appearance (it did not last a quarter of an hour), but about winning a game in Europe, something that Koeman and Sergi ‘s Barça have only achieved in two of the five games (both against Dynamo Kiev).

“Why not?” the technician wondered before answering himself. “I don’t see that it is such a miracle to win in Munich, we are Barça. History says that Barça has never won here, but history is also there to break it,” claimed Xavi, convinced that Dembélé “can be a very important player. make a difference “.

The problem is the traditional irregularity of Barcelona, ​​whoever is on the bench (six Champions League games, three different coaches), while Bayern, led by Nagelsmann, the coach who wanted to sign Laporta as soon as he won the elections, is a Extremely reliable prodigy. The Barça president wanted it, but could not because he did not have the 25 million euros paid by the Bavarian club to keep it.

Barça is a team without a goal. At Bayern Munich, on the other hand, goals fall wherever they go. Nobody has scored so much (he has 19 in five games) in this Champions League. And Xavi does not have a forward as accurate as Lewandowski. “You have to try to get him out of the area as much as possible because there it is definitive,” stressed the coach.

“You have to be patient”

Removing the Pole from his natural habitat (the area) is a fundamental objective for a Barça that will play two games in the same night. The one from Munich, forced to break a historic streak, appealing the coach to his players with a forceful message: “I hope the latest defeats do not affect us psychologically,” he said in allusion, although he did not cite them directly, at 2-8 in Lisbon (August 2020) and 0-3 at the Camp Nou (September 2021).

“I tell my players that the pressure is on me, I am here to help them,” said Xavi, whose speech was completely realistic. “It is not the best scenario, it is a complicated ballot. But we will try,” proclaimed the coach. Barça does not think about that possible descent to the second European division, with the economic drama that it would unleash.

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Also assuming Xavi that any reconstruction is a complex and difficult process. “There is work, a lot of work ahead. This is not overnight. You have to be patient,” claimed the technician, who has not been in charge for a month, a prisoner, as happened in his day to Koeman, from a sporting decline that takes Barça to the edge of the ledge in Munich.