Barça has champion numbers. With 31 points out of 36 possible, he scored the best start of the last five years and equaled Guardiola’s first season records, which ended with the title. Xavi’s Barça shines in the league, in striking contrast to the Champions League, where he has already been eliminated. The two sides of the Blaugrana team have a lot to do with the different level of demand between Spain and Europe. While in the league it becomes increasingly clear that everything will be clarified in a face to face between Madrid and Barça, in the Champions League the Blaugrana are still not up to the great ones. You have to accept this reality and understand that a team under construction can hardly compete to win everything. It’s time to prioritize. And the League is now the big goal.
This is why the complicated victory in Valencia was celebrated in style in the culé expedition to Mestalla. In the changing room and in the garage. The euphoric photo of Laporta on the lawn of the Ché stadium together with Rafa Yuste, Jordi Cruyff, Mateu Alemany and Enric Masip demonstrates the football and psychological importance of the three points obtained thanks to Lewandowski’s dying goal. Barça needed the victory to reaffirm their aspirations in the league and to recover emotional stability after the continental failure. The ‘all or nothing’ bet that the president has made, applying four financial levers and investing 200 million euros in purchases, requires immediate securities. And the longest but feasible way to get them is, without a doubt, the League.
Barça’s solvency in this competition (10 wins, 1 draw and 1 defeat, at the Bernabéu, in 12 games, with 29 goals in favor and only 4 conceded) provides optimism. And again after the Madrid stumbling in its stadium against a surprising Girona. The whites failed to overcome the draw (1-1) and the Blaugrana are only one point from the lead. The parity between Barça and Madrid is almost total (Ancelotti’s team has also won 10 games and drew 2, with 29 goals conceded and 10 conceded) and this suggests that both teams will compete for the championship until the last breath of the tournament . Barça have two theoretically convenient matches before the World Cup break, against Almería and Osasuna, while Real Madrid face Rayo and Cádiz. Xavi’s goal was to get a “number 9” to strengthen his candidacy. At the moment, his birthday was in Mestalla. The League’s dream is very much alive for the Blaugrana. And winning it would be a great success.
