FC Barcelona remains in crisis! Xavi particularly despairs of the defense and says that mistakes make life difficult for her.
The embarrassing and dramatic 3-3 draw against basement child Granada increased Barça’s gap to Real Madrid to ten points. Xavi’s side had to come from behind twice and rely on a brace from 16-year-old Lamine Yamal to salvage at least a point.
It was the fifth time in 2024 that Barcelona conceded three or more goals in a game, taking the number of goals conceded this calendar year to 23 – more than any other club in Europe’s top five leagues.
Xavi spoke about Barcelona’s defensive problems and admitted that the mistakes “destroy” any hope of defending the La Liga title.
“We gave up too much in defense. We conceded a lot of goals against Villarreal, and again today. That makes it difficult to win anything,” explained Xavi. “We have to minimize the number of errors. Defensive mistakes mark the season. We concede a lot of goals that are due to defensive errors. Defensive mistakes make life difficult for us. That was also the case with the draw in Granada at the beginning of the season.”
The appalling form of Barcelona’s defense is all the more astonishing considering how solid it was last season. In the 2022/23 title season, the Blaugrana only conceded 20 goals in 38 league games – 13 fewer than in the current season, although there are now 14 match days left to play.
When asked what has changed, Xavi replied: “That’s sport. Fluctuations in form, the loss of players, players who could no longer play together… lack of concentration. We did a lot of good things to win a lot of games, but these mistakes in defense are the difference between us and Madrid and Girona.”
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2024-02-12 22:44:57
#Embarrassment #Kellerkind #Xavi #despairs #Barça #defense
