If the one in Terrassa is delayed or does not arrive, the alternatives are Gallardo, Barjuan or Capellas
BARCELONA, 28 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The dismissal of Ronald Koeman opens a new stage on the bench of FC Barcelona and must also open it in a club that, at a sporting level, is adrift and that has more nightmares still on an economic level, so throwing away the “asset “Xavi Hernández seems the most plausible and, if not, an emergency solution would be sought.
Everything seems to indicate that, this time yes and after several ‘no’ for various reasons, Xavi Hernández will return home. He left as a player, still on the crest of the wave and before ‘walking’ through the grass, following the example of Carles Puyol. Six years later, he can return as a coach and as a savior.
It is not a good time to land on the Blaugrana bench if you look at the immediate present, but it is if you arrive with the conviction of beginning to change the mentality of the dressing room, which seems to be more of a losing team, mediocre, than a historic FC Barcelona that took football to the fore a little more than a decade ago, with Xavi as captain of the ship in the green.
Nor was it a good time, surely worse, when Ronald Koeman arrived. A myth of the club, living history of the entity, which took the reins when nobody else wanted, not even Xavi Hernández, after 2-8 in the Champions League against Bayern and with a team that had to be built.
Koeman leaves with a Copa del Rey, he does not leave empty, but with the erosion of his image as an idol for those who do not know how to separate what he did as a player from what he has been able to do as a coach. If Xavi Hernández arrives now, he will inherit a squad with survivors from his Barça, with former teammates, but also a shortlist of young talents who, well guided and trained, can be the basis of a great Barça.
If the forecasts are fulfilled and Terrassa lands again in Barcelona, with his background of an Al-Sadd who has become multi-time champion in Qatar, he will have to deal with the pressure that, almost certainly not turning the tables immediately, it will start with a blank year.
LaLiga is not lost, far from it, but it comes with a ballast of 6 lost points compared to the co-leader Real Madrid, against whom the first Clásico has escaped. In the ‘Champions’, the situation is precarious, with a new final against Dinamo to dream of the pass. And the Copa del Rey is the great ‘candy’, the fetish competition, but the one with the least weight.
Xavi, however, would bring joy and enthusiasm with him as well as a purely Barça style, that of the best times, which he would try and implement immediately so that those young people from the ‘Dream Teen’ such as Pedri, Gavi, Ansu Fati or Riqui Puig soak up what Xavi went through with Guardiola to try to emulate that team that was a joy to the eyes, and that filled the museum’s showcases.
His ‘Barça DNA’ is undoubted, he carries it inside. But if Xavi has not returned before it may be, in part, because in the dressing room he has friends, former teammates like Gerard Piqué, Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba or Sergi Roberto – the current captains – who are not going through their best moment, and whose ears should be stretched out by the egarense.
But as a “Barça asset” that Xavi is, as he sold himself in the last electoral period despite going within the sports organization of former candidate Víctor Font and his ‘Yes to the Future’ that did not prosper, it is time to leave the ‘isms’ aside and to focus on the future of a team that needs that spark that an idol can provide.
An idol who, unlike Koeman, does bet strongly on La Masia and with sense, not in terms of putting young people just for the sake of having nothing else. And without defenestrating Riqui, Demir or Nico due to specific errors. And Xavi Hernández, if he has the backing of the board and the fans and he is given time, he may be the ideal candidate.
ALTERNATIVES TO XAVI, FROM GALLARDO TO INTERIM
If Xavi Hernández still does not see it clearly, or if he prefers to come next summer to start from ‘zero’ and without sports ballast, the club is considering other alternatives. Since Koeman walked a tightrope, months ago and when in summer he stayed because there were no viable alternatives, there is talk of Marcelo Gallardo, Argentine River Plate coach.
Other names from the past were Erik ten Hag, the Dutch from the Ajax school that is so popular in Barcelona and who seems to be rejecting the offer from English Newcastle. But not everything will be long-term alternatives, if the Xavi operation fails in this month of October, which is already looking to take over from November.
An interim manager could be the ‘wild card’ answer. And it would go through the coach of Barça B, the former player of the ‘Dream Team’ Sergi Barjuan, and the figure of Albert Capellas is gaining more and more weight, an unremarkable coach who works in the grassroots football of this FC Barcelona and who has worked on several occasions with Jordi Cruyff, Laporta’s advisor and son of the ‘myth’.
After being Denmark’s Under-21 coach and previously passing through China, Borussia Dortmund or Tel Aviv’s Maccabi – where he made friends with Jordi Cruyff -, Capellas could take the team to make him play in the purest Barça de la Masia style and put the wickers of the new era. It would be the bridge between Koeman and Xavi, between the past and the future of a Barça that lives another key moment.