Xavi tarnishes Barça's quarter-final berth and Cubarsi's great performance
Xavi Hernández once again ruined a great night for Barça. The coach's obsession with blaming the press for all his ills, like Pablo Iglesias in his best days in Congress, ended with a quote from journalist Ramón Besa about the buffoonery of being knocked out in the group stage last year against Shakhtar Donetsk. What was an accurate criticism at the time, Xavi turned it into a lowly settling of scores with no time or form to justify it.
Behind Xavi's smokescreen about the team he will leave in June, there is a good game of Barcelona breathing a sigh of relief at having one more month of sporting life and several million assured by breaking into the top eight teams in Europe.
The opportunity to give value to his line-up was also wasted by the coach. Yamal, Cubarsí and Fermín were a huge risk that gave an unexpected result. In 16 minutes, Fermín and Cancelo had scored two goals. Cubarsí is a spectacle at the age of 16 and his future is that of Barça with a possible call-up from De la Fuente for the European Championship. Rrahmani put fear into the 50,000 fans who went up to Montjuic to watch Barça, but Lewandowski finished off the scoring in the 83rd minute after four years without knowing this Champions League round.
You have to give Xavi credit for the fact that since he announced his departure the team has not lost, although you also have to remind him that we are talking about a top level squad in the hands of a coach who is unable to find the key to good play and who made extra-sporting excuses after every game he did not win.
Napoli did not notice the extra motivation that their president De Laurentis put on the table: 10 million to be shared if they got through the round and won a quarter-final. The prize for the club was to be present at the next Club World Cup to be organised by FIFA in style in the summer of 2025. The Neapolitan club did not qualify and Juventus will be the other Italian team alongside Inter Milan.
Calzona's side are no longer even a shadow of the all-powerful side that won the Italian league last season and their stars are less bright. Osimhen, Kvaratskhelia, Politano and Di Lorenzo are no longer enough, although that does not detract from Barcelona's good performances that earned them a deserved place in the quarter-finals. The best are there: Bayern, PSG, City, Arsenal and Real Madrid, who could already face their eternal rivals in the quarter-finals in April.
Barça had a great night in exile at Montjuic. A cold stadium, with low visibility tickets and even zero visibility, as can be seen on the club's website, needed a boost to make them forget the social and economic disaster in which they live between debts and the Negreira case. Well deserved, despite Xavi.
