It’s like some of the nauseating stuff they have in The Blizzard.
Insightful interview with Xavi Hernandez
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Obvious point but it's one thing to see football the way he sees it and another to get a group of less talented players to do it. That's not counting the management aspect of managing different people and personalities.
Who knows but he might just end up a coach / assistant coach.
Who knows but he might just end up a coach / assistant coach.
Well Laudrup is a bit of a Cruyff-ite himself and he was relatively good with Getafe and Swansea.
Great stuff from Xavi, cant be more obvious that he will be a manager one day. I dont agree with the part about talent over physicality, you can have bags of talent and not be up for it physically (Reus). I also think there should be more than one way of playing football, thats what makes things interesting, the game is constantly evolving.
Comes off as a sanctimonious POS in both of these interviews. Time will tell whether the success Barca have had over the past 15 years is the result of a perfect storm or because they genuinely are just better than everyone in every way.
Ofcourse they are better, that's a half generation worth of dominanceThat notion makes no sense. How will 'time tell'? If they're worse later, that will prove they haven't been better before? That's not exactly how time works.
Oh dear, I'll spell it out. Since the mid 00's Barcelona have been been the best team in the world. There is no denying that. Nothing that happens on the football pitch in the future can take that away from them, that's not what I meant.
The way Xavi was coming across in the interviews, to me at least, was pretentious, sanctimonious and he was talking down to every other footballing philosophy and ideology in the world because they're "better" than everyone. And by better, I mean in the way we encounter people in all walks of life who think they're better than others and look down on them.
It's very easy for Xavi to say these things when he's part of a generation to come through Barcelona's academy that just so happened to be the spine of Spain's World Cup winning team and also had the best player ever to play the game on top of that.
The past 10 years have been the most successful in Barcelona's history. Is it because they're "more than a club" and are just "better" than everyone in every way from the first team down to the cafeteria staff or is it the perfect storm of world class players coming through the academy with Messi on top of that?
The next 15 years will show us. If a new generation of world class players comes through their academy and their philosophy continues to be the most successful in Europe then you'd really have to tip your hat to them.
At the moment, they're a once in a lifetime generation of players, a perfect storm that are rightfully acclaimed to have been the best in the world. It doesn't mean that Barcelona's way of doing things is better than everyone else's and they can look down their noses at everyone else, the way Xavi came across in these interviews.
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I love his point about how “useful” statistics actually are. Fully agree with him that far too much emphasis is put on them in modern football. They will never come close to the same analysis as what your eyes can see.
@SillyUsername take a look at how many "new" academy players currently make the first team.
The barcelona way(really the ajax way) of a single uniform playing philosophy enforced at every level, with players raised and nurtured within that emvironment, and chosen because of their ability to adapt to it, is imho objectively the best when it comes to the academy. But fr the first team? At the end of the day, you need luck too. Barcelona were lucky with an incredible generation of players, and that luck has since dried up. So they jave to sign players from "outside". The advantage of having a clear philosophy is that it helps giving the club stability nd continuity
But at the end of the day, barcelona won because of their talent. Thei philosophy was a factor, but ultimately without the individual talents of puyol, xavi, iniesta busquets, pedro, Messi, pique....they wouldn't have been nearly as successfull. La Masia nurtured them and made them reach their full potential maybe(except Messi. Messi could have come up through Stoke City academy, wouldn't have made a difference), but it didn't magically increase their talent
The barcelona way(really the ajax way) of a single uniform playing philosophy enforced at every level, with players raised and nurtured within that emvironment, and chosen because of their ability to adapt to it, is imho objectively the best when it comes to the academy. But fr the first team? At the end of the day, you need luck too. Barcelona were lucky with an incredible generation of players, and that luck has since dried up. So they jave to sign players from "outside". The advantage of having a clear philosophy is that it helps giving the club stability nd continuity
But at the end of the day, barcelona won because of their talent. Thei philosophy was a factor, but ultimately without the individual talents of puyol, xavi, iniesta busquets, pedro, Messi, pique....they wouldn't have been nearly as successfull. La Masia nurtured them and made them reach their full potential maybe(except Messi. Messi could have come up through Stoke City academy, wouldn't have made a difference), but it didn't magically increase their talent
Agreed, although if you have a clear philosophy of how you want to play the game and its geared towards getting the best out of 'gifted' players as Barcelona's philosophy quite clearly is..
Then you're a) more likely to have a clear idea of the profile of player you need when looking at the market b) attract the most gifted players who will know you're likely to get the best out of them.
That is why whilst I think La Masia is clearly a special academy, for me where the philosophy at Barca comes into its own is that it provides very useful parameters by which you can hone in on the right type of players for your club, ensuring more often than not.. you'll find a good fit. Big signings by Barca, rarely fail as much as United's signings in recent years and that is because we have a very ad hoc system of buying players with little thought as to how they fit into a particular style of football or how they complement existing players.
This isn't just Barca though, even Real etc will generally have a framework and look at players who can handle being at a Barca/Bayern.
To be fair no one thinks stats can replace what you see with your eyes.
Stats aren't supposed to be a replacement, rather a supplement.
I could have told you all of that and I'd be a crap manager 
It's the same principles most youth coaches use today too, at least here. I think at youth level it's the perfect way to coach and make players grow both technically and tactically but to make it work in a competitive environment at the top level in the world is very different.
It's the same principles most youth coaches use today too, at least here. I think at youth level it's the perfect way to coach and make players grow both technically and tactically but to make it work in a competitive environment at the top level in the world is very different.
@Sigma @Keeps It tidy Loads of people use stats to dispute things that people claim to see. It happens on here quite frequently, as well as other football discussions all over the Internet.
Barcelona were a big club but never a massive club in European terms until the mid 00's. Before the 90's they weren't even a particularly big club. Real Madrid were always the team.
They talk like they invented football.
The physicality argument they bring up like they had some kind of handicap because they were short in height. Other way round for me. They ran around faster than any team I've ever seen live when I was at Wembley for the 2011 final. They ran, ran and ran a bit more. Technically superb but I came away thinking physically superior to us in every way.
They talk like they invented football.
The physicality argument they bring up like they had some kind of handicap because they were short in height. Other way round for me. They ran around faster than any team I've ever seen live when I was at Wembley for the 2011 final. They ran, ran and ran a bit more. Technically superb but I came away thinking physically superior to us in every way.
I do agree about the physicality part. I think people always underestimate the athleticism and stamina of technical players.
Ideally he will become Barcelona manager just as Messi is retiring, to show us all he has it sussed
In fairness, he, Iniesta, Busquets, Messi, Pedro, Pique all grew up in Barcelona academy from an early age, they weren't bought.
In fairness, he does say talent always wins, which is another way of saying money wins.
Pique was bought back from us.
Yes but he still grew up in their academy and they bought him for nothing really. I think Xavi's point was they grew up playing a certain way all their lives and they knew how to think that way by default.
I just burst out laughing at this point imagining Xavi trying to coach someone like Rooney with this philosophical depth.
Xavi will coach players of a certain intellect, or be lost.
When you break it down what he is saying is pretty basic.I just burst out laughing at this point imagining Xavi trying to coach someone like Rooney with this philosophical depth.
Xavi will coach players of a certain intellect, or be lost.
Yes, he’s a pretentious twerp.
There are so many issues with Ajax I don't even know where to begin.
Yest, the repitition is a big issue and a big problem with the current state of Dutch football is Louis van Gaal. He is a good first team coach but a terrible youth developer. We are paying the price for the success of Ajax in 1995.
I will make a big thread on Dutch football and it's failings.
People over here still talk about 'Dutch Philosophy' and have no idea what it even means. It's become a buzz word devoid of any meaning.
It is one of cosmic irony that Germany now play 'Ducth Football' better than any national team, using all the concepts we made famous by Johan Cruijff and based on Pep Guardiola's work at Bayern, while people over here (Netherlands) are bothered about horizontal passing and possession statistics and reminiscing about the past.
This interview tickled and educated in equal measure. I've learnt that Xavi is in fact Dr. Who, also.
You can take a lot of it, like the last quote, as arrogance, or honesty - whichever, it's amusing.
That's relative. Players who have got by on physical superiority and raw talent could well struggle with what is elementary for others.
With that last quote it definitely seems arrogant but, I feel I like a lot of people have that sort of mindset without vocalizing it. There is a lot of people who do not rate someone as World Class until they play for a club like Barcelona or Real Madrid.
Yes please
Yeah, I enjoy the ambiguity of the statements and how they are open to interpretation. Some will call him pretentious or arrogant, others will see it as genial and honest. Tickled me he classes Barca as Master's Degree, mind.
Man City under Pep is trying to play the same way as Barca. She is doing alright so far without Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and Puyol.