The barcelonismo does not hide his depression. The season of high hopes, like that bar J.R. Moehringer, has been twisted at the first change. The effective official propaganda, so credible that it was assumed as realistic by the social mass, has been stamped against the Champions League, a competition impervious to false resurrections that only bows down to full-fledged teams. Barça is "under construction", Xavi Hernández acknowledged yesterday, and goes to the Santiago Bernabeu with the urgent need to be credible again so as not to worsen the European wound. Last season's match on the same stage (0-4) is taken for a walk at Can Barça as a close psychological hold. The azulgrana team, already coached by Xavi, was much worse back then than now. Today Barça is leader of the League and wants to return home maintaining its status. Two results are worth it, winning and even drawing. Losing would aggravate the sadness.
If Barça is stressed, Madrid is still an institution that lives relaxed in the box and on the pitch. Also financially. Ancelotti, in himself a calm man, comes from winning a Champions League that nobody counted on, skill only within the reach of a club of unfathomable resilience. Let's put that recent 0-4 for example. A result like this would have destroyed Barça, but the Whites, experts in minimizing the effect of any bad news, dusted off their shirts and went ahead without further ado. Barça has desecrated the Bernabeu on many occasions (Rijkaard's 0-3, Guardiola's 2-6, Luis Enrique's 0-4...). He needs to do it today, get his pulse back, and not make a big deal out of it again.
Being a Barça coach is sometimes ungrateful. Especially when the objectives crumble with the same fragility as a house of cards. Xavi Hernández recalled it, that in his most complicated week since he landed on the Barcelona bench ten months ago, he faces the visit to the Santiago Bernabeu with the mission of reviving a hit team, immersed in a sea of doubts and criticism after remaining virtually eliminated from the Champions, the maximum illusion of the barcelonismo.
“We are still under construction. The notes must be put at the end of the course. It is true that in the Champions League we have not been good but in the League we are. We are leaders”, recalled the coach, who sees the Bernabeu as an opportunity to resurface. To claim. To win. And it is not worth adding the three points in any way. “We have to flee from resultism. You have to win by playing well. Being protagonists. At the Bernabeu you have to be brave and daring, you have to be patient and move Madrid from side to side because then it also suffers ”, he insisted.
It already happened last year, when Barcelona managed to thrash the whites 0-4. "We weren't doing well either. The classics are unpredictable”, recalled the coach. Xavi clings to that memory and to his daily work. He more stubborn than anyone and more culé than ever. Demanding their players have “more brains”. There is a suspicion that Barça could face the classic without any of the regular captains. Something that the coach did not want to confirm or deny, although he did remember that it has already happened a couple of times this season. Not even Busquets is already irreplaceable.
If they gave him the choice, Xavi would not hesitate. He would rather put on his boots, go out and enjoy the date. “It is in these games where you have to measure up. It is an opportunity to become more leaders. You have to be brave ”, claimed the coach, always championing optimism. And the day he doesn't make it, he'll walk away. “I will not be a problem for Barça. I am very cool. I will not stop working. And when I don't see it clearly, I'll go home, "he sentenced.
Real Madrid, after a historic double last season, are experiencing good times and that, for a veteran coach who knows everything like Carlo Ancelotti, comes in handy. He seems happy and relaxed, possibly enjoying the last years of his career. The Italian is the only Whites' coach in recent times who has survived a beating from Barcelona in a classic without major setbacks, and more so at the Bernabeu. Something similar took Julen Lopetegui and Rafa Benítez forward not so long ago.
Ancelotti is so comfortable at the moment in the club (Florentino Pérez said of him in the last assembly that he was the best in the world) that he even allows himself to joke about the idea of taking Modric out as a center forward in the last classic: “No I'm going to invent anything. Last year I tried and they gave me a stick.
Ancelotti is above all a practical guy. His philosophy does not speak of styles. He summed it up quite well yesterday when asked about the opponent: “For me, it's a mistake to only have one style of play. I limit myself to trying to make the players comfortable on the pitch”.
He has said it before. For Ancelotti, there are many ways to play football well and if you win, any one is worth it, none is better than another. In the noble zone of the Bernabeu they praise the way in which Ancelotti has faced the problems; especially last year, when he did not shake his hand when sitting heavyweights like Bale or Hazard, the two highest salaries in the squad. In this nobody asks him about the Belgian, resigned to the substitution.
Confident in the hard core of the team (Courtois, Modric, Kroos and Benzema), Florentino Pérez smiles at the game that Ancelotti has taken out of Vinícius, a player that Zidane was about to unhinge and kick out of the club. Not even the shadow of Kylian Mbappé is long for Carlo Ancelotti. These are times for Vinícius, Rodrygo, Valverde, Militão, Camavinga or Tchouaméni, the young people who have taken a step forward with the veteran coach, the legacy that Ancelotti will leave at Madrid.
