Boss Xavi Hernandez's absurd excuse for Barcelona's failures this season

Barcelona started this season 2023/24 with the objective of improving their performance in the previous year. They had been champions of La Liga, but in the Champions League they had not even been able to advance to the knock-out stages. So now the challenge was to achieve that, while repeating their success in Spain.

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While Los Blaugranas are competing in all tournaments for now, things have not gone as they had hoped. The team's performances have been disappointing and as a result they are far behind the leaders in the Spanish league standings. In addition, they suffered a heavy 4-1 defeat against Real Madrid in the Super Cup final, while in the Copa del Rey they had to work harder than expected to beat Barbastro and Unionistas de Salamanca, two teams from lower divisions.

This led to the players and coach being harshly criticized by the press and fans. And this Saturday Xavi Hernandez gave a press conference in which he tried to explain the reason for the poor level of the team in the last matches. However, his words were not very convincing.

"We accept the level of demand, but many times there is a lack of optimism. We are playing with 16, 17 and 18 year olds and I have also been criticized for that. We are building. Failure would be not trying," said the manager. While it is true that there are many young players in the squad such as Pedri, Gavi, Lamine Yamal and Marc Guiu, the truth is that they are accompanied by stars such as Robert Lewandowski, Ilkay Gundogan, Joao Felix and Jules Koundé. Moreover, they compete against other teams that have a much lower quality, with the exception of Real Madrid.

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He is confident in the team

Xavi was then asked whether he would prefer to win La Liga or the Copa del Rey, and his answer was ambitious: "We can't discard either of them. We will go for the three titles we have left. Motivated, excited. Win games by being convincing. Everything is at stake, except the Super Cup".