Winning the league title last season with FC Barcelona was inarguably the biggest achievement for Xavi in his career as a professional coach. After having won the Spanish Super Cup, Xavi led his team to conquer the league after a gap of three years.
What made this win even more impressive was the difficult conditions in which Barcelona had to operate. The club had been suffering from financial problems for several years, and the club had to make a great effort to provide Xavi with the players that he needed to keep Barcelona competitive.
In such circumstances, it was the team’s defense that stood out and allowed Barcelona to win the league title, and that too with relative comfort in the end.
The backline of Kounde, Araujo, Christensen, and Balde, with Marc Andre Ter Stegen in goal, conceded only 18 goals in 37 league games, allowing Barcelona to get important victories.
However, despite the addition of players like Inigo Martinez and Joao Cancelo, the team’s defensive area is performing significantly worse this season.
As Mundo Deportivo has noted, the team has already conceded 14 goals when they took on Girona last night, and the four goals scored by Michel’s men take the tally of goals conceded by Barcelona to 18.
What makes this statistic even worse is that Barcelona have conceded these many goals only in 16 games, i.e., less than half of the league games.
The decrease in defensive efficiency is even more notable in home matches. Last season, Barcelona conceded only four goals in the nineteen home games they played.
However, this season, the Catalans have already conceded nine goals in nine home games, i.e., more than double what they conceded last season in less than half the games. Thus, Xavi will have to work on the defensive side of the team going forward.
It is not only the defenders who need to up their performance but, as Araujo claimed after the match against Girona, the changes in the team’s structure might also have to do a lot with this significant increase in the number of goals being conceded this season.
