Can the tactical keys of coach Xavi Hernández revive the ‘tiki-taka’ of FC Barcelona?

Xavi Hernández is completing his third season as a coach and after leaving Al Sadd after payment of the termination clause of five million, he will continue it at the Camp Nou. For years before retiring, the one who will be Barça’s new coach had already expressed his intention to make the leap to the bench after hanging up his boots. Sports world from Spain.

Even as a footballer, he began to obtain the title of coach, did an internship for the Qatar national team while playing for Al Sadd and in June 2019 he obtained the UEFA Pro title, which allows him to direct any team.

That same summer he assumed the position as coach of Al Sadd, the team in which he had played for four seasons after leaving Barça in 2015. In these two and a half seasons that he has been a coach, Xavi is characterized by being a coach who bets on a clearly offensive style of play, marked by the influence of Cruyff and the style that he has enjoyed at Barça throughout his career. Possession and dominance of the game, playing on the wings or high pressure are some of the keys to his philosophy.

“The most important, the most beautiful, the most precious thing in football is having the ball, going on the attack and dominating the game with the ball,” said Xavi recently in a tactical talk at The Coaches Voice.

In that masterclass, he made it clear that he tries to dominate the games through the ball and defined himself as obsessed with possession. But in every training session he leads in Qatar, he insists on the importance of not having the ball just for the sake of having it, but that possession and dominance is the best way to create scoring chances and hurt the opponent.

Different systems

Xavi began playing with the 4-3-3 with which he lived his best years as a footballer at Barça, although in these two and a half seasons that he has been a coach he has shown a lot of tactical wealth and a variety of systems. He has been alternating mainly two game schemes, on the one hand the aforementioned 4-3-3 and on the other an offensive 3-4-3, which is the one that has given him the best results. This is a modern version of Cruyff’s system, but different from Koeman’s three-center drawing, since in this case there are no lanes that make it a five-defense in practice. Xavi’s Al Sadd has played many games with three defenders, in some cases centrals and in other cases converted into centrals, but he completes the team with four midfielders, two wingers and a benchmark nine. That is, a very ‘cruyffista’ system although with a double pivot and two offensive interiors in the center of the field instead of the diamond that Johan used.

High pressure

The pressure in the opposite field is another of the hallmarks of Xavi’s team, as it was at Guardiola’s Barça and is supposed to be from now on at the Camp Nou. His team goes to look for the rival upstairs, does not let him progress to the center of the field and tries to steal the ball as close as possible to the rival goal, since this way the chances of doing damage are even greater. Xavi’s Al Sadd jumped to the pressure in an organized way, with movements that are very worked in training and in which each player knows who and where to press. And the ten field players press, like an accordion, in a coordinated way.

The famous position game that is worked so hard at the FC Barcelona school has also been one of the keys to Xavi’s Al Sadd. The coach placed his players on the field always seeking to try to generate superiority over the rival in the areas of the field, to always have a free player to pass the ball to.

Open ends

Whether with 4-3-3 or with a defense of three, Xavi’s Al Sadd always played with two open ends on each wing. It is the way to open the field, to force the rival to move away to the sides of the area and thus generate spaces for the nine or the interiors.

In Al Sadd’s training sessions, the ball was the main protagonist, everything was trained with the ball, the rounds, the possession games, the position games … Xavi has ‘educated’ a group of players who are technically years old. light of those of Barça and their conception of understanding the game has changed. “I want them to enjoy the ball, not suffer,” he said in The Coaches Voice. “The ball is not a bomb, it is a treasure,” concludes Xavi. With that philosophy he will reach the Barça bench. (D)