“Bottleona”, Losing mentality, or just bad luck. Whatever you wanna call it, the FC Barcelona tendency for Complacency goes way back. It happened so many times in the Blaugrana history, and it might happen again. But it’s Xavi’s job to make sure that the players don’t go there. 1 good month doesn’t change the fact that FC Barcelona has no room for complacency this season. Every game is like a final. So games like the one vs Galatasaray are important so the players will learn that nothing is given to them.
Xavi knows that, because he experienced it as a player. If you take a look at the best seasons of Barça, you’ll see that in order to win the UCL, we had to be nothing short of amazing. Meanwhile, other teams can play mediocre football and somehow reach the final rounds of the competition. You know who i’m talking about.
No time to relax
Playing the FC Barcelona way is amazing, but it comes with a price of no complacency. It’s very easy to just pass the ball around when you have 70% possession. Moreover, when you have the ball you can sense that the goal will just come. But it doesn’t work like this, and we saw it in our most dominant years as well.
Most games under coach Pep started with a ‘bang’. The team used with an ‘all out attack’ with the ambition to score as quickly as possible. I think Pep knew as well that if you don’t score quickly, the other team will just keep defending deep and it will make your life harder.
It’s important for Xavi to make sure the team is doing things fast. That’s the way to get into free spaces and score a lot of goals. Our best games under Xavi so far are those that we played quickly. We have to see many more games like the 2 legs vs Napoli, the 2nd half vs Valencia than the game vs Galatasaray.
I’m even a little bit happy that we need to work hard in order to win in Turkey. That way I know we won’t witness the FC Barcelona Complacency in that match. Because we have great examples from last years of what can happen when we come to the away leg with a 2-3 goals lead…
