There was a day when Xavi Hernández knew how to get out of a Classic. Sunday brought us the Classic in which Vinícius has probably been very close to removing Xavi from his role as Barcelona coach.
That's the damage the absolutely brilliant Brazilian international did by winning the Spanish Super Cup by The whites scored three goals in his team's 4-1 victory in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (stream the replay on ESPN+).
Over the centuries, human nature has thrived on someone else's misfortune: Cassandra in Greek mythology, the old witches weaving by the guillotines in revolutionary Paris, Shakespeare writing incessantly about the “fatal flaws” in the character of great men and women, almost every great opera that ends in death and misery, decades of great blues music and almost every country-western song.
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So there will be a huge appetite in the media around the world to analyze, criticize and revel in the fall of a truly great, because Xavi suffered one of the most seismic setbacks of his career as he watched his team get thrashed in this first final. of the Spanish Season.
The headlines will happily speculate about his dismissal, opinion writers will shout about historical humiliation, entire mines of salt will be emptied into the Catalan's already bloody wounds. Schadenfreude (the German word for delighting in another person's downfall) will proliferate. However, that is categorically not the big story.
It's easy to find failure, decline, and underperformance anywhere we look in the world right now. What's harder to find is the kind of dizzying, relentless, uplifting excellence that Carlo Ancelotti's brilliant Madrid displayed in clinically destroying Spain's reigning champions.
This final was a thrilling and chilling display of athleticism, sporting aggression, brilliant competitive acumen, all-in-one team play and a demonstration that Ancelotti's team is just warming up for what could well be several years of total dominance in Spain.
Let's return to our first point: an eon ago, when Xavi was clearly proving to be precisely the right man (at that time) to lead Barcelona away from the rocks, to infuse it with a new, steelier and more competitive spirit and it started to win. regularly against The whitesA main weapon was to annul the brilliant Vinicius.
Ronald Araújo does not have a nickname “Lapa” (La Lapa), but when Xavi first asked him to mark Vinicius, he did so with the brio of an Italian defender from the 70s (it is a false rumor that Vinicius opened his locker in the locker room after a Classic defeat and asked Araujo what he was doing there).
In this latest chapter of their rivalry, one that originally seemed so balanced in favor of the 24-year-old Uruguayan and now it seems that Vinicius not only has Araujo's number but also enjoys playing with him, the course of revenge was served. cold had icicles hanging from it. Vinicius' record against Barcelona is now: 9 wins, 1 draw, 6 losses and 6 goals.
In the first goal, Araujo was defeated. He was literally nowhere as Vinicius (half Usain Bolt, half Fred Astaire) ran past Barcelona's stupid defense and danced around their helpless goalkeeper. From the fastest hat trick of Vinicius's life, to the moment Barcelona's best defender was sent off for kicking the Brazilian's ankle, this was a no-contest.
The essential thing was that, first of all, Vinicius knew that he was athletically faster than all the players in Barça colors. He knew it and chose to impose it.
Secondly, Vinicius continued this season's initially uncomfortable trend of him no longer being an outright left winger who cuts inside. He is now the second striker in a 4-4-2 system. He has a lot more positional freedom, and it's a lot harder for a guy like Araujo to man-mark (when previously the Uruguayan had the white line painted on the side of the pitch to help him squeeze out Vinicius' potential running space).
That the last thing any opponent should do is play a high defensive line when they are unwilling or unable to vengefully put pressure on the Madrid players feeding Vinicius, especially if the opponent has a goalkeeper who is quite allergic to playing the role of sweeper and positioning themselves on the edge of their own penalty area when the ball is in midfield.
Although Vinicius sometimes played as a “second striker” through the middle for Flamengo, a completely new version of this already phenomenal player is emerging.
He still has that box of tricks he used as a winger. The elasticity of the body, the absolute. audacity and daring to tell a defender that he is going in one direction, then in the other, and then back again: the invention, the boast, the fun. But if you watched his performance in Sunday's win, there really wasn't even a hint of “spectacle.”
Vinicius was in Terminator mode: totally focused on timing his runs behind, 100% determined to seal victory as firmly and quickly as possible. This was the 23-year-old at his most ruthless. This was top-notch and incredible to watch, no matter how much Barcelona's ineptitude helped the Brazilian.
The moment Madrid realized what Barcelona was doing defensively, they stifled their laughter of disbelief and set about completely defeating their historic rivals. Madrid's passing, running, unselfish vision and finishing were brutally relentless, and watching it all was a great spectacle.
Throughout the season the song, for Ancelotti's team, has been “Hey Jude.” And to be fair, Bellingham made a glorious assist for the first goal, was excellent positionally throughout and helped try to extinguish the Pedri-Frenkie de Jong-Ilkay Gündogan axis that, at least in a creative sense, could have given Barcelona a lifesaver.
But from the 1960s peace and love song of “Hey Jude,” we move on to a slight corruption of Julius Caesar's centuries-old declaration of Come Vidi Vici: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” This was Vini Vidi Vici: Vinicius came, saw where Barcelona's defects were and won.
It goes without saying that one wonders how much sweeter it was for him, here, to stand out, score a historic treble, win the Super Cup, be named man of the match and not have to suffer any of the racist abuse that, unfortunately, we are trying to eradicate from football.
I have already written in recent weeks in this space about the sinister (only for its rivals, happy for Madridistas) growing momentum in Madrid. A brilliant coach retained for a couple more seasons, a core of fantastic, competitive and Madrid-obsessed young players, most of whom are linked to the club for four or five more seasons and a stadium that is not only sensationally rebuilt but which can contribute significantly to the club's income generation. If Kylian Mbappé or Erling Haaland join this project imminently, then heaven will help Madrid's LaLiga rivals.
Rodrygo was happy to play second fiddle to his old friend and national team colleague Vinicius, but still managed to score and hit nine goals in his last 12 games in all competitions.
Bellingham also played a much more anchoring role, using the kind of positional intelligence and diligence that was sorely lacking in the way Barcelona attempted to contain their opponents. There will be games in which he will break into spaces that Vinicius likes to occupy, and the process of holding on to each other's times and specialties will continue. For those who think Bellingham is increasingly a favorite for the 2024 Ballon d'Or, I say: Good. It is absolutely spectacular.
But Vinicius is in that mix. When Ancelotti hailed his superstar after a 5-2 win at Anfield as “the most decisive player in the world,” he only left him room to add to that sentiment by calling Vinicius the best player in the world. There is growing evidence that, one day, he will have to use that phrase.
As for Xavi and Barcelona: They performed a defensive performance of complete and utter ineptitude. They were mentally and physically slower than their rival and, compared to their great victory in precisely this match a year ago, they have fallen back by a significant margin.
Most of their players give the impression that their athletic conditioning during training is insufficient, or that the intensity of Barcelona's training matches is too low or, and this is the issue that president Joan Laporta must analyze, they have lost respect or faith in your coach. In competitive aggression, Madrid was ruthless, implacable, intelligent and victorious; Barcelona was none of the above. The fact remains that, for the first time this season, the Spanish champions played with a lot of creative flair, moved the ball intelligently to create space and could have scored three or four goals, compared to the seven or eight Madrid could have scored. . had.
If Laporta believes that the return of João Cancelo and Iñigo Martínez will solve the abysmal defense, then there was enough creativity from Xavi's team to suggest that this season is not yet cancelled. If he believes that the team's performance is specifically the coach's fault, then dire days of evaluation and decision-making lie ahead in the Camp Nou offices.
