Ancelotti - Xavi: the one on top, the one looking for a place
*Real - Barca: 3am on Friday, March 3, Hanoi time.
If there are no incidents, after today Ancelotti will be the opponent on the coaching bench that Xavi has faced the most since the former midfielder returned to lead Barca.
For the first time, Xavi lost close to the Spanish Super Cup. The second time, it was Ancelotti's turn to receive a bitter fruit by defeat in La Liga. Phase one of the current season, the Italian strategist successfully avenged also in La Liga. But earlier this year, Xavi beat Carletto in the Spanish Super Cup to win the first trophy of his Barca coaching career. For the time being, the balance of results is even.
If you include this pre-season friendly in Las Vegas (USA), Ancelotti has met Xavi five times. At the end of this season, unless there is a change in the leadership of Real or Barca or both, these two people of two generations will have faced each other eight times, in less than two years.
The stories written and told about Ancelotti are many, his 2016 memoir "Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches" is one of the most valuable football documents. Xavi of course has nothing, if not counting two years of training in Qatar, he has only started training in Europe for less than a year and a half. The person who has reached the top must of course be different from the one who is looking for a foothold.
However, it is not difficult to recognize the difference in football school, ideology, and coaching style of Carletto and Xavi.
Ancelotti does not necessarily have to shape and explain the way he won. He won and won so many championships, he just needed to lead quietly, the result was naturally a loud shout. As for Xavi, people still have to count how many games his team lost, how many titles won, how failed in the European Cup. When you are not yet successful but have faith, you naturally have to find a way to protect the process.
Carletto's life is also seen when he is the only coach to have ever won the national championship in the five strongest football countries in Europe: with Milan in Serie A, Chelsea in the English Premier League, PSG in Ligue 1, Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga and last year with Real in La Liga.
Experience with so many big clubs also means that Ancelotti has to learn to cope with a lot of pressure and find a way to survive against powerful but "one by one" bosses, from Silvio Berlusconi, Roman Abrahmovich, Nasser Al -Khelaifi to Florentino Perez.
Former defender Philipp Lahm told The Guardian that just a few weeks after arriving in Munich, Carletto leaned close to his ear and asked: "At Bayern, who has the more say, Uli Hoeness or Karl-Heinz Rummenigge?" Also while leading Bayern, one day, Ancelotti stood in the middle of the dressing room with a piece of paper in his hand listing five items that the club's leadership required the players to implement. He looked down at that piece of paper and said in front of the players: "The board instructed me to read you this list. Honestly, this is not my job, I am not leading a team. youth team. But if the bosses want, I will."
It is Ancelotti's wisdom and ingenuity to survive and avoid collision in every football culture he sets foot in. He always sought to avoid conflicts. But if there are conflicts, Carletto resolves them with "soft power".
Fernando Llorente, who had a short spell at Napoli when Ancelotti took charge of the team, once told El Pais newspaper: "What makes him different is the way he treats each player. He says and do it in front of them. Because you know, someone will say one thing in front of them, and do another behind their back."
Hirving Lozano, the Mexican player who was personally called by Carletto to convince him to join Napoli, also told The Players' Tribune: "My first night in Italy, Ancelotti took me and my family to dinner with his whole family. Ancelotti also brings his grandchildren. Sometimes people don't realize how difficult it is for a player to go abroad, change the culture. Especially with Latin American players, because the culture in Europe is so different. But Ancelotti simply has a way to make you feel at home."
It is the background and the experiential environment that once again contribute to shaping a person. Also Lahm gave an explanation: Ancelotti was once a member of the legendary Milan team under Arrigo Sacchi, who enlightened the concepts and models of football for outstanding individuals in football history. Ancelotti was therefore on the field at a time of tactical revolution, with ball-oriented play combined with regional players – an indicator that still exists today.
Playing at the top, under a talented strategist and next to his class teammates, Ancelotti has gained a deep understanding of the game, players and professional football environment from the moment.
When following his coaching career until now, Ancelotti is self-aware that it is difficult for him to keep up with young people. And if you no longer have the strength to chase, bring back the young people to accompany you. That's why alongside Carletto on the current helm, we see his son Davide, an adversary and video analyst. Davide is the embodiment of the new generation of football and he helps Ancelotti find reconciliation.
It is wrong to say that Ancelotti has no tactics or lessons. Every team that Carletto leads has a tactical imprint, and as an Italian, he always takes the defense as the foundation. The 63-year-old coach himself also humbly shared: "I think I can help the team in defense, but when attacking, I always find a way to bring freedom to the players, help them express themselves. reveal all the best qualities."
Football is still basically a game and once played, it must be comfortable and fun. That is the purpose of Ancelotti's football thought. As Lahm puts it: "Football players do many things without words. Ancelotti has mastered the 50 most important words needed in every language of the sport. Club international football has always been there. And the Real, PSG, Chelsea, Bayern or Milan teams each with a style, a nuance, Ancelotti is the ideal solution to take over such teams in a quiet way. "
There is a paradox that exists in recent seasons. In an age where everyone seems to like to talk about shapes, intricate patterns, position-oriented football or pressure, ... Real has never been a heavy reference. in academic comparisons. But they themselves won the Champions League consecutively.
Football is decided by the players, who hold the ball on the field. The role of the coach is to create a platform for those individuals to manifest and increase their chances of winning, which also means reducing the risk of failure with tactical solutions.
But is it too strict in terms of tactics also sometimes restrain the legs of the players? A science-heavy football will be successful in the long run if placed in a perfect environment, with no random elements. But football is full of randomness and uncontrollable factors. In the most chaotic and stressful times on the pitch, it is the players with their quality and spontaneous outbursts that become the antidote. Ancelotti always knows that he always has excellent players in his hand, so he simply lets them do it, not forced.
"For me, Pep Guardiola is still a great coach, but the key in coaching is knowing how to develop the players and I had the best years under Ancelotti. Not only because I was in the best shape, but also because I have the best feelings and the desire to train." Javi Martinez, a former Bayern player, once said so.
In short, Ancelotti is the perfect embodiment of a coach in the "chameleon" style, which means always improvising and flexible in solutions.
Xavi is basically the perfect man of the Barca philosophy. He was absorbed in the direction of Pep Guardiola, who directly understood the thought of Johan Cruyff. He shares the pitch with outstanding teammates such as Iniesta, Busquets and Messi. Together, they take the balance of defense and attack to the next level. Now, body shape is not the deciding factor, but the key lies in thinking about space and time.
Enjoying all that, it's easy to understand why Xavi is a man who always appreciates the football philosophy he was trained in. The coach is always aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the method and style of play that they choose, but they simply choose because it is their taste, their belief.
However, the glory of the player's time has never been a guarantee for success as a coach, and vice versa. Saying Xavi does not have any coaching experience is not true, because he also worked in Qatar and won the national championship with Al-Sadd club. However, the level between this country's football and the top European football is too lame.
In season one of the documentary series "FC Barcelona: A New Era" to be broadcast at the end of 2022 on the Amazon Prime platform, there was an episode in which Xavi passionately talked about the football model he wanted. made at Barca. That model is based on the four letters "P" and is the successor to the three-letter "P" model that has always been the guideline at Barca, including: position - position, possession - control, pressure – pressure to withdraw the ball, and perception – the sense or sense of space to perceive space and unaccompanied teammates.
Xavi is clearly a leader with a clear philosophy and ideas. However, he is not exactly a conservative coach, living and dying with what has been molded. Is it true that Xavi is still preserving the Johan Cruyff school of football in the opinion of the majority?
Less than a year and a half is too short a time to accurately measure and evaluate Barca's progress under Xavi. But if you compare the second half of last season - when Xavi just sat in the hot seat of Camp Nou, and more than half of this season of 2022-2023, Xavi shows that he is a person who has receptive to the current. flowing with the times, as well as being pragmatic when necessary.
In the beginning, Barca's 4-3-3 system under Xavi always emphasized the role of wingers on the side. Unlike Barca when Xavi was still playing, he wanted his midfielders to become bait, trying to push the ball quickly to the wingers on either side. Barca is therefore ready to cross the ball regardless.
By this season, when he had partly consolidated the human resources in the squad from efforts to maximize revenue - including mortgaging a part of the club's assets - Xavi established a modern tactical system. . It is a 3-2-2-3 or 3-2-5 formation when attacking, with the midfield square as the focus of play and sacrificing a winger. This structure is similar to those of Man City, Bayern Munich or Arsenal.
That adjustment to the system, combined with Ter Stegen's high-pressure play and excellence in form, is why Xavi's Barca became the team with the best defense in La Liga. But when stepping on the continental playground, where mistakes are easier to pay for, with opponents with a higher intensity of play than the common ground in La Liga, Barca immediately collapsed.
A recent article by data analysis writer John Muller in The Athletic pointed out that: Xavi's Barca is currently a version of the "new normal", which means that other modern teams all play with different players. similarities to Barca, and Barca also plays with their similarities. In short, the change is now a good thing, but Barca's way of playing is no longer a secret or their own peculiarity, nor is it a product of the famous tiki-taka.
This reflects a point that Philipp Lahm once made in November 2021: "Times have changed. Nowadays, coaches are gradually losing some of their influence and players are increasingly decisive in football. Football is getting faster and stronger. Even Guardiola has to find a way to adapt at Man City and the main characters on the football stage are now athletes who look like Usain. Bolt, not the form of a 1m70 tall Xavi like before."
At least, Xavi is still gradually restoring the Barca project. With a reputation built during his time playing football, Xavi has a good base to control the room in the Barca dressing room in the post-Messi era, where there are many young faces but also many veteran players. number.
In an interview with beIN Sports in early February this year, Lewandowski said of Xavi like this: "Xavi's player quintessence surrounds him as a manager. He has faith, a strong belief. strong like when he was playing football, knowing what he was doing, what needed to be done and believing it was right. You felt it, you believed it and you wanted to be in the same boat with him."
And in the Amazon Prime footage, one can see a Xavi skillful enough to motivate young players, but also determined enough to gradually eliminate the older gods.
At a team meeting before the derby with the Spanish, this was also the first match of Barcelona, Amazon Prime's video recorded Harvey saying to the students in a happy atmosphere: "Next Christmas, you will have a five-day holiday. But if you win today, I will give you another day. You can use it to play in Disney, or rest with your family and relatives, and do what you want to do. OK? But my next challenge for all of you is, "If you score two goals in the 30th minute, I will buy you dinner in Ferrand or Salvaye. Anyway, I haven't been in Barcelona for six years. How did you like it? What is the loss? "Ah."
Xavi's time playing football in his prime was a different football scene than it is now, when he led Barca. And to be able to find a place for himself in a time when football tactics are no longer a secret and one's own recipe for success, Xavi will need more time to accumulate experience, just like how. Ancelotti has got.
