Xavi’s controversial reaction to Barcelona’s tough defeat, looking at the camera: “A shame!”

He Barcelona lost 3-5 against Villarreal at the Olympic Stadium this Saturday for the 22nd matchday of the Spanish championship, which Real Madrid provisionally leads. The match was full of alternatives, with a movie ending, and Xavi Hernandez remained in the eye of the storm.

The coach and club legend took over as manager in November 2021, just months after Lionel Messi’s departure for PSG, and has yet to make Barça what it was in decades gone by, when it dominated at local and was a protagonist in international competitions.

That feeling has intensified this season and more precisely in recent weeks, eliminated from the Copa del Rey, fallen to Real Madrid in the Super Cup and further and further away in La Liga, which sees its humble Catalan neighbor, the surprising Girona, fighting.

This Saturday they experienced another crazy match, which once again ended in defeat. Villarreal won 2-0 thanks to goals from Gerard Moreno (42nd minute) and Ilias Akhomach (54th minute) and Barcelona turned the situation around in a flash thanks to goals from Ilkay Gundogan (60th), Pedri (68 °) and Eric Bailly, in his own goal (71). In ’84 the Yellow Submarine equalized again with Gonçalo Guedes. And the culé team felt they had won on the hour mark, but VAR annulled a penalty in favor of handball.

“A shame, a shame!” Xavi expressed himself by looking at the camera to complain about the decision, perhaps influenced because the controversy occurred days after a scandalous refereeing which benefited Real Madrid against Almería.

To add more flavor to the match, Villarreal ended up winning it thanks to goals from Alexander Sorloth (90+9), after a pinball and a series of errors in the Barcelona area, and from José Luis Morales (90+12 ).

“In the end they will sanction me. I don’t want to create more controversy. It’s our mistakes, the defeat, but that play marks the match. The fourth referee tells me it’s a penalty, that it hits him in the elbow. There are the images”, said Xavi after the match to justify his anger.

His comment has to do with the harsh sanctions that La Liga usually imposes on players and coaches who complain about refereeing.

Beyond this circumstance, the coach has taken control of the moment his team is going through, 10 points behind in La Liga but still in the running in the Champions League (against Napoli in the round of 16).

“I am the most responsible. We need to change the dynamic as soon as possible because the championship is becoming very difficult for us. We deserved to win, coming back against a team that defended very well. We weren’t able to reach 4-2.” and then we didn’t know how to make a tactical foul before the 3-3. It’s the summary of the season. The team is emotionally very bad, but as a club we have come out of worse situations,” said Xavi.

“I am a lover of the ball, I don’t want to lose it even at home. And I want to play on the opposite field. This has to do with maturity, we lack maturity. We are under construction, they are very young players who need these owners they learn from home “Only improvements based on chestnuts”, acknowledged Xavi when speaking of the series of errors that led to Villarreal’s fourth goal, duly added to the regulation.

And he added, sincere as rarely in these two years and two months that he has coached Barcelona: “Today I’m screwed. I can’t say it’s a good day. It’s a hard blow. We were very good in the second half until the 3- 2 and we deserved the victory, but we lost it. We have to get up. It’s a difficult day to digest for me as a coach, but above all for the players who I saw very messed up. I have to lift their morale.”