Xavi claims first trophy

Barça

Xavi’s side have not looked back since hit­ting the top of the league prior to the World Cup break. Since then, their record reads P9 W8 D1 L0 F19 A7, with the 1-1 league draw against Es­panyol at the Camp Nou on De­cem­ber 31 the only blem­ish on an oth­er­wise per­fect set of re­sults.

Granted, two of those wins were against rel­a­tive min­nows in the early rounds of the King’s Cup, but two of the oth­ers were against Betis and Real Madrid in the Span­ish Super Cup, which was played in Saudi Ara­bia, to bring Xavi’s first tro­phy as Barça head coach. That final, in which Barça com­fort­ably out­played the Span­ish cham­pi­ons to run out 3-1 win­ners, may just be enough to con­vince the squad, fans and media that this Barça is ca­pa­ble of going on to lift the La Liga title this year. In­deed, they still sit top of the perch on 47 points from 18 games, and al­though there is still more than half of the league sea­son left to play due to the World Cup break, hard fought 1-0 vic­to­ries like those at Atlético and Girona and at home to Getafe dur­ing the month of Jan­u­ary are ex­actly the type of wins that earn you league ti­tles.

Es­panyol

The periq­ui­tos’ form has been very promis­ing since the World Cup break, start­ing with the afore­men­tioned much-prized draw at the Camp Nou, reaped thanks to a 73rd minute penalty by Joselu. Fol­low­ing that, Diego Mar­tinez’ side beat Celta 3-1 at home in the King’s Cup, al­though they did get knocked out later in the month with a 1-0 de­feat in San Mamés, be­fore notch­ing cred­itable league wins at Getafe (1-2) and at home to Betis (1-0).

The other home game was a 2-2 draw at home to Girona, who equalised late on to deny Es­panyol the three points, and the last game of the month brought a sober­ing 3-1 de­feat away at Almería, but over­all, it has been a very sat­is­fy­ing start to 2023.

Girona

After the dis­ap­point­ment of los­ing at lowly Cac­ereno in the King’s Cup in De­cem­ber, two 2-2 league draws against Rayo (h) and Es­panyol (a) were fol­lowed by a glo­ri­ous come­back win against Sevilla at Mon­tilivi, after falling be­hind early on. An­other late Yan­gel Her­rera goal to add to the one that sal­vaged a point at Es­panyol a week ear­lier sealed three very wel­come points against the An­dalu­sians.

How­ever, the un­beaten league run of seven games was brought to an abrupt halt in the most dra­matic of cir­cum­stances in the next game, away at Vil­lar­real, which Girona lost to a highly con­tentious 99th minute penalty, after keeper Paulo Gaz­zaniga had al­ready saved a spot kick four min­utes ear­lier to add to sev­eral spec­tac­u­lar saves ear­lier in the game. De­spite then suf­fer­ing a sec­ond straight de­feat at the end of Jan­u­ary, los­ing 1-0 at home to league lead­ers Barça, the side now sit com­fort­ably in mid-table.