The future looks bright

Barça

De­cem­ber was al­most a very bleak month for Barça fans in terms of re­sults, even if their team is start­ing to re­sem­ble the kind of Barça they would like to see under the stew­ard­ship of re­turn­ing club leg­end Xavi. It started with a 1-0 de­feat at home to Betis, the first under Xavi, but was fol­lowed by a hum­bling 3-0 Cham­pi­ons League loss in Mu­nich, which saw them plunge out of the com­pe­ti­tion and into the Eu­ropa League, the first time Barça have not qual­i­fied for the knock­out stages of the Cham­pi­ons League since 2000/2001. If that was not bad enough, they then pro­ceeded to twice lose the lead against Os­asuna in Pam­plona, ul­ti­mately hav­ing to set­tle for a point in a 2-2 draw. The next league game saw lowly Elche visit the Camp Nou, the per­fect op­por­tu­nity to ex­or­cise any demons and get the fans op­ti­mistic again, and every­thing was going to plan after 60 mins, with Barça cruis­ing and not look­ing in any dan­ger at 2-0 up, only for for­mer Girona boss Fran­cisco’s side to pull back two goals in quick suc­ces­sion, ex­pos­ing the de­fen­sive frail­ties and lack of con­cen­tra­tion that have haunted the side this sea­son. It took a dra­matic 85th minute win­ner from sub­sti­tute Nico Gon­za­lez to fi­nally cap­ture the three points after su­perb work by an­other young­ster Gavi, who has been the high­light of the team’s per­for­mances over this past month. And with­out that goal it would have been a win­less De­cem­ber for the blau­grana, since their last game of the cal­en­dar year brought a 1-1 draw at sec­ond-placed Sevilla, even after the hosts had Jules Kounde sent off with some 30 min­utes re­main­ing. In all fair­ness, Xavi’s side de­served much more than they got from those De­cem­ber games, ex­cept per­haps from the trip to Mu­nich, and there are clear signs that this youth­ful team is start­ing to get to grips with their head coach’s style and im­ple­ment some of the basic ideas that have made Barça the club they are. Xavi him­self has com­plained about how play­ers do not ap­pear to have been taught “the Barça way” in the past few sea­sons, and that will take time to change.

Barça go into 2022 fac­ing at least six games in Jan­u­ary – four in La Liga, one in the King’s Cup and one against Real Madrid in the Span­ish Super Cup on Jan­u­ary 13, al­though if they win that they will face a sev­enth game in the final against ei­ther Atlético or Ath­letic – be­fore a tough run of games at the be­gin­ning of Feb­ru­ary against Atlético at home and Es­panyol away in the league and Napoli at home in the Eu­ropa League.

Es­panyol

Vi­cente’s side lie in 11th place in La Liga and made it safely through two rounds of the King’s Cup fol­low­ing three wins and two de­feats in De­cem­ber. The de­feats were 1-0 at this sea­son’s sur­prise pack­age Rayo Val­le­cano, no dis­grace there con­sid­er­ing that they have only dropped two points from their nine home games so far, and 3-1 at Celta, the lat­ter more dis­ap­point­ing given that the Gali­cians had only won one of nine home league games prior to Es­panyol’s visit. Cup wins at lower di­vi­sion sides SD So­lares (3-2) and CD Pa­len­cia Cristo Atletico (2-1) gives fans hope of an ex­tended Cup run this year, while Es­panyol’s 4-3 home win over Lev­ante left them fifth in the home league table, be­hind only Rayo, Sevilla, Madrid and Barça.

Prior to meet­ing Barça in the derby at the RCDE Sta­dium on Feb­ru­ary 13, Es­panyol face home league games against Elche and Betis, and trips to Va­len­cia, Cádiz and Bil­bao in the league, and Pon­fer­rad­ina in the Cup. It is the away form that needs to im­prove if they are to achieve a top ten fin­ish this sea­son, as Vi­cente’s side have drawn three and lost six of their nine away league games this sea­son.

Girona

A very sat­is­fac­tory month for Girona was sealed with a 3-1 home win over in-form Bur­gos at Mon­tilivi on De­cem­ber 17, fol­low­ing an­other home league win over Leganes (3-0) and a dis­ap­point­ing draw at Ibiza (1-1). The re­turn of tal­is­man for­ward Cristhian Stu­ani has gal­vanised the side and its as­pi­ra­tions for an­other pro­mo­tion push this year, the Uruguayan now on 10 league goals for the sea­son. Sand­wiched in be­tween those league games were King’s Cup wins at CS Puer­tol­lano (5-1) and more im­pres­sively at Huesca (1-0), leav­ing Michel’s side with the chance of fur­ther Cup progress in the new year. Girona are now in sixth place in the Sec­ond Di­vi­sion, and there­fore in a play-off po­si­tion, al­though there is plenty of com­pe­ti­tion, with a whole host of teams within four points down to thir­teenth-placed Malaga. A pro­mo­tion push will re­quire a con­tin­u­a­tion of the form that has seen them win seven and draw two of their last 11 league games, as the new year throws up a friendly run of games, with vis­its to Huesca and SD Amore­bi­eta and home games against Fuen­labrada and Lugo, while they face a tough home tie against Os­asuna in the Cup on Jan­u­ary 6.