Barcelona boss Xavi Hernandez has maintained that he has full confidence that his team would win all other four trophies despite being knocked out of the Champions League competition.
The Catalans coach revealed that the objective of the team is to win trophies and that would not change even when they are not competing in the Champions League this season.
After returning to Camp Nou in 2021 as Barcelona’s head coach, Xavi has undoubtedly improved the team.
However, he is yet to win any silverware and was unable to lead the Blaugrana into the Champions League knockouts which have generated fears over the club’s already poor financial crisis.
Barcelona has been relinquished to play in the Europa League after Inter Milan’s win came out on the wrong side for the Catalans and the 3-0 loss to Bayern Munich at Camp Nou on Wednesday finalized the ruin.
Barcelona opened Group C with a 5-1 victory over Plzen, but their away defeats to Bayern Munich and Inter Milan and a loss at home to Bayern set up their utmost relegation to European football’s second-tier tournament.
Meanwhile, this marks the second season in a row that the Catalans, who have won the European Cup five times, most recently in 2015, have failed to reach the last 16 of the Champions League following 17 successive years between 2004-05 and 2020-21 in which they entered the latter stages of the campaign.
Barcelona’s Champions League elimination came as a painful stroke to Xavi and his team but the manager still believes defeat from UCL is not the end and his objective is to win all other four trophies as they focus on the rest of the season.
Xavi said: “I’m staying positive. The Champions League is a big setback, but we can still fight for LaLiga Santander, for the Copa del Rey, Spanish Supercopa and the Europa League.”
“We won’t stop working, I’m confident but it’s not what we expected.”
“We want to win titles. We’ve lost out, but we hope the results will come by the end of the season.
“We’ve seen things in the team and results don’t distract us. We can’t deviate from our plan. We have to keep believing.
“We have no doubts.”
It remains to be seen how Xavi would steer a team that could not even qualify from the UCL group stage to win four trophies this season.
After spending over €150 million on signings this summer, including €45m to sign former Bayern Munich star Robert Lewandowski, Barcelona’s enormous spending for the season should facilitate them reaching the quarterfinals of the Champions League campaign.
The huge spending was supposed to ensure an elimination didn’t happen, to push them into something more constructive and kick-start their growth.
However, Barcelona were already losing to Bayern within nine minutes and the horrible thing was that throughout the 3-0 loss to Bayern, the Catalans had not managed a single shot on target. This didn’t speak well of a team whose objective is to win trophies this summer.
After all, Xavi said his team would still compete for, and win the other four titles, which he might be right about, but they would have to reach the final stages of the Europa League and level up their game in the La Liga campaign.
Xavi Hernandez’s side will enter the Europa League in 2023 and have the Spanish Supercopa and the Copa del Rey to come.
In LaLiga competition, they lost just one of their opening 11 matches and they are in second place with three points behind Real Madrid.
Next up for Barcelona
Barcelona is set to take a trip to Mestalla to face Valencia in La Liga Santander today, October 29.
Venue: Estadio Mestalla
Kickoff time: 20:00 BST
