Hi community!
The Blaugrana, who lost two competitions in the first month of the year (Copa del Rey and Super Cup), do not want history to repeat itself in 2025.
In the League they won three of the four games, but Villarreal gave them a 5-3 win at Montjuïc and Xavi announced that he would not continue the following season.
Barça have ended 2024 with a poor run of results. Hansi Flick's men have only picked up five of the last 21 points played for in the league and have ended up losing the lead in a season that they were comfortably leading (nine points ahead of Real Madrid). The Blaugrana hope to have a good January in 2025 and improve on the results they had in the first month of 2024, although the matches are extremely demanding.
The last January ended up being a black season for Barça. In nine matches played by the team led by Xavi, they were beaten in three of them. The Catalans fell 4-1 to Real Madrid in the Super Cup final, 4-2 in the Copa del Rey quarterfinals against Athletic and Villarreal gave Barça a 5-0 win in Montjuïc, the first time a team had done so in the League away from home since 1963 (1-5 Real Madrid). Xavi, deeply affected, announced that same 27th of January that he would stop being the coach of the first team at the end of the season. The other matches were a 1-2 victory against Las Palmas to start 2024, a 2-3 win against Barbastro, 2-0 against Osasuna, 1-3 against Unionistas, 2-4 against Betis and 1-0 against Osasuna, but everything was overshadowed by those three fateful performances against Athletic, Real Madrid and Villarreal.
A script that is not expected to be repeated, but which begins with a match in Barbastro, a team that was also the protagonist last January by putting the Blaugrana on the ropes (2-3) in the same round of the Cup that they will face next Saturday. Then, a Super Cup semi-final against Athletic, and if they win, a final against Real Madrid or Mallorca. As if that were not enough, on the 18th they will visit the Coliseum in Getafe, where Barça have not managed to score a single goal in the last four matches there (three draws to zero and a 1-0 defeat). Two Champions League duels (Benfica and Atalanta), a visit by Valencia to Montjuïc and a possible last 16 in the Copa del Rey are the ones that close the January 2025 campaign for the Catalans, for which Flick hopes to have Lamine Yamal on board as soon as possible.
Barça hope to change the current dynamic of results and return to the sensations that the team transmitted at the beginning of the season, when they were unstoppable against teams such as Real Madrid (0-4) or Bayern Munich (4-1), and scored three goals in 10 of 16 games played. To do so, Hansi Flick has decided not to give the team any more days off and will work uninterruptedly until the visit to Barbastro on January 4.
See You soon!
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