FC Barcelona Coach Xavi Slammed By Capello, Ancelotti ‘Best in World’
Coaching legend Fabio Capello laid into FC Barcelona manager Xavi Hernandez while calling his Real Madrid rival Carlo Ancelotti the best tactician in the world during an interview with MARCA.
The Italian – known for spells at AC Milan with whom he thrashed Johan Cruyff’s Barca 4-0 in the 1994 Champions League final, Madrid and Juventus – called his compatriot Ancelotti the “number one in the world” for winning “everywhere he’s worked”.
“It’s very difficult to win as much as Carlo has won. He goes to Germany and wins, he goes to England and wins, in Italy he goes and it’s not that he wins, it’s that it’s a miracle what he does, I never thought he could win a title with the team he had.”
“He’s smart. He doesn’t have a system, it depends on the players it has. Knowing how to adapt is a sign of intelligence. You can’t always play with the same style, it depends on the players you have. You have to put your players in the right place and with the game plan that allows them to perform better, to give you 100%,” Capello added.
Capello then moved on to making a veiled comment about Xavi, noting that “a lot of coaches say, ‘You have to play this way’.”
“And no, you can’t always play the same way. Watch the last Madrid-Barca [match]. You know they have quality players and very fast strikers, and you put the defensive line in the middle of the pitch… ‘Well, thank you very much!’ Carlo must have thought,” Capello said, in reference to a 4-1 Spanish Super Cup final win for Los Blancos.
“There are coaches who insist: ‘This is my system, this is my way of playing’. Every game you have to study and prepare for, you have to always have a winning spirit and mentality, but one of the most important things is to know the opponent and how to play them, their characteristics, where they are good and where they are not”.
Capello therefore isn’t surprised that Xavi has been criticized as of late.
“That always happens,” he pointed out. “Lewandowski is failing him a little bit, he’s not the same as last year, and that’s important. There are few centre-forwards. Haaland is a player who improves every year, because he is young; but Lewandowski this year is not playing at the level we know him to. And that’s a problem.”
On the ‘Caso Negreira’ involving Barca making over $8 million in payments to the former vice-president of the Referees’ Committee – which Barca president Joan Laporta insist were above board for honest consultation work – Capello said the debacle “is incredible” and “something very bad for football”.
“It’s a scandal. I don’t understand either of them. If you’re the president of Barcelona and you give money to the refereeing vice-president, you know that’s not right as a club; And if you take that money being the vice-president of the referees, it’s even worse,” Capello explained.
