The Spain and Barcelona playmaker has been the best in 2010 and should have won the Ballon d'Or last night.
Leo Messi was wearing a dickie bow last night. Proof, some said with a smile, that he knew he was going to be awarded with a second successive Ballon d'Or – after all, Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta were only in ties. But he didn't know: amid all the shock, the disgust and the pathetic patriotic paranoia, the man most surprised at Messi's award was Messi. On his way into the gala, he was asked whether it felt a bit strange to be the best player in the world and yet still know that he wasn't going to get the award for the world's best player. Messi mumbled something along the lines of: no, not really – Xavi and Iniesta won the World Cup.
And there in a barely audible phrase was the crux of the issue. This is the first time since 1974 that in a World Cup year when it was won by a European team the winner has not been from the world champions. And in 1974 it was Johan Cruyff – the World Cup's moral winner. Only one Spanish player has ever won the award – Luis Suárez in 1960 – and for years the reason was assumed to be that, while Madrid and Barcelona had been among the continent's very best teams, there was no international success to push Spanish players over the line. Now at last there is. But this time, more than any other time, the World Cup has not been decisive. If it had been, Messi would not have won the award.
Messi was extraordinary in 2010. If the Ballon d'Or is given to the player who played the best football over the course of the year, he is a worthy winner. It was the year in which there was no doubt. Fans spent much of it scraping their jaws off the floor as he performed with barely plausible brilliance week after week. Even the sceptics were won over. The hammering of Arsenal, especially, turned heads . He became the complete player. The debate surrounding him was elevated to a different plane. It was no longer enough to ask whether he was the best now: was he, in fact, one of the best players ever?
He produced more dribbles, more goals and more assists than anyone else in La Liga and was the Champions League's top scorer. He was the European Golden Boot. He scored 60 goals in 59 games. Despite arguments to the contrary, he played rather well in South Africa. But that basic construction – best player gets vote – has rarely been followed before. This is not the world's best player award. It is the year's greatest achiever award. On the greatest stage, Messi did not leave a lasting mark. And that point strengthens the case of the two men who shared the podium with him last night: without Xavi and Iniesta, Messi was not as good; without him, they were. Without him, they won the World Cup.
Ultimately, the decision rests of the criteria employed. Trouble is, how do you apply a criteria with the electorate expanding as it has? In 2006, 56 people voted, in 2010 96, this year 427. Next year it will be 624. Officially, the Ballon d'Or "awards the best in their category, without distinction of championship or nationality for their achievements during the year". Voters are reminded to be impartial and to take into account all criteria. It is awarded for "on field behaviour and overall behaviour on and off the pitch". Voters were reminded of the importance of "individual" achievements and "team (trophies)".
If it was down to trophies, a basic count, then one man stands above the rest: Wesley Sneijder was the key creative spark of the Internazionale team that won the treble and helped carry Holland to the World Cup final, scoring five times en route. (By the same criteria, the omission of Diego Milito even from the shortlist is baffling but for pointing to the significance of South Africa: he scored the goal that clinched the title, the goal that won the Italian Cup and the goal that won the European Cup but was irrelevant to Argentina. The fact that Arjen Robben has hardly been mentioned jars a little too: Bayern Munich's most important player by miles, he won a league and cup double and reached World and European cup finals).
Under the old format, it would have been Sneijder. The Ballon d'Or used to be voted on by the correspondents of France Football but the award has been hijacked by Fifa – frustrated at its inability to sink the Ballon d'Or with the Fifa World Player Award – and now it is an amalgamation of both trophies. Now, international coaches and captains also get a vote. Counting only the France Football votes, Sneijder would have won. Messi would have been fourth. It is the coaches and the captains not the correspondents who have given him this award.
But when it comes to trophies, none weigh so heavily as the World Cup. Precedent, if not written rules, has pointed that way. Ronaldo in 2002, Cannavaro in 2006. And although Sneijder's case there is strong too, he did not win the World Cup. Here, no one can match Spain.
Iniesta's winning goal – and, it should not be forgotten, his wonderful tournament – propelled him into the top three, despite a year in which he had suffered with injury at club level. Many were furious when José Mourinho insisted that Iniesta did not deserve the award, claiming that "any player could have scored the winner in the final", but he had a point. In Spain, there was talk of Iker Casillas because of his vital intervention against Paraguay in the quarter-final and Holland in the final (his club season had been surprisingly poor). There was not, strangely, much talk of David Villa: another international top scorer award seemed counter-balanced by not having played for Madrid or Barcelona before the tournament.
And then there was Xavi. If football is about legacy, about impact and importance, Xavi's claim seemed unassailable. If it takes into account the whole of 2010 and not just the back of 2009-10 and the World Cup, it grows stronger yet: has any game stood out like this season's clásico in which Xavi led his side to an incredible win? In the past three years, Xavi has won it all. A European Championship in 2008, six trophies out of six with Barcelona (league, Copa del Rey, Champions League, World Club Cup, Spanish Super Cup, European Super Cup) in 2009, and the World Cup in 2010.
Not just won them: won them in style. There is an argument that suggests, especially after the stunning 5-0 destruction of Real Madrid, that this Barcelona team might be the best club side there has ever been. By winning back-to-back European and world championships, much the same could be said about Spain – they were unusually worthy winners of the World Cup. But it is not just that those two teams have won it all; it is the way they have won. Rarely has a team had such clarity of style, such a distinct identity, as Spain and Barcelona. An identity in which they dominate, control and anaesthetise the opposition, picking apart their defences, undoing their armour piece by piece.
That style is Xavi's style. Xavi lays for Barcelona and Spain. Really plays for them; he is not just in the side, he does not just play, he makes them play. It is not just that he is a great player, which he is, but that he makes other players great. He is the ideologue behind two of the best teams there has been. If any player has marked the last three years, it is he. At 31, he probably won't get another chance to win the award – God knows how many Messi might win – and he should have won it this year. For this year and the previous three; for this era. His era. No matter what the Daily Mail thinks. Especially because of what the Daily Mail thinks.
And yet one thing the criteria is clear about is that this is an award for 2010 alone. In the past, France Football has talked too of "trajectory"; this year, that has not been the case. That's one explanation. In the scramble to explain last night's surprise there have been plenty of theories forwarded. The most tragically predictable has been proffered by the newspaper Marca whose cover ran on a photo of Mourinho (about whose award there has been rather less anger, even though he got the nod ahead of Vicente del Bosque) and Messi. In the middle was a small picture of Sepp Blatter. The headline read: "Two Giants and One Anti-Spaniard". The paper's name was written in red and yellow. "This," complained the cover, "is the flag the president of Fifa hates."
But Blatter did not vote. Journalists, coaches, and players did. And they voted for Spaniards in huge numbers: 42% of the first choice votes went to Spaniards. For the first time ever, seven players from the same country picked up at least one first choice vote. That hardly smells of conspiracy. More skewed surely is the desire for someone, anyone to win the award – just so long as they are a Spaniard. And, in fact, Spain – and here it's worth reminding many in this country that there was no candidate called Spain – may have been a victim of its own success, its very nature. Of the fact that its collective nature meant there was not one, single stand-out candidate for everyone to get behind. The vote was split: Messi won with 22.65%, Iniesta had 17.47% and Xavi 16.48%.
The fact that there is an open vote has allowed some to snipe at who chooses the winner, and pick out those "guilty" for this "crime". But before everyone starts patronisingly laughing at the stupidity of votes from those third-worlders who don't know anything, check out last year's most idiotic voter Besides, that did not damage Spain, either: plenty of votes came in from countries that were being dismissed as irrelevant last night. Although banned from voting for international team-mates, players do indeed – as the example above shows – sometimes vote politically. Amid almost 500 votes, though, that hardly seems sufficient to tip the balance. The wrong player might have won, but no one was actually wronged.
Last night, Leo Messi was surprised. He was not the only one. In 2010, the Argentinian eclipsed everyone. But even he didn't expect that to include his World Cup winning team-mates.-TheSportBlog
Xavi pulls the strings as Barcelona leave Madrid dangling in despair again
Barça are the best side in the world and Messi is the best player on the planet. Without Xavi, they might not be.
One o'clock Saturday night, Sunday morning in the bowels of the Bernabéu and somewhere behind that mop of hair there's a look of surprise. There may even be a hint of disgust. "If you say so, mate," replies Carles Puyol, "but I don't agree. Maybe some people don't give him all the credit he deserves. Maybe you have ignored him, but we haven't. Not us. We know he's absolutely fundamental; we know that he's among the best in the world and I think everyone recognises that." Well, almost everyone. When Xavi Hernández was included in the top five at the Fifa World Player award ceremony in January 2009, alongside Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaká and Fernando Torres, the Daily Mail's headline famously ran: "The best players of the world (and Xavi).
They could not have been more wrong, even if they frequently are. That much was again shown by the clásico on Saturday night. It was billed as a title decider and as Messi versus Ronaldo. But while the same picture – Messi, fists clenched in celebration; Ronaldo, head down, shirt drawn sadly towards his face – occupied the covers of both Madrid sports dailies, in the aftermath of the match it was Xavi that most people were raving about. "Xavi's eye decides the league," said Marca; "Xavi," added Público, "hands down the sentence." While Messi and Pedro got the goals, Xavi gave them, with two wonderful assists: the first, a beautifully clipped first-time ball; the second, a perfectly weighted through ball. It was his sixth assist in two trips to the Bernabéu. And just in case anyone missed them – the Madrid defence, for example – he reproduced both assists, only for Casillas to save from Messi.
Last season Xavi provided more assists than anyone else in La Liga; this season, only five players (Alves and Messi among them) have given more. But it is not only about assists. The clásico was no classic. It was built up as the match of the millennium but wasn't – unless the next 990 years really are going to be rubbish. The ball was in play for less than half of the 90 minutes, there was a foul every 180 seconds, and there was little of the stunning brilliance of last season's 6-2. But in its own way it was just as painful for Madrid, and in its own way Barcelona were still impressive. They might not have torn Madrid apart, but they did control them – certainly once they had ridden out the opening storm. "The best team won," said the cover of AS simply. The concern for Madrid, argued editor Alfredo Relaño, was that "Barcelona passed by the Bernabéu without even looking nervous, winning without expending energy." "Barcelona are a better team than us," shrugged Pellegrini.
This was not the Barcelona that amazes. It was, though, the Barcelona that anaesthetises. Moving the ball around, controlling the game, avoiding Madrid's lunges, frustrating them, exasperating them. This time, in short, it was as much Xavi's Barcelona as Messi's.
Xavi is, says the Sporting coach Manolo Preciado, "the personification of simplicity". He is also the personification of Barcelona. Even when the passes are not telling, they are fundamental. Maintaining possession, using the ball quickly and accurately, is the key: Xavi completed twice as many passes as any Madrid player. "Xavi," said El Mundo Deportivo, "was gregarious, majestic, an exhibition, his football was a recital that never ends." In Marca, Miguel Serrano described him as "an extraterrestrial": "He ordered, he played, he directed, he slowed it down and sped it up. Every time he touched the ball, the very foundations of the Bernabéu wobbled." "He read the game like no one else. He carved out space, moved cleverly, and built football," said El País. "As always."
Well, quite. Everything Barcelona do is based on possession. Even defending. Even resting. As one of Guardiola's closest collaborators says: "Barcelona are the only team that can take a break in possession." "Receive, pass, offer," is the simple message, the obsession, a badge of identity that they insist runs right through the club, driven into players from the moment they join. Xavi joined in 1991 and no one represents that obsession better than him. "I am basically a passer," he says. Guardiola calls him maquí, the machine. The late commentator Andres Montes used to call him Humphrey Bogart because, like Sam in Casablanca, he was asked to play it again. And again. And again. And again.
Last season, Xavi completed almost 100 passes at the Bernabéu. Last week, he completed more than all of Arsenal's midfielders put together. This season he has made over 400 passes more than any player in Spain; in the Champions League, he is 400 passes ahead of anyone from any other club. Even his own team-mates are 300 behind. As Alex Ferguson joked: "I'm sure I saw him give the ball away once."
"I need team-mates, people to combine with," Xavi says. "Without team-mates football has no meaning. I am no one if they don't make themselves available." But it is not just that he sees the movement first, it is that he often sees the movement before it has happened, that rather than passing to the movement, he passes in such a way as to oblige the movement. He makes players' runs for them. "Xavi plays in the future," says Dani Alves. Coaches at Barcelona privately admit that sometimes he moves into areas that he should not – but that his technique is so good, his passing so precise, that ultimately it ends up looking like the right thing to do. Then there's the commitment. Xavi is a football anorak that can wax lyrical on Matt Le Tissier and Paul Scholes, he looks after himself and there's not a trace of arrogance. "When he has a day off, he goes and picks setas [mushrooms] in the countryside," reveals Guardiola, "and someone who picks mushrooms can't be a bad bloke."
At the Under-20 World Cup, the Spanish Football Federation presented a formal complaint after Seydou Keita was named the tournament's best player ahead of Xavi. But, despite having made his debut under Louis van Gaal in 1998, he has not always had such a telling impact on Barcelona's game. So much so that he admits to thinking about walking away, with Manchester United, Milan and Madrid among those that approached him. The arrival of Frank Rijkaard and Edgar Davids in 2003 changed his future, giving him protection, a competitive colleague and freedom to step forward – away from the deep lying midfield position. It was a liberation. A revelation.
It is no coincidence that Xavi is the man imposing the style on both the finest national team and arguably the finest club side Spain has ever had. When Xabi Alonso returned from training with Spain for the first time, he could not get over his midfield namesake. At Euro 2008, Xavi was named player of the tournament (although, personally, this column would have been tempted to go for Marcos Senna), completed over 100 passes in the semi-final when Russia didn't even see the ball and provided the assist to Torres in the final.
When the inevitable question is asked about why Messi has not played as well for Argentina over the past year as he has for Barcelona, it is tempting to give a one word answer: Xavi. The last week has reinforced the belief that Barcelona are the best side in the world and that Messi is the best player on the planet. Without Xavi, they might not be.
-TheSportBlog
They could not have been more wrong, even if they frequently are. That much was again shown by the clásico on Saturday night. It was billed as a title decider and as Messi versus Ronaldo. But while the same picture – Messi, fists clenched in celebration; Ronaldo, head down, shirt drawn sadly towards his face – occupied the covers of both Madrid sports dailies, in the aftermath of the match it was Xavi that most people were raving about. "Xavi's eye decides the league," said Marca; "Xavi," added Público, "hands down the sentence." While Messi and Pedro got the goals, Xavi gave them, with two wonderful assists: the first, a beautifully clipped first-time ball; the second, a perfectly weighted through ball. It was his sixth assist in two trips to the Bernabéu. And just in case anyone missed them – the Madrid defence, for example – he reproduced both assists, only for Casillas to save from Messi.
Last season Xavi provided more assists than anyone else in La Liga; this season, only five players (Alves and Messi among them) have given more. But it is not only about assists. The clásico was no classic. It was built up as the match of the millennium but wasn't – unless the next 990 years really are going to be rubbish. The ball was in play for less than half of the 90 minutes, there was a foul every 180 seconds, and there was little of the stunning brilliance of last season's 6-2. But in its own way it was just as painful for Madrid, and in its own way Barcelona were still impressive. They might not have torn Madrid apart, but they did control them – certainly once they had ridden out the opening storm. "The best team won," said the cover of AS simply. The concern for Madrid, argued editor Alfredo Relaño, was that "Barcelona passed by the Bernabéu without even looking nervous, winning without expending energy." "Barcelona are a better team than us," shrugged Pellegrini.
This was not the Barcelona that amazes. It was, though, the Barcelona that anaesthetises. Moving the ball around, controlling the game, avoiding Madrid's lunges, frustrating them, exasperating them. This time, in short, it was as much Xavi's Barcelona as Messi's.
Xavi is, says the Sporting coach Manolo Preciado, "the personification of simplicity". He is also the personification of Barcelona. Even when the passes are not telling, they are fundamental. Maintaining possession, using the ball quickly and accurately, is the key: Xavi completed twice as many passes as any Madrid player. "Xavi," said El Mundo Deportivo, "was gregarious, majestic, an exhibition, his football was a recital that never ends." In Marca, Miguel Serrano described him as "an extraterrestrial": "He ordered, he played, he directed, he slowed it down and sped it up. Every time he touched the ball, the very foundations of the Bernabéu wobbled." "He read the game like no one else. He carved out space, moved cleverly, and built football," said El País. "As always."
Well, quite. Everything Barcelona do is based on possession. Even defending. Even resting. As one of Guardiola's closest collaborators says: "Barcelona are the only team that can take a break in possession." "Receive, pass, offer," is the simple message, the obsession, a badge of identity that they insist runs right through the club, driven into players from the moment they join. Xavi joined in 1991 and no one represents that obsession better than him. "I am basically a passer," he says. Guardiola calls him maquí, the machine. The late commentator Andres Montes used to call him Humphrey Bogart because, like Sam in Casablanca, he was asked to play it again. And again. And again. And again.
Last season, Xavi completed almost 100 passes at the Bernabéu. Last week, he completed more than all of Arsenal's midfielders put together. This season he has made over 400 passes more than any player in Spain; in the Champions League, he is 400 passes ahead of anyone from any other club. Even his own team-mates are 300 behind. As Alex Ferguson joked: "I'm sure I saw him give the ball away once."
"I need team-mates, people to combine with," Xavi says. "Without team-mates football has no meaning. I am no one if they don't make themselves available." But it is not just that he sees the movement first, it is that he often sees the movement before it has happened, that rather than passing to the movement, he passes in such a way as to oblige the movement. He makes players' runs for them. "Xavi plays in the future," says Dani Alves. Coaches at Barcelona privately admit that sometimes he moves into areas that he should not – but that his technique is so good, his passing so precise, that ultimately it ends up looking like the right thing to do. Then there's the commitment. Xavi is a football anorak that can wax lyrical on Matt Le Tissier and Paul Scholes, he looks after himself and there's not a trace of arrogance. "When he has a day off, he goes and picks setas [mushrooms] in the countryside," reveals Guardiola, "and someone who picks mushrooms can't be a bad bloke."
At the Under-20 World Cup, the Spanish Football Federation presented a formal complaint after Seydou Keita was named the tournament's best player ahead of Xavi. But, despite having made his debut under Louis van Gaal in 1998, he has not always had such a telling impact on Barcelona's game. So much so that he admits to thinking about walking away, with Manchester United, Milan and Madrid among those that approached him. The arrival of Frank Rijkaard and Edgar Davids in 2003 changed his future, giving him protection, a competitive colleague and freedom to step forward – away from the deep lying midfield position. It was a liberation. A revelation.
It is no coincidence that Xavi is the man imposing the style on both the finest national team and arguably the finest club side Spain has ever had. When Xabi Alonso returned from training with Spain for the first time, he could not get over his midfield namesake. At Euro 2008, Xavi was named player of the tournament (although, personally, this column would have been tempted to go for Marcos Senna), completed over 100 passes in the semi-final when Russia didn't even see the ball and provided the assist to Torres in the final.
When the inevitable question is asked about why Messi has not played as well for Argentina over the past year as he has for Barcelona, it is tempting to give a one word answer: Xavi. The last week has reinforced the belief that Barcelona are the best side in the world and that Messi is the best player on the planet. Without Xavi, they might not be.
-TheSportBlog
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