The recent FC Barcelona resurgence should be credited to club legend and head coach Xavi Hernandez, according to former Bafana Bafana star Teko Modise.
Barcelona may be going into the Clasico this weekend 15 points behind Real Madrid – albeit with a game in hand – but there’s a renewed sense of optimism surrounding the Catalan giants.
A win against Los Blancos would put them one point behind second-placed LaLiga while they are enjoying a ten-game unbeaten run with a youthful squad – which is a far cry from the crisis which saw Ronald Koeman sacked after dropping to ninth in the Spanish top-flight.
“I think because they started bad there was a dark cloud over the team and Fati the number 10 got injured, nothing was going well for the club at the time, some players didn’t want to reduce their salaries,” Modise said at the LaLiga El Clasico event.
“No players could be signed, it was just a mess and then Xavi came and just brought back the happiness, I think that’s important, for players to get results they need to be happy and that happiness starts at training.
“You could see from the training the players were happy, and players who didn’t give that good performance really changed, you even see Dembele now who’s doing well all of a sudden.”
He continued: “Now when you’re thinking about players who want to come to Barcelona, you find Aubameyang coming, being unhappy with his previous manager and then coming in and scoring goals,
“So you can see they’re starting to be the team that we know. I think the biggest plus is the coach has the identity and the DNA of the club, he knows what it means to play for Barcelona and it’s easy to have that conversation that can relate to the players.”
The Blaugrana who are in their first season in the post-Lionel Messi era are still in contention for the UEFA Europa League under the guidance of the 2010 FIFA World Cup winner.
