This Barca team has been a real joy to watch despite the numerous off-field scandals. Barcelona are just one more La Liga match away from officially ending the 2022/23 season with their 27th title, capping off a remarkable rebound season plagued with so much off-field issues.
Say what you will about Barca, but this team has proven itself at long last.
In light of Barcelona lifting the La Liga title for the first time in four years and the 27th time in the club’s history, I thought it would be a good idea to congratulate this team on overcoming both the recent La Liga dominance of Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid and also ignoring all the troublesome scandals surrounding this club for pretty much the entire season. As there were so many issues with Barca this year.
Whether it was the bankruptcy issues, needing to sell off valuable, historic assets of Barcelona (ex: Camp Nou, Barca studios, Barca’s T.V. rights, jersey sponsorships), salary cap issues that forced Barca to register and not register key signings during the summer transfer window, constant attacks and verbal disputes with La Liga president Javier Tebas, the lingering ramifications of Leo Messi’s chaotic departure just a few seasons ago, and the effects of Barcagate that has seen the club get investigated with bribing referees, Barcelona has been hampered down with litigation and financial woes.
So, even with the signings of Robert Lewandowski, Jules Kounde, Raphinha, Fernan Torres (January of 2022), Franck Kessie, Andreas Christensen, and Marcos Alonso, it would have been perfectly reasonable to predict Barca would come up short in the La Liga title race again as Xavi still needed more time to remake the squad in his image.
And, of course, Barca did finish 13 points behind Real Madrid last season, Madrid strengthened in the summer transfer window with the Antonio Rudiger and Aurélien Tchouaméni signings, Barca hadn’t finished less than 5 points behind the eventual title winners in the last three years, and the team was mainly filled up with players who hadn’t won a La Liga title before.
In fact, only Marc-Andre Ter Stegen, Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, Sergio Roberto, and Ousmane Dembele could claim they had won a La Liga title for Barcelona in the past, while only Robert Lewandowski, who won the Bundesliga for Bayern Munich in 2021/22, could claim he had won a title before joining the Catalonian giants this past season.
Now, that may not seem too unreasonable for any old club, but this is Barcelona we’re talking about. Players from all over England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Scotland, Greece, Turkey, Eastern Europe, and obviously Spain, etc. join the club as champions of their own, respective nations and clubs, and hope to add Champions League titles and treble wins to their resumes with Barca.
They usually don’t join Barca to start off their championship pedigree.
Thus, Barcelona actually playing intricate, attractive tiki-taka football with frankly a bunch of inexperienced high-level players, such as Gavi, Pedri, Ansu Fati, Ronald Araujo, Jules Kounde, etc., was a real credit to the work ethic, heart, motivation, and tactical nuance of Xavi as they pretty much blew every opponent out of the water in La Liga.
In fact, Barcelona have only lost five games this season (with one more game left to play) and two of those losses (2-1 vs. Sociedad, 3-1 vs. Valladolid) already came after they clinched the title, so I’m not sure they would have lost those games if the title really depended on them.
Leading La Liga in goalscoring to no one’s great surprise, Robert Lewandowski (23 goals) truly did end up being the focal piece of Barca’s reemergence in Spanish football as his supernatural goalscoring ability and championship experience helped guide this young squad through the thick and thin of the La Liga season.
And, when Lewandowski fired the ball in the back of the net to give Barca the lead, their defense of Arajuo, Alba, Kounde, Christensen, Alonso, Eric Garcia, and keeper Ter Stegen completely shut down the opposition and gave up literally nothing as they not only gave up the least number of goals this season (18 GA) and had the most clean sheets (26), but they did so by a country mile.
The next lowest GA for the top-flight teams belonged to Atletico Madrid with 31 GA (13 goals difference) and the keeper following Ter Stegen (26 clean sheets) in the clean sheet race was Sociedad’s Alex Remiro…with 15. Yes, Marc-Andre Ter Stegen and the Barca defense had 11 MORE clean sheets than the anyone else in the league.
That’s insane!
And such excellence ended them up with 88 points in 37 games (and maybe 91 points in 38 games, which would be the most for a La Liga champion since 2017/18 Barcelona), 11 points above Real Madrid, and 12 over Atletico. Sure, Barcelona failed in Europe this season as they got knocked out of the Champions League in the group stage and got knocked out by Manchester United in the Round of 32 of the Europa League, but that success will come in time.
For now, this Barca team has to be overjoyed with finally breaking Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid’s stranglehold on the La Liga title.
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