My point is, if u put Bale, Giggs, Keene and other top notch players with the rest of the English team, that would be one hell of a team. I have zero background or interest in English history, so I have no idea why the talent is split that way. I assumed the teams were split on ethnic lines, but if I’m wrong, then just ignore it because I don’t care.
Really? When Bayern Munich tore apart Barcelona in 2013 Champions League, all the pundits were talking about how Bayern had figured out how to crack tiki-taka with the key element being breaking down Xavi. There was a lot of discussion whether Xavi was overrated. So there’s no way I’m the first person who questioned Xavi’s “greatness.”
I actually believe the player who is more interesting than Xavi and Barcelona is Pirlo and Juventus. Once Bayern cracked Xavi, Barcelona was pretty quick to dump Xavi and switch from pure tiki-taka to a hybrid version that at times abandoned midfield control to outlet the ball to the NSM combo (Neymar-Suarez-Messi). Juventus, on the other hand, stuck with Pirlo for a while.
I can see that you are a big fan of Xavi and what he represents, but there’s no way I can call him great when you consider that his “legacy” includes getting torn apart in Champions League 2013, torn apart in World Cup 2014, voluntarily going to Qatar which IMO was an admission by him that the game had passed him by, his team abandoning the tiki-taka style of play with which he was identified, his team not even trying to replace him with a younger version of himself.
Maybe it’s fair to say that Xavi represents an evolution in the game. He tried to swing the pendulum toward soccer IQ and ball control, but the game evolved to more athleticism and pressure all over the pitch.