Euro Icons - 2008: Xavi and the Barca-fication of Spain

It could never enter the pantheon of the worst headlines ever published by the Daily Mail – that bar has been set phenomenally high – but there was a notably cringeworthy effort on January 13, 2009. They had published an article on the FIFA World Player of the Year ceremony at the Zurich Opera House, where Cristiano Ronaldo had scooped the prize. Appearing with Ronaldo in an accompanying picture were the four runners-up – Lionel Messi, Fernando Torres, Kaka and Xavi Hernandez. The headline writers tagged the piece with ‘The best players of the world (and Xavi): Ronaldo crowned king of football’.

It looks ridiculous now, given the era of near perfection that Xavi would be central to with Barcelona and Spain. While it might be tempting to cut the headline writers a bit of slack for not being clairvoyant, it should really have dawned on them at the time that Xavi could play a little. Just eight months earlier, a revolution had been televised all over Europe.

Cathartic would be a rather weak word to describe Spain’s victory at the 2008 European Championship. They had won the tournament once before, all the way back in 1964, but with little fanfare. That victory was secured at home, where they beat the USSR 2-1 in the final in Madrid with a late goal from Marcelino. It secured the European title, but not quite as we know it. The European Nations Cup was then in its infancy, a two-legged, unseeded, straight knockout competition that not all teams entered.

Nevertheless, it went in the books. Thereafter, Spain suffered a similar fate to England, who won the World Cup at home two years later. Both were huge nations in terms of stature and reputation, housing club sides that would regularly win European trophies. Yet the national sides were chronic underachievers at international tournaments. Spain had one 14-year stretch where they didn’t even qualify for one, and had a deflating time hosting the 1982 World Cup. A second-round exit there was part of a pattern of disappointments that took in misfortune, self-inflicted wounds, and shattering defeats on penalties. Only a surprise appearance in the final of the 1984 European Championship provided a journey beyond the last eight.

The path Spain walked to end these decades of mediocrity stretched back to the 1970s. While he was a Barcelona player, Johan Cruyff used his considerable influence to suggest that the club follow an academy-based approach that had been so successful at his first club, AFC Ajax. As a result, a converted Catalan farmhouse, La Masia, was first used to house and develop Barcelona’s youth players from outside of the city in 1979.

Just a few months after it was put to that purpose, Xavier Hernandez, or Xavi for short, was born in Terrassa, a Catalan city forty kilometres outside of Barcelona. He joined Barcelona’s youth academy at La Masia at 11 years old. In 1992 the club won their first European Cup under the management of Cruyff and with a La Masia alumni, Josep Guardiola, playing in midfield. Six years later Xavi had also graduated and made his debut for Barcelona in a Copa Catalunya semi-final against Unio Esportiva Lleida.

Xavi’s development was rapid. He was the La Liga Breakthrough Player of the Year in 1999 and played in the Spanish team that won the World Youth Cup title in Nigeria that year. In the 1999-2000 season he had a prolonged spell playing as an attacking midfielder when Guardiola was out with injury. Xavi soon reverted to a more defensive position, as Barcelona worked through some turbulent years on and off the pitch in the early noughties. Yet another Dutch influence, Frank Rijkaard, moulded their next great team and Barcelona won the La Liga title in 2004-05. That season Xavi was voted La Liga’s Spanish Player of the Year. Barcelona then retained the title but a long injury lay-off meant Xavi was only on the bench when they also won the 2006 Champions League final in Paris.

By now Xavi was established in the Spain team after making his debut in 2000. He was a beautifully composed presence in midfield, blessed with a featherlight touch and the innate ability to orchestrate games. Although he could pass over the middle and long distances too, his short game of quick, rat-a-tat passing was his basis of control. It had all been drilled into him in his youth. “Our model was imposed by Cruyff; it's an Ajax model,” Xavi said in a Guardian interview with Sid Lowe in 2011. “It's all about rondos [piggy in the middle]. Rondo, rondo, rondo. Every. Single. Day. It's the best exercise there is. You learn responsibility and not to lose the ball. If you lose the ball, you go in the middle.”

This influence was growing on Spain. At the 2006 World Cup in Germany, their slick interplay was inadvertently christened tiki-taka – a Basque expression for taking quick, light steps – by Spanish television commentator Andrés Montes. In the group phase of that tournament the Spanish team played gracefully and clinically, winning all three matches. Yet their mental block in the knockout rounds persisted. Despite taking the lead against France in the first half of their second-round match, Spain defended terribly. They were eventually overpowered and conceded two late goals to collapse to a 3-1 defeat.

The Spanish manager, Luis Aragonés, now decided to bet all of his chips on Xavi and Barcelona’s style of play trumping the more physically powerful teams. Another La Masia graduate, Xavi’s 22-year old midfield teammate Andres Iniesta, had been a squad player in Germany but quickly became a fixture in the team. Like Xavi, he stood 5 feet 7 inches tall; like Xavi, his technique and appreciation of space was virtually flawless. In tandem, they developed perhaps the most telepathic understanding of any two players in history. “Receive, pass, offer, receive, pass, offer,” was Iniesta’s summary of his education at La Masia. It had been the set text for Xavi too. With it, they would completely rewrite the possibilities for Spanish football.

At the 2008 European Championship in Austria and Switzerland, the Spanish team swept aside their opponents in the first round. They rattled off three consecutive wins over Russia, Sweden and Greece in Group D, with Valencia striker David Villa scoring four of their eight goals. As with the 2006 World Cup, they then advanced to the knockout stages and were drawn against a formidable opponent.

Italy weren’t just the world champions; they had also beaten Spain in a controversial quarter-final in Boston at the 1994 World Cup. Spain had enough opportunities to win that match and had been denied a late penalty when Mauro Tassotti elbowed Luis Enrique in the face in the penalty box. The blow broke Enrique’s nose and although Tassotti later received a whopping eight-match ban, Italy won 2-1 and made it all the way to the final. Spain hadn’t actually beaten Italy in a tournament since the 1920 Olympics; as much as the Euro 2008 quarter-final offered a chance of revenge, it also presented an all too familiar scenario. The pattern of being eliminated by the first serious opponents they faced in the knockout rounds had long been set.

They dominated possession in Vienna, right through normal and extra-time, but couldn’t create the clear chances to score. Italy were intent on hanging on and defended as a homogenous mass in their own half. The game went to penalties, which recurred another nightmare for Spain. They had lost quarter-finals on shootouts to Belgium and South Korea in the 1986 and 2002 World Cups respectively, and to England at Euro 96. For the incurably superstitious, the Belgium and England defeats had been on 22 June, the same date as the match in 2008.

Their opponents had already cured themselves of their own demons from twelve yards. Italy had been eliminated from every World Cup in the 90s via penalties but had achieved redemption by beating France on spot-kicks to win the trophy two years earlier. Everything seemed stacked against Spain, but they did not buckle; Iker Casillas saved penalties from Daniel De Rossi and Antonio Di Natale before Cesc Fabregas stroked home his effort to win it 4-2 for Spain.

Their players went wild. Boston had been avenged, they had beaten Italy at last, they had won a major knockout match and done it all on penalties. The sense of release was profound and fed into their performances for the rest of the tournament. From here onwards, Spain played like eleven Andy Dufresnes, who had clambered out of a sewage pipe and formed a football team.

They would stay in Vienna for the rest of the competition. In the semi-final Spain eviscerated Russia with a brilliant second-half performance. Xavi started it, with his only goal of the tournament. At Euro 2008 Iniesta was stationed on the left of a midfield four, with Marcos Senna of Villareal accompanying Xavi in the centre and David Silva of Valencia on the other side. The ‘receive, pass, offer’ ethos worked down the left for the first goal. Xavi fed Iniesta, who by way of return picked out a perfect cross for Xavi, who had continued his run and ghosted into the Russian area penalty undetected. As the ball arrived Xavi volleyed it through the legs of goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev to give Spain the lead.

Goals from Dani Güiza and Silva finished Russia off. Both were set up by Fabregas, who had replaced the injured Villa in the first half. With five midfielders, all ring-mastered by Xavi, Spain had simply drained the legs of the Russian players by hogging the ball. “It was very deserved,” said Russia’s coach Guus Hiddink. “If they keep touching the ball the opposition will get fatigued and they know they will score.”

In the final they would be up against the masters of certainty. After two exits in the group stages of the European Championships of 2000 and 2004, Germany were back with a vengeance. They had won their quarter- and semi-finals 3-2, over Portugal and Turkey respectively, and were powered by a clutch of vibrant young players in Bastian Schweinsteiger, Lukas Podolski and Philipp Lahm.

Spain had pulled off one of the greatest smash and grabs in the history of the European Championship when they beat West Germany 1-0 in 1984 to progress from the group at their expense; this time, they grabbed the Henri Delauney Trophy. With Villa out of the final Spain started with five in midfield and played Liverpool striker Fernando Torres up front on his own. In the 33rd minute Xavi picked him out with a wonderfully precise through ball. Torres wrestled Lahm out of the way and coolly chipped the ball over the advancing Jens Lehmann and into the net. It was, for two years, the most famous goal in the history of Spanish football.

It was also the only goal of the match, a statistic that flattered their opponents immensely. Not since their defeat to Italy in the 1982 World Cup had a German team been so comprehensively outclassed in a major final. Spain hit the post twice and Lehmann bailed Germany out on a number of occasions to keep the score respectable. Outside of that, Xavi directed everything to ensure Spain pulled the Germans all over the pitch with numbing bouts of short, quick passing. Even though their team actually had more time in possession, the German media dubbed the defeat "death by a thousand passes."

Spain won a whole lot more than the European Championship that night. After 44 underwhelming years their football had been validated at the very highest level. “They have always prized technical excellence and imaginative expression above all else, advocated fantasy above pragmatism,” wrote Paul Doyle in The Guardian. “They always knew they were right. And now they may bask in beautiful vindication.”

The world was smitten too, particularly with the architect of the victory in Spain’s midfield. Xavi was voted the Player of the Tournament. "We think he epitomised the Spanish style of play," said UEFA Technical Director Andy Roxburgh, part of a panel of nine judges. "He was extremely influential." It was an influence that would stretch far beyond one magical summer in central Europe. Xavi would become the centrepiece of a pair of club and international teams that are among the greatest to have ever played each discipline of the game.

Five months after the Daily Mail had chortled at Xavi’s credibility, he was guiding Barcelona to a Champions League final victory in Rome over Manchester United. His pinpoint cross for Lionel Messi to head home in the second half sealed their 2-0 victory. And although Messi would become the greatest Barcelona player in history and claim his first Ballon d’Or off the back of this victory, United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was in no doubt who had forced his team into submission. “It wasn't really Messi who was the problem,” he later said ruefully. “It was Iniesta and Xavi. They can keep the ball all night long.”

It was an axis that ensured Spain would keep hold of the European Championship trophy four years later.