Photo Credit: Al Sadd FC When Barcelona legend Xavi Hernandez was unveiled as an Al-Sadd player a few months ago, he was stepping into the unknown. All his life, the midfield genius had played for Barcelona. Catalan-born and bred, Xavi will have felt a tinge of awkwardness pulling…

Xavi – A player of such ability, elegance and craftiness that fellow professionals are always flattering in their praise of a footballer who is arguably the finest midfielder in today’s game. A simple pass-and-move element to the game repeated each week with dynamism, resolve and precision is the…

Xavi is a regulator, growling whenever his teammate drifts outside the ‘zone’. This zone is the various triangles’ he forms with the 10 players on the pitch. If fame creeps into a player eventually disrupting the structure of the team, Xavi will remind him of his place. Take…

Name it total football, tiki-taka or joga bonita. Every club; not just in Europe but also in the world dreams of playing like Barcelona.  This is a brief dedication of cumulative moments of the various players in the club as they have faithfully entertained us with their concept…

It was always going to be a tricky affair, being invited by an Italian to watch the match on a super big screen, among a bunch of Italians. A tricky affair because I was rooting for the Spanish. There had been a lot of hoo-la-hoo in the media…