At the start of the season, Barcelona coach Xavi Hernandez sat his players down and told them they had to win the LaLiga title.
"With this squad, the league cannot escape us," he said in August, as revealed in a recent documentary. "We have to blow this league away, blow it away. Every game is a f---ing war; we have to give everything. We are privileged to be at Barca. We have to die on the pitch. With this squad, we have to win trophies, above all the league ... are you ready to be a family?"
On Sunday, Barca wrapped up their first league title since 2019 with a 4-2 win away at local rivals Espanyol. It is the 27th time the Catalan club have won the Spanish league but the first under Xavi, the former midfielder and club legend who returned as coach 18 months ago when the team were ninth in the table, having won just four of their opening 12 matches.
Barca won 10 league titles during the time Lionel Messi was at the club from 2004 to 2021, but the frequency of their success during those years diluted the value given to domestic dominance, with the Champions League seen as the ultimate prize. Messi himself even warned that, one day, supporters would realise how hard it was to win league title after league title.
Now a sense of value in LaLiga has been restored, after three barren years in which Barca won just a single Copa del Rey. Fans poured to the streets after the win over Espanyol, heading to Canaletes at the top of La Rambla, the spot in the city centre where supporters traditionally celebrate trophies. They were there until long past 2 a.m., setting off flares, climbing lamp posts and singing songs, with the roads around closed to traffic. Others headed to the training ground to greet the players returning from RCDE Stadium, where they had been chased off the pitch by angry home fans for their celebrations in the centre circle. The players greeted them from a balcony -- a scene not witnessed before, and a sign of the communion between the squad and the fan base -- before heading off to a beachside nightclub.
Behind those celebrations is Xavi, who became the fifth person to win the title with Barca as a player and a coach, joining Josep Samitier, Johan Cruyff, Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique. The former midfielder's status as a club legend has brought calm when other coaches might have been swallowed by the storms that often surround Barca.
That's not to say there have not been hurdles, though. There was a rush to register the new signings ahead of the start of the season as the club battled to comply with LaLiga's finance rules. To do so, they had to sell off club assets and a percentage of future earnings from television rights. The board deemed not doing so to be a bigger risk as Barca would be in danger of falling further behind Real Madrid and Europe's biggest teams.
