- Xavi claims that at Barca, it’s important to understand the space-time concept, saying that Busquets, Messi and Iniesta are masters at it.
- He believes that rondos are the easiest way to improve creativity.
- Meanwhile, Xavi reckons that Casemiro wouldn’t be able to perform as well at rondos.
“How to stimulate creativity? With rondos! People still think that’s just something we do for fun. No! It’s an incredible exercise. You use both feet, you look towards the second line, you pass inside, you attract your opponent and then when he’s close to you, pam! you pass it to the other side. It’s endless,” Xavi told El Pais back in 2018.
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“It’s an exercise that allows infinite implementations. For example, seven against two, five against two (in this case, it’s already harder to find an escape). Nine against two is more fun.
“Or you can have a big rondo with three in the middle: two press and the other one covers potential passing lines so you have to find the space, think where you can find the ball.
“It forces you to look around you, find the free player. At Barca, we understand football as a space-time concept. Who dominates that? Busquets, Messi, Iniesta: they’re masters of space-time. They always know what to do when they’re surrounded.
“Then you have midfielders like Casemiro who don’t understand that. But at the same time, Busquets could never do the cover work that Casemiro does when the game is heads or tails.”
Rondo is one of the most frequent exercises our players do as it can be spotted in almost every training video Barcelona publish.
You can enjoy an old video of Barca playing the rondo here:
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