Football Season Guide

In Xavi’s first full season in charge at Barcelona, the Catalan club won the LaLiga title and the Spanish Super Cup too. That made it a successful season overall, even if they exited the Champions League at the group stage for the second year in a row. This year, the challenge is to retain the league title, something that hasn’t been done in LaLiga by any club since 2019. The other objective is to make it back to the Champions League knockouts. To try to achieve this, the marquee summer signing is Ilkay Gundogan, who just lifted the Champions League with Manchester City. With Barcelona still strapped for cash, few other big signings are possible, but getting Gundogan was a big deal. They’ll hope that Gundogan helps make the Barcelona midfield as dominant as it once was. Because the strength during last year’s title win was actually the defence, with Marc-Andre ter Stegen keeping 26 clean sheets in the league. Barcelona’s weakness might even be in attack. Even though Robert Lewandowski bagged 23 league goals in his first LaLiga season, finishing as top scorer, more was expected of him and there weren’t many contributing goals other than the Pole. That’s an area to watch in 2023/24 for the Catalan club, who won 1-0 11 times last campaign, but who may not be able to squeeze out so many narrow victories this term.