At the heart of Barcelona’s success is Xavi Hernández

Should Barcelona give Xavi Hernández a better contract soon? Is the Pope Christian? Barcelona is today the world’s top football club for many reasons: great discipline, teamwork above all else, rigorous practice and team continuity. Most of the world’s great teams share some of these values, but Barcelona does something that most teams don’t — or can’t — do. Barcelona sticks to its tremendously tough-to-emulate style of play, and to do that, it doesn’t chop or change its squad as frequently as most other clubs do. And the heart of this great team — the engine driving the entire game from midfield — is Xavi. Most recent polls place him as the world’s best midfielder, even better than his Barcelona colleague Andrés Iniesta, who was crowned European Footballer of the Year by Fifa recently. Any club in the world would give an arm and a leg to snatch Xavi away from Barcelona: it is up to the team’s management to keep him happy, and playing for the Catalan club.

Sometimes, when watching top athletes in peak form do their thing, it is easy to forget how difficult it is for ordinary mortals to emulate them. Sometimes, the real greatness of players becomes apparent when they are not playing. When the full Barca squad is on the field and in flow, it is easy to assume that this is the natural, inevitable order of things. But that is an illusion. A new, exhausting league season has started in Europe, and in the initial matches, coach Tito Vilanova has sometimes chosen to bench Leo Messi and Xavi at the start of the game. Both feel the need to play every minute of every match, but both need the rest. In many such games, Barca struggle to lift the game to their usual level of brilliance, or struggle to penetrate stubborn defences. Then Xavi strides in, and the magic begins once again.