Barcelona is trapped in a seesaw sporting, but above all emotional. This state of permanent cyclothymia has generated wear and tear that leaves Xavi Hernández in the spotlight, practically with one foot outside of Barça. “We all know this club. “You never know what can happen,” they warn from the leadership of the Catalan club. It happens that the fatigue with the coach is no longer only political but also footballing: without unity in the institutional message, which is not uniform, nor results on the field. Xavi’s entourage, for now, looks the other way. “No one has told us anything,” they emphasize. The club’s communications department is betting on patience: “There is nothing. All rumors and too much noise.” However, there is no longer a manager or executive who trusts the coach.
The differences in criteria between Xavi and those responsible for the club are not new. In fact, president Joan Laporta was never convinced about hiring him. However, in November 2021, after firing Ronald Koeman, Barcelona needed an emotional inflator to overcome an institutional crisis. It was then that Xavi arrived to take the reins of the team. Initially, the coach aspired to a managerial role that would allow him to have control of different areas of the first team. He was not allowed. He managed, in any case, to put together a coaching staff tailored to him, protected by the people he trusted the most. “I don’t understand how Xavi, after so many years in football, hasn’t been able to convince a top-level player to join his coaching staff,” they were surprised, at the time, from the offices.
But Xavi, from the start, worked. First as a shield, then as a coach: second position in the league in the 2021-2022 season, champion in 2022-2023. “It was practically a miracle to have finished second in the first season,” they celebrated from the start. staff technical. Already without levers – the euphemism that Laporta made famous to explain the sale of the club’s assets – last summer the champion team was unable to enter the market with force, beyond the loans of Félix and Cancelo, plus the incorporation of veteran players free like Iñigo Martínez and Gündogan. The only investment was that of Oriol Romeu. Xavi did not protest, on the contrary. “We have had a very good market, but now we have to prove it,” he said in September 2023. The problem was that Barcelona deflated on the field, with nothing to celebrate since PSG eliminated them from the Champions League, Madrid the League and Athletic of the Copa del Rey.
But at the moment when Barcelona no longer had anything to fight for, Xavi asked to continue. “To rectify is wise,” he argued. Three months earlier, in January, he had deferred his resignation. “I will leave at the end of the season. The feeling of being a Barça coach is unpleasant, it is cruel, you feel that they disrespect you many times, that your work is not valued. This is a terrible drain on mental health and mood. I am a positive guy, but the energy is going down, there is no point in continuing,” he had explained in January. Laporta and Deco accepted “his goodbye” and his “I’m staying.” Of course, the president asked him: “Do you trust the staff?” “Yes,” Xavi responded privately. Already in public, the coach explained: “I see myself with strength and ability.”
Xavi went from trusting the squad to asking for reinforcements. And the sports management was upset. They weren’t the only ones. The coach’s most realistic and sincere message last Wednesday irritated the board. “The culé must understand that the situation is very complicated and that it has nothing to do with the situation 25 years ago. Now the coach can’t ask ‘this one, this one and this one. The goal is to change, otherwise we will stay the same,” said the coach.
“There are two issues,” explains one of the club’s top officials; “There is a political issue, which is what happened on Wednesday when Xavi gave a message opposite to the one he had given to the president; There is also a sporting issue: the team is not improving.” And it is at this point that the managers opposed to Xavi’s continuity asked Laporta: “Will this team be better next season if Xavi continues? Well, then there is no point in continuing.”
One change of script in Barcelona, one more, and no one knows what is going to happen. Xavi’s phone has not yet rang with the president’s call. For now. Rafa Márquez and Hansi Flick are already warming up.
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