Barcelona fires Xavi Hernández. A month after president Joan Laporta appeared publicly with the Catalan coach to celebrate his continuity at the club until June 2025, the Barça entity has had enough of Xavi. President Joan Laporta met with the coach this morning and informed him that he will not continue on the Barça bench. Next to Laporta were the sports vice president, Rafa Yuste, and the sports director, Deco, as well as Xavi’s assistants, Óscar Hernández and Sergio Alegre. The wear and tear was not only political, but also footballing: there was no unity in the institutional message, which is not uniform, nor has the team found results on the field. The economic impact of the coach’s departure still needs to be defined: the cost of firing Xavi is 20 million. Bad business for a club that is in the red and has to look for a new coach. In sports management, they say that Hansi Flick is the chosen one.
This is not, in any case, Xavi’s first goodbye. The first was decided by himself on January 27, when he assured that he would leave “at the end of the season.” “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 said. But he repented. “To rectify is wise,” he argued. Laporta and Deco accepted both “his goodbye” and his “I’m staying.” Of course, the president asked him: “Do you trust the staff?” “Yes,” Xavi responded the day they agreed that he would fulfill his contract until 2025 in Laporta’s penthouse. Already in public, the coach explained: “I see myself with strength and ability.”
But paradoxically that meeting at Laporta’s house was the beginning of the end. And something (again) changed in Xavi: he went from trusting the squad in private to asking for reinforcements in public. And the sports management was upset. They weren’t the only ones. The coach’s most realistic and sincere message last Wednesday, before the duel against Almería, irritated the president. “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 cannot ask ‘this one, this one and this one’. The objective is to change, if not, we will stay the same,” stated the Catalan coach. A different answer, according to Laporta’s environment, than the one he had given in the penthouse in the upper area of Barcelona. “We did tell him that this team needs four important reinforcements to compete,” intervene from the coach’s hard core.
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. “He has no experience,” he justified. However, in November 2021, after firing Ronald Koeman, Xavi arrived to take the reins of the team. Initially, the coach aspired to a managerial role that would give him 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 his most trusted people although without any powerful profile at his side.
But Xavi, from the start, worked. First as a shield, then as a coach: second position in LaLiga 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. Without the levers, last summer the champion team could not go to the market with force. The only acquisition was that of Oriol Romeu (3.4 million). Xavi did not protest, on the contrary. The problem was that Barcelona deflated on the field, with nothing to celebrate since PSG eliminated them from the Champions League, Madrid from the League and Athletic from the Copa del Rey. Before, in January, they had already fallen in the classic Super Cup final.
And 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 more change of script in Barcelona. The last one for Xavi. One more for Laporta.
Xavi is the third legend that the president has struck down since he returned to the club in 2021. First it was Messi; then, Koeman; Now, Xavi.
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