This Thursday, Víctor Font presented his sports organization chart at a large event at Cinemes Bosque in Barcelona. The pre-candidate for the presidency of Barça would entrust the management of football to Xavi Hernández, who would act as general sports manager, whether or not he became a coach. The reason for this nuance is that Ronald Koeman would remain on the bench in the short term waiting to assess the team’s results this season. The Dutchman has a contract until June 2022. Although Xavi publicly softened his ties with the Yes to the Future project a few days ago, Font has it all closed with the former player and current coach of Qatar’s Al-Sadd , with whom he has spent time working on the organization chart.
“Xavi would be Barça’s coach next year if he doesn’t do well with Koeman. The idea is to make him like Ferguson at Manchester United, which would make the job of coaching compatible with that of general manager,” said Font. who insists that it is necessary to “create the conditions for Barça assets such as Xavi to serve the club” and that the Egarenc, in the event of an electoral victory, “would start advising the club on sports from 25 January”.
The other powerful figure in the technical structure of football would be Jordi Cruyff, who would join Barça as sporting director. The son of the Dream Team coach currently works for Shenzhen FC in the Chinese Super League, but his main successes after finishing his time as a player were as a sporting director at Maccabi Tel Aviv, which between 2012 and In 2015, he lived in the Champions League thanks to the vision of the Spanish-Dutchman, who promoted coaches such as Peter Bosz, Paulo Sousa, Òscar Garcia and Pako Ayestarán. Josep Maria Bartomeu tried to hire him as technical secretary to fill the vacancies of Pep Segura and Robert Fernández, but Cruyff never agreed to make the leap to Barça’s offices. Now, if Víctor Font were chosen, he would.
One of the first operations that Jordi Cruyff would manage is the return of Eric García, Manchester City’s central defender whose contract expires on 30 June. “It’s a priority for us, an example of the mismanagement that has been done in grassroots football in recent years,” said Font, who, even if he presided over the club, could make the effort to advance the signing to the winter market.
Below Cruyff would be a technical secretariat with two figures. One is Tito Blanco, a former Levante sporting director who joined Barça B in the early 1990s. And the other has not been revealed due to contractual confidentiality – Fernando Navarro is still working at Sevilla under Monchi. Blanco would also be in charge of coordinating grassroots football, in which the key positions would be for two former La Masia players who are not currently at the club: Joan Vilá and Albert Benaiges. “The sum of players builds a team. And if we have proximity to young players, we can build great teams,” Vilá explained at the event.
Font has presented several “transversal areas” that will also be under the tutelage of Xavi: medical services, physical preparation and physiotherapy, methodology (with Paco Seirul·lo as a key figure), talent management (with Emili Ricart ) and behavior and psychology (with Inma Puig, the therapist who treated Andrés Iniesta in 2010). And in terms of decision-making, the pre-candidate has detailed a plan in which the sports management will identify needs, the technical secretariat would analyze the discharge market, the coach would be consulted, the general manager would make the decision and the board the validaria.
Juli López, general director of sports
Xavi and Cruyff would be the strong men of the football area, but they would have above a general director of sports who would be the ex-player Juli López, brother of the also ex-soccer players Gerard and Sergi López with a wide experience in the world of the company , especially in the recreational sector, and training at ESADE. Juli has been the sports spokesman for Sí al Futur for months and would have similar responsibilities to the club to those of Albert Soler a few years ago, when Bartomeu appointed him director of professional sports to coordinate all sections. “It will be a link between the executives and the board of directors,” explained Víctor Font on López.
.
