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Xavi Hernández, Dani Alves and Barça’s lack of communication strategy

A monkey at the wheel. If not, it is not understood. The football industry that has so much media focus and moves so much money seems too often governed by a bunch of incompetents. Two recent examples.

The image of the Barça footballers collecting the Super Cup champions’ medals by themselves, without anyone to give them or hang them up, is unfortunate. Above all because, if we compare it with the grandiloquence and pomp with which the Federation performs these acts on the male, it makes us sick to our stomachs. Incompetence? Negligence? Or just masculinity? We would bet on a mixture of everything, but it is clear that the tics of a way of understanding sport – and the world in general – that is totally cavernous and retrograde still persist.

The other example, at Can Barça. If a week ago we were pointing to Xavi’s skates in terms of communication, this weekend he showed off even more. His first statements about the Dani Alves case, ignoring the victim, embarrassed many fans. The coach rectified it on Sunday, admitting the mistake and redoing the story, a fact that honors him, but his inability to empathize with the girl who denounces Alves is unforgivable. First for him, who seems to have a pending subject with how to address the thorny issues that escape from football, but also for Barça as an institution. Is there no one in a club with hundreds of workers, where the communication strategy is vital, to tell Xavi how to respond to a question that we all knew would come out in a press conference? Who builds the story? Who foresees the possible scenarios to avoid the umpteenth crisis?

Obviously, there is no manual on how to approach these questions, especially when the accused is a friend, but it shouldn’t be that difficult to apply common sense and start from a basic premise that must govern any answer on this matter: the respect for the victims, empathy towards them. We have had enough speeches recently questioning the survivors of sexual assault and abuse – not only when she is a victim, sometimes even when there are fifteen or so witnesses – such that Barça and Xavi, references for millions of people , many of them boys and girls at the age of forming their personality, skate in this. And the problem is that it is not the first time that the club has made a mistake in a situation of this type. When the case of Albert Benaiges exploded, he did not get the first statement right and it was not until the next day that Joan Laporta sent the message he wanted. We hope that the third will win.

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