Two meetings simultaneous events in the bowels of Montjuïc led to Xavi Hernández’s announcement that he would leave the Barça bench in June, despite the remaining year of his contract (2025) and Joan Laporta’s insistence that he continue. There are several reasons why the Barça legend has anticipated his departure.
“I accept this formula because it is Xavi who proposes it to me,” the president of that march admitted on a delayed basis, implying that another coach would have been fired at that moment. “I accept it because he is a legend of Barcelona fans, an honest person, who acts with dignity and loves Barça,” he said, convinced of his “maximum dedication” until the end of the season.
1. Why is he leaving?
The first reason is sports. The team is not going as its coach would like or as the board expects, overstressed by how much is at stake. Barça’s economic ruin can only be avoided with titles that attract new income, all the resources for sale have already been exhausted, income has been minimized without the Camp Nou and museum collection machines working, and Joan Laporta’s entourage is devoid of ingenious executives.
“With an improved squad we had better expectations that, for the moment, have not been met,” he said in an evening critical of the squad and coach. These expectations do not correspond to the real capacity of the group, short in number and quality. If the most unbalancing man in the attack is Lamine Yamal, 16 years old, It is clear that there is a problem; Yeah Pau Cubarsi (17) He stands out as the most solvent defender in the squad, confirming that the general performance is low.
“With an improved squad we had better expectations that, for now, have not been met”
The second reason is the staff. Xavi feels mistreated and vilified. He led Barça to win the last League with a 10-point difference over Madrid (they reached 15), which he surpassed in winning the Super Cup. The credit was ephemeral; The coach saw him exhausted in the preseason, the environment infected with the anxiety that the board gives off. Xavi arrived in November 2021 with the mission of “save the club,” according to what Laporta told him and his followers agreed.
2. Why are you announcing it now?
The cruel defeat against Villarreal has been the trigger for a decision already made by Xavi, disgusted by the general atmosphere outside the locker room. The coach thinks that the players feel the pressure, and the stress leads them to make poor decisions on the pitch. Ronald Araujo, a former example of infallibility, is no longer an impregnable bastion. Robert Lewandowski seems to have aged suddenly.
The team represented the ambivalence of the paranoia that shakes him: capable of scoring three goals in 11 minutes, He missed the point, conceded the tie and fell into disarray during the last 11 minutes after the penalty that could have given him the victory was annulled until conceding two goals in added time. He lost three points after losing the oremus.
Xavi came to the conclusion that his men They are victims of that dynamic and he only came up with the idea of resigning himself to free them from that yoke, convinced that he was the magnet of that negativity due to the criticism leveled at the team.
3. What does the club think?
Laporta did not expect Xavi’s decision. Nor the determination with which she wanted to communicate it. While the coach debated with his staff relatives the need to anticipate his future departure, the leaders cursed the defeat in the box at the same time. These two simultaneous and parallel meetings converged into one.
Xavi asked The door let it go down the surroundings of the locker room and explained his point of view. The president, according to some sources, insisted that she not be discouraged and assured her that she continued to trust him and that she wanted him to continue until the end. Not about the season, but about the contract in 2025. Laporta’s former brother-in-law, Alejandro Echevarría, vice president Rafa Yuste and sports director Deco, They listened to the arguments that they were not able to refute.
And the good words of the president with whom Xavi has a solid relationship, do not correspond to the coach’s perceptions. They are not accompanied by corresponding gestures. The coach feels that the anguish of the leadership demands from the team a level that it cannot provide, without the squad having been reinforced in quantity or quality to defend the championship title that some, increasingly, describe as a “miracle” against the football and economic potential of Madrid.
4. What will Laporta do?
Nobody had interpreted Xavi’s insinuations on Friday, when he linked the contempt for his work with the critical charge that his much more victorious predecessors also received, as a symptom. This toxic environment, of created interests and perennial critics – out of conviction, out of identity, out of colors, out of politics – maintains its bellicosity due to the obvious weakness of the club. That is also part of Barça’s DNA.
Laporta has not known how to combat the erosive atmosphere with ideas or messages that would deny the apparent indifference with which he travels the world while the team despairs. Although he has gone twice to Sant Joan Despí following two catastrophes. Upon returning from Saudi Arabia after the setback with Madrid and the day after the Montjuïc earthquake. “The club is under control in institutional matters; in sports, things do not go as planned,” said the leader.
5. Where does the pressure lie to finish the season?
Xavi has taken a step aside. He moves away from the focus, believing himself to be the cause of evil, so the responsibility falls on the footballers. He attributed individual failures to them with which the coach justified several setbacks, and they assumed them all in the definitive fiasco against Villarreal with the string of errors they exhibited: two goals disallowed against Villarreal before the first legal one, born from a throw-in rudely defended by Romeu, Araujo and Christensen; that of João Cancelo at 0-2, with which the Portuguese flagellated himself; the loss and lack of aggressiveness from Gündogan and De Jong that led to a 3-3 score, and the last two goals with the team broken down.
Laporta knows that the club is in the hands of the footballers. Although Xavi sees it as possible to be champion of the Champions League and sees it as “difficult” to win the League that he has, the president will settle, in these low hours, with securing qualification for the European competition. Because The gaze will go from the grass to the box without going through the bench. The president already intervened when he ordered that no one should miss the Antwerp event and Xavi extended the call on the sixth day of the league.
6. Who are the future candidates?
No one will look towards the bench until the identity of the tenant for the 2024-25 academic year is known. Xavi assured that his resignation was final and irrevocable even if another double miracle of biblical proportions occurred with a utopian doublet.
The fun over the choice of coach has exploded. The always bustling market about the footballers who will come and go is expanding with that of the next coach. The first name was Jürgen Klopp, who announced his departure from Liverpool on Friday. That of José Mourinho appeared, who landed in Barcelona. Rafa Márquez, the coach of Barcelona Atlètic, raised his hand from Fuenlabrada, where the reserve team won (1-2) and they even asked the ex-Azulgrana Thiago Motta, today in charge of Bologna, about his connection with Deco from that time of Frank Rijkaard.
The search for technicians will attract the name of Imanol Alguacil, for his great role with Real Sociedad and that of Míchel Sánchez, with the revelation of Girona, without forgetting that of Luis Enrique for the return that would return Barça to the last time it reigned in football. Nor forget that the Laporta candidate in the elections would like a German (or Hans-Dieter Flick, the man of Bayern’s sextet, or Julian Naggelsmann, Leipzig’s revelation) or a figure like the Italian Andrea Pirlo. There is only one unanimous name. And he resides in Manchester.
2024-01-29 07:20:16
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