When Xavi was looking ahead to the Supercopa de Espana last week, he said he hoped the four-team competition in Saudi Arabia would give his underperforming Barcelona side a chance to finally “click” this season.
“We are getting closer to our game,” he said before Barca’s semi-final against Osasuna. “We only need this turning point, and that’s what we might find here.”
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A few days later, a traumatic defeat to Real Madrid in the final brought about quite a different outcome. Nobody witnessed any ‘click’ from Barcelona during that 4-1 loss, just the rising waves of intensifying pressure.
Instead of the Supercopa — Spain’s expanded equivalent of the Community Shield in England — providing a springboard towards success, as it did for title-bound Barca last season, Xavi’s project has been sent back to square one and his position has been left seriously undermined.
Xavi, 43, was already under scrutiny as manager of the Catalan club where he had starred as a player, with Barca badly off the pace in La Liga this season and unconvincing in their style of play. Barcelona are still planning to assess Xavi’s role at the end of the season, as reported by The Athletic, but there is a growing realisation around the club that he is not the manager everyone hoped he would be — the figure around whom a renaissance could be launched.
After the Supercopa, keeping his job won’t be an easy task for Xavi. The manager who won La Liga last season is now fighting for his future. This is why.
Xavi has always carried an extra — and possibly unfair — share of expectations since being appointed as Barcelona coach in November 2021. A legendary player who spent 17 years at the Camp Nou between 1998 and 2015, he took the midfield baton from fellow academy graduate Pep Guardiola and helped define an era under him on the pitch. Parallels were always going to be drawn with the now Manchester City manager.
Xavi’s return came at a tough time. He inherited a squad short on quality and depth compared to previous years, and with Barcelona just ninth in La Liga after 12 games of that 2021-22 season under Ronald Koeman, another of the club’s former players.
At the start, there was a shade of suspicion over whether club president Joan Laporta fully trusted Xavi, who had been part of Victor Font’s rival candidacy during Barca’s 2021 elections. Xavi wasn’t his man, and Laporta tends to surround himself with those who faithfully support him, but those were desperate times and the club needed the boost someone of his profile would bring.
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In financial terms, Xavi has been more trusted than the majority of his predecessors. In January 2022, his first transfer window in charge, Barcelona’s board backed him with five signings to make sure of Champions League qualification. That mission was completed. Six months later, The Summer of Levers arrived.
Those two windows saw nearly €300million (£257m/$326m at today’s rates) invested in new players. Last season, Barca claimed a first La Liga title in four years but since then, Xavi has simply not helped his side progress. It’s hard to spot any player performing at their very best or youngsters who have been skillfully developed by the coaching staff.
What’s most concerning, though, is the lack of connection between the manager and the dressing room that Sunday’s Clasico defeat exposed.
Xavi has tried practically everything to revamp the team’s spirit in recent months, but seemingly with little success.
There have already been two important clear-the-air team meetings this season. The first was in October after the 2-1 league Clasico defeat at home, and new signing Ilkay Gundogan’s words of criticism that followed. The second was after Barca were beaten 1-0 away against Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League group stage less than two weeks later. Backroom staff left those discussions feeling reassured of the team’s commitment, and expected a positive reaction on the pitch — but it never really happened.
Xavi often chose not to publicly criticise his group, instead blaming the media for spreading negativity, but after another disappointing performance in the 3-2 home victory against Almeria — the final league game of 2023 — that strategy changed.
“There was no intensity or aggressiveness, I told the players that at half-time,” Xavi said. “We do not possess the 2010 Barcelona’s quality, we just don’t. We need to run our socks off. If we don’t run like animals, we won’t win games. This needs to change and is not happening again. This is my responsibility.”
But only four matches later, Xavi found himself admitting his team “didn’t show up” in the second half of Sunday’s defeat by Madrid in Riyadh.
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Nothing has changed, and it leads people inside the club to question whether the players are not following the manager, or if they simply struggle to apply his ideas on the pitch. Both scenarios would be concerning, but Xavi’s relationship with some of them has certainly come under strain.
Pedri felt disappointed last season with the pressure applied on him to hurry back from injury, which eventually caused him a severe setback. There was frustration from Ferran Torres, who was kept on a list of potential departures throughout the summer, despite neither the manager nor Barca ever telling him directly to find another club. The same scenario happened with Ansu Fati and Eric Garcia, who both finally opted to leave.
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Before the start of the season, Jules Kounde told Xavi he didn’t enjoy being played as a right-back, and that he would prefer to be used in his natural central defensive position. This saw club captain Ronald Araujo being relocated as a right-back more regularly, but he has ended up complaining about this too. Another defender, Andreas Christensen, has become disgruntled over consistently being the first player to be dropped when everyone is fit.
There’s also the case of Robert Lewandowski, arguably the club’s key senior player, who has also seen his position at the club, and relationship with the manager, change significantly of late.
As soon as he arrived at the club in the summer of 2022, Lewandowski was regarded as a blessing by the coaching staff — a role model and a benchmark in terms of work ethic for the youngsters in the club. Xavi even used him as an example during team talks and encouraged other players to follow the striker’s example.
After the 2022 World Cup in November and December, Xavi changed to a new system, taking a winger out to get an extra midfielder on the pitch. By the end of last season, Lewandowski was feeling that this new structure did not help the team produce more in the final third, or provide him with big chances. He expressed his concerns in an interview with The Athletic during pre-season.
Xavi has switched to two wingers in multiple games this season, but Lewandowski’s form is way below his high standards. The 35-year-old was taken off at Las Palmas early this month when Barca needed to find a goal to win, and it felt like a big moment.
Backroom staff sources — who, like all those cited here, preferred to speak anonymously to protect their position — have conceded their frustration with Lewandowski’s lack of luck in front of goal this season.
In many ways, much of this is all part of the normal running of an elite football club. Nobody can expect top athletes to be happy when things aren’t going the way they planned, and some of the examples mentioned above are now thought to have been dealt with.
Barcelona held their first training session since the weekend’s Clasico loss yesterday (Tuesday). Before the start of it, the coaching staff and the footballers had another honest talk to assess the situation. After that meeting, sources from the backroom staff assured The Athletic that Xavi is still convinced the vast majority of the dressing room supports him.
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However, judging by what has happened on the football pitch and according to first-team sources, there are still various loose ends.
Xavi does have a clear idea of how he wants Barcelona to play, but he’s not transformed that into reality. Against Madrid on Sunday, he returned to the four-midfielder system used to such great effect in the same fixture last January. This time, it left Barca badly exposed. Unable to operate an effective high press, they could not prevent Madrid easily dismantling their defensive line to score twice in the first 10 minutes.
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In the build-up to the Supercopa final, Xavi had once again attempted to convince those listening that his side were committed to the ‘Johan Cruyff DNA’. It might have been a move to protect his players from outside pressure, but now it looks like he went into that game without having spotted the major warning signs around his team, and his pre-match words made the defeat even more damaging.
Despite all this, we should not expect Barca to abruptly fire their manager.
Club sources keep insisting Xavi will continue, that this is a time to remain calm and that a definitive diagnosis will be left until the summer.
Sacking him now would not fix anything in the short-term, and blame for the club’s state must also be placed at the door of those above him in the hierarchy, with an excessive salary bill and a transfer policy more based on relationships with agents rather than an analytical mindset, as well as Barcelona’s deeper money problems.
And even if it’s decided that Xavi has to go in the summer, what is the alternative? The club’s finances mean they would struggle to even bring in a modestly-paid replacement.
The only potential candidate who has been timidly lined up to replace Xavi in case of emergency is Rafael Marquez, the former Mexico and Barca defender now in charge of Barcelona Atletic, a reserve team largely consisting of academy graduates who compete in Spain’s third tier.
Marquez taking over might make sense financially but he is unproven as a manager at elite level. Hiring him to lead the first team would be an extremely risky gamble and would bring no guarantee the situation would change.
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Barca’s money troubles and the manner in which they have chosen to address them mean the club need success on the pitch. When Laporta returned as president three years ago, he did so promising to follow the “virtuous circle” theory of his first spell; spending big money to bring in players who would guarantee titles — and the revenue that comes with them.
His plan crashed into a wall in Riyadh on Sunday night.
Now the club have the final five months of the season to work out the answers on the pitch.
(Top photo: Aitor Alcalde Colomer/Getty Images)