Xavi reveals: “The decision on my resignation has been made for a long time, our work is not valued enough”. “Honestly, I had decided to leave from the beginning of the season”.

by icestory

19 comments

  1. Is this copium? I don’t think there wasn’t such criticism until the loss to Shakhar in November but come on, you can understand while we were all critical then

  2. Lol I love Xavi but if he decided to leave at the beginning of the season then he should have left at the beginning of the season. A manager needs to be fully committed when managing the club. If theyre partly checked out then its harder to motivate the players and you can end up with a bad season…

    eh kinda like the one we are having now!!

  3. Maybe that’s why we’ve been awful. He’s a professional but surely your edge drops a little when your heart’s not in it.

  4. He sounds salty. Hopefully it doesn’t go ballistic in his last few months

  5. There sad to hear, job of coach is never easy let alone being one at barca

  6. His press conference today has been weird, at least to me. I don’t fully get it. He says he feels valued and supported by the club and by the players, but that “the things they do are not appreciated in general” and that being a manager of the club is cruel.

    So he is making it very clear that he is leaving because of the “environment”, the media and the fans. But this feels ridiculous because he spent his whole career here, he knows what this club is, the pressure, the fans and the demands. Nobody is more familiar with this place than him. He saw Guardiola get balder, and he saw the club be accused of doping, of cheating, Villarato.

    I can see that he has suffered and struggled, but you can’t put yourself out there and come as a victim as if everything is moving forward and the fans/media simply want more.

    He won the league, but we also got kicked out of the UCL twice in the group stage, and twice from the EL without even reaching semis. You don’t need 2010 Barcelona to avoid this, it didn’t happen since 1997. We had 14 points on Madrid, but they also ran over you the CdR 0-4 in the worst defeat at home we had. You won 1 Supercup out of 3 you competed, the other two you lost to Madrid, one recently by 4-1. All of this plus the awful display of football, struggling against bad teams, random defeats against weaker teams.

    You can’t act like there aren’t reasons to complain, what other manager would be tolerated for this? And despite all of this, the stadium never whistled him, never chanted against him, there was never a “pañolada”, there were complaints on Twitter and other social media like every club has…

    Koeman got far more insults and worse treatment, with fans waiting outside the stadium to shake his car, and he got a worse team where he lost Messie, and Griezman and his star reinforcement was Memphis Depay.

    Sorry for the rant, I love Xavi but his comments are just so ugh…

  8. Didn’t he sign a contract renewal at the start of the season?

    Edit: He renewed his contract until 2025 on September 2023, 6 games into the season.

  9. So why did he renews his contact? Playing the victim card is getting old

  10. LOL, no. Xavi is a first class complainer and excuse-maker.

  12. I dont see how revealing all this information in press conference is taking off the pressure from players

  13. He is not ready for this level of after 1 season he’s already burnt out.

  14. Maybe as a club it’s time to admit the media, the board (obviously), fans; the things Johan complained about decades ago. Is the problem.

  17. I’m sure the toxicity is 100 fold worse now than when he was a player, the team is struggling now and we were one of the best teams in the world when he played. So even though he was here before and knows the culture, what he is dealing with from the board, media, fans is guaranteed much much worse than any manager we had during Xavi’s time as a full time 1st team player.

  18. Someone was saying the other day how Xavi is like that toxic relationship that you just can’t get out of and it just makes more and more sense. Jesus, brother, stop with the victimizing and just move on. As other people mentioned, he is by far the most protected coach we got. Others would have been crucified after games like the Madrid SuperCopa and the Girona disgrace.

  19. Some people are wondering about what Xavi means by not being appreciated.

    It’s quite simple folks. In England, if you’re managing a big club and are 7th in the table, it doesn’t really matter. They only start calling for your head if you touch the bottom 5-6 spots.

    In Spain, if you’re managing Barca and you’re not 1st in the table, the media story is that you’re in crisis and about to be sacked.

    The story is also that you don’t know about football, that you’re a failure, that you’re essentially bad at your job, etc.

    The Spanish press is also very nosy, and things get leaked from meetings, dressing room, etc, that are uncomfortable to have aired in public.

    That’s all it is: the Spanish sports media. It’s simple.

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