Xavi’s return to Barcelona as manager was written in the stars, but it was too good to last
Xavi wept the first time he bid goodbye to Barcelona. Those were tears he shed for parting with a slice of his soul, the club he has devoted all his life for, the club he spent his time from adolescence to middle age. The institution had defined him, as much as he had defined it. Those were tears of joy too, for he was departing as a winner, with the European crown on his right hand at the sleek Olympiastadion in Berlin.
The separation, though, seemed fleeting. One day, some day, hope fluttered, that he would return, to be Barcelona’s again, to be Barcelona again. His was a coaching life foretold. Like Pep Guardiola; like Luis Enrique; like Johan Cruyff. He did, before he left again.
It was the perfect marriage; the manager made for Barcelona, breathing and living its idealistic ethos.
But Xavi did not weep the second time he bid farewell. He was sombre, relieved that a pain was removed off his chest. He could smile now — but he didn’t. The words he used implied as much. “Cruel”, “unpleasant”, “liberation”, he sprayed the words someone does after a sour divorce.
“It wears you down terribly, in terms of health, of mental health, your mood, your emotional state. I am a positive guy but the energy goes down, down, down, until the point at which you say: it makes no sense.”
The words seemed too unreal for someone who barely spoke anything half-bitter or acerbic in his career as a midfielder master of space and time. The pass metronome would pass anything remotely with a fireball potential. But Xavi had had enough, he had lost his love for the club. Like all sour marriages, the trust had begun to wane. The president would interfere, the sporting director would intrude, the media would interrogate.
“The [media] create situations and scenarios that, for me, are not real,” Xavi once said. The 250-odd sessions a year with the media were taking a toll on his poise. He could have tackled questions on tactics, results, and individuals; even politics, besides dealing with gossip and leaks to the media. “Half of the questions they would ask you would not be on football,” Guardiola had once sniped.
Even Guardiola lost some of his love for the club in his fourth year, and before the ties turned bitter, he parted ways. “I felt I needed a change of setting, a renewal. The intensity, the pressure, it’s something else here,” he would then say. So did one of his successors, Luis Enrique, despite winning a treble. Guardiola would sympathise with the talisman of tiki taka, Xavi: “We can’t compare the pressure in England with the pressure in Spain, in my experience. It’s a thousand times harder there. Six press conferences a week, a lot of games. The pressure you feel in Barcelona is not comparable to anywhere else,” he told the English press.
Managing any elite club is difficult; shepherding Barcelona even more. It’s not just a matter of accumulating trophies. In his second season, Xavi did win the league and the Super Cup. But it’s also about how they win. Xavi would dwell on this once: “You beat Real Madrid 1-0 and it seems that it’s not convincing enough, whereas if it was the reverse there would be a national party. At Barcelona, you have to win and convince, to have 70 percent of possession and create 16 chances while the opponent makes three.”
More than a club
The politics — Barcelona is a powerful international symbol of Catalan identity, its identification with Catalonia is part of what gives the club a socio-political dimension — amplifies the pressure on the manager. When the clock reaches 17 minutes and 14 seconds, commemorating the year the city fell to Felipe V, the fans would chant for Catalan independence. It’s a club that looks for more than three points from a game, a team that values aesthetics and philosophy as much.
Idealism looks grand on paper, but in modern-day football, to achieve everything is near impossible. Being a Catalan himself, Xavi could identify with politics, but not when the questions of independence confronted him at a press conference.
One could empathise even more with Xavi. The team he inherited was a mess. Lionel Messi had gone; Neymar and Luis Suarez had long gone. There was both chaos and confusion. He was empowered with a treasure-chest to rebuild the empire. Xavi himself would know that his club doesn’t go about setting empires and eras. But he did all he could to stitch a team — by hasty accumulation rather than careful nurturing.
Everything fell into place in the first full season; then everything fell apart in the next. The central pillar, the last link to the golden era – Sergio Busquets – left, a spate of injuries kicked in; ageless veterans began to age, opponents revived. Xavi could take no more. It might not have been the Barcelona he had seen and sensed as a player. It might have felt like a strange and distant place. But that’s how it was.
The world one sees as a player is different from the world seen by a player-manager. Xavi is not the first legend to return to the club he played for and find it an entirely different place. Only a handful of true greats have succeeded as managers.
Zinedine Zidane was, but not Diego Maradona, Andrea Pirlo or Frank Lampard. Contrastingly, most distinguished managers, Jurgen Klopp, Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger had undistinguished careers as players. Perhaps, the player-turned-manager is deluded by the success of the past, perhaps he would be under even more pressure because of the past.
At least, Xavi did not suffer the humiliation of an axe. He could have, but for his stature as a player, president Joan Laporta would say. The president was not entirely at fault either, as Barcelona had looked uninspired in the past few months.
Maybe, his departure was for the good after all, but this time there lingers little hope of a reunion. Xavi is still Barcelona, but Barcelona is no longer Xavi. It perhaps never would be.
