Last update 21 May, 2015 by Alberto Llopis
Xavi Hernández's time at Barcelona comes to an end. The main reference of tiki-taka will step aside, He will leave elite football and set up his new base camp in Qatar, where he plans to retire at Al-Sadd and at the same time start as a coach and sports director.
Xavi's departure does not take anyone by surprise. He was about to embark on this path last summer, after not achieving the objectives set neither with Barça nor with the National Team. He decided to end his international career due to the failure in the World Cup in Brazil, Between other reasons, but Luis Enrique encouraged him to continue one more year in ‘Can Barça’ so that a bittersweet sensation did not invade him before leaving for not lifting any title in 2014. The situation has changed for the better. You could even say goodbye with a triplet under your arm. In his power he already has the League. Two endings, one for the Cup and another for the Champions, define a year that can go from positive to historical, how was he 2009 with Pep Guardiola. Barcelona is the clear favorite for betfair in both betting on the Copa del Rey as in the Champions, although they must prove it on the field of play.
Xavi assumed when he stayed that he would have a less prominent role. The arrival of Rakitic and age, is on the way to 36, they have turned him into a useful bench piece, leaving behind years of undisputed ownership both in Barça and in the National Team. The first symptoms of a gallon leak were glimpsed in Brazil. Spain played their options to go to the second round against Chile without Xavi, after the debacle in the opening day against the Netherlands. That episode chilled an idyllic relationship with Del Bosque.. He did not understand how he did not inform him in advance of his substitution on the appointed day, in the most important game. He felt as if a style would be questioned right off the bat, a way of playing that he devised with Luis Aragonés and perfected with Guardiola and Del Bosque himself.
Se trata del tiki taka. The same hallmark for a country and a team that has given so many joys and that seems to have evolved with Lucho, because the counterattack also now enters the catalog of variants of this football belief. The goodbye that was given to Xavi de la Selección was not the one that someone of his importance would deserve and history should not be repeated in his other home. It has marked a before and after in football because when the beautiful game thought that in modernity you could only succeed by being a mixture of athlete and bodybuilder, showed that soccer is played with the foot and that those with smaller sizes give a special symphony to the ball. Neither better nor worse, to taste the colors. Simply different and that has fallen in love with many.
Xavi will go gradually closing his stage as a footballer at Al-Sadd, Raúl's former team, to make his way in the offices and on the benches, even though, like Zidane, you will never need a degree to be a coach. He was always a conductor