After many about-faces and numerous twists and turns, FC Barcelona finally announced on Friday the departure of its coach, Xavi Hernandez, after a season in which the Catalan giant finished in second place in the Spanish championship, without a trophy.
“FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta told Xavi Hernandez that he would no longer be the coach for the 2024-25 season”the club said in a press release, specifying that Xavi would be on the bench for the last La Liga match on Sunday against Sevilla FC.
FC Barcelona thanked Xavi “for his work as a coach, which adds to his incomparable career as a player and captain of the first team” between 1998 and 2015.
Xavi said in January that he would leave Barca at the end of the season. But a series of good results in April reshuffled the cards and pushed him to stay until the end of his contract in June 2025.
His upcoming departure, however, had been the subject of new speculation for a few days after his statements, little appreciated by his management, on the club’s financial difficulties in competing with big European teams like Real Madrid.
The former Spanish international (44 years old, 133 caps) is a pure product of La Masia, the Barça training center which he joined at the age of 11. As a player with the Blaugranas, he notably won eight Spanish league titles and four Champions Leagues.
White season
Arriving in November 2021 as coach, Xavi managed to win the national title last season, as well as the Spanish Super Cup after a final won 3-1 against rival Madrid.
The president of FC Barcelona (l) with his coach Xavi Hernandez, during a press conference, April 25, 2024 near Barcelona / LLUIS GENE / AFP/Archives
But his mandate is also marked by several disappointments, notably in Europe with an elimination in the quarter-finals of the Europa League in 2022 against Frankfurt and an exit in the accession play-offs in the 8th round of C3 the following year against United. Returning to the final phase of the Champions League in 2024, Barça was beaten in the quarter-final by PSG (4-1) at home, after winning at the Parc (3-2) in the first leg.
This season – in ups and downs – he also had to let his La Liga title slip away, helpless against Real Madrid, champion with a strong lead, and did not win any trophy, beaten by Real in the final of the Spanish Super Cup and released by Athletic Bilbao in the Spanish Cup.
The Catalan club “will reveal in the coming days the new structure for the management of the team”. According to the press, the former coach of Bayern Munich and Germany Hansi Flick is one of the favorites to replace him.
Flick won the German championship title twice with Bayern (2020, 2021).
He notably went 32 matches without defeat spanning the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons with the Bavarians, with a quadruple of Bundesliga, German Cup, Champions League and European Super Cup in this series, then enriched with the German Super Cup and the Club World Cup.
