Khaled Waleed, BeIN Sports: "Xavi is the new manager of Barcelona. All details will be mentioned tomorrow, including date of presentation."
Xavi (Spanish Lego Pep) | Sacked, Backed, then Sacked
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Khaled Waleed, BeIN Sports: "Xavi is the new manager of Barcelona. All details will be mentioned tomorrow, including date of presentation."
Would be quite interesting. The shadow of Pep looms large.
Would be fun, i hope it.
He's not qualified enough. He needs to go into the championship and bring Derby up to the Premier League.
I guess is anyone but Valverde at this point.
He really hasn’t done that great around this neck of the woods, considering the size of the club and the squad he had.
Is Valverde's contract up in the summer?
Does seem the type who would be a very good manager
I thought they'd go after Gallardo, River Plate's manager.
I think he'd be an excellent choice of manager for them. The talent in the squad is there, it's about utilising it properly and he knows how to do that. He's one of those obsessive football freaks like Pep that will analyse every minute detail. How Valverde survived Liverpool is beyond me.
Villas Boas at Chelsea
Ex-player as manager of a big club?! It will never work! Think of the children!
Thought Ten Haag was nailed for the Barcelona position. Guess it's Bayern potentially.
It doesn't work on certain clubs although with Xavi I do think is too premature for him but they're so fed up with Valverde then why the hell not. I think also Arteta could be a potential manager for them in the future if he does good with Arsenal.
I think he'll flop.
He's seems too nice and smiley, he doesn't wear a stylish turtle neck like Arteta or a casual jumper and jeans like Pep. Nor does he powder his nose like Pep or have a German laugh like Klopp.
He's seems too nice and smiley, he doesn't wear a stylish turtle neck like Arteta or a casual jumper and jeans like Pep. Nor does he powder his nose like Pep or have a German laugh like Klopp.
Really difficult to judge how this will go.
The guy who wrote "AVB @ Chelsea" must be insane though. Xavi grew up with Barca brand of football since age 11. He has been managed by the likes of Aragones, del Bosque, van Gaal and Pep while being the main organizer on the pitch. You think he hasn't picked up anything about coaching and coaching Barca in particular? He's not the dumbest person, already talks better English than Pep who is in England for 4 years. As a player he could barely speak it only a few years ago.
His football insight is incredible, rarely do you see a former player talk about football like him.
The only question mark is whether he is an idealist living in the 2006 - 2015 Barca prime era bubble. As of today, Barca's fullbacks are mediocre, the attack has no dynamism or pace and the midfield is merely potential as of now with Arthur apparently sidelined for months for partying and catching an STD. If he coaches this team like it's the best in the world and can dominate anyone like it's 2010, he will be in for a surprise.
The guy who wrote "AVB @ Chelsea" must be insane though. Xavi grew up with Barca brand of football since age 11. He has been managed by the likes of Aragones, del Bosque, van Gaal and Pep while being the main organizer on the pitch. You think he hasn't picked up anything about coaching and coaching Barca in particular? He's not the dumbest person, already talks better English than Pep who is in England for 4 years. As a player he could barely speak it only a few years ago.
His football insight is incredible, rarely do you see a former player talk about football like him.
The only question mark is whether he is an idealist living in the 2006 - 2015 Barca prime era bubble. As of today, Barca's fullbacks are mediocre, the attack has no dynamism or pace and the midfield is merely potential as of now with Arthur apparently sidelined for months for partying and catching an STD. If he coaches this team like it's the best in the world and can dominate anyone like it's 2010, he will be in for a surprise.
Not sure about this. Pretty sure Valverde cannot be fired before he completes 10 years.
Can’t see this going well really. I’ve watched virtually every Al-Sadd game under him. He’s as bad as a manager gets defensively. Very poor tactically as well. Has an inability to change his tactics to suit the opponents. Whenever Sadd are losing he just goes 2-5-3 etc.
Sadd have the best team by a mile in Qatar as well bar Duhail. They’d finish 2nd most seasons without a manager. They have a lot of games where they look unmotivated. He might surprise me and he perfect for Barca but can’t see how he will get a solid defence.
Gallardo seemed a perfect appointment to me.
Sadd have the best team by a mile in Qatar as well bar Duhail. They’d finish 2nd most seasons without a manager. They have a lot of games where they look unmotivated. He might surprise me and he perfect for Barca but can’t see how he will get a solid defence.
Gallardo seemed a perfect appointment to me.
Shhhhhh, you’ll upset the Pepolytes and total football noobs.
He is now where Zidane was 4 years ago. So can he be as successful manager as Zidane?
It takes a little bit more than just to copy-paste Guardiola's style of play and tactics to be a good manager but it's a good start
This Barcelona team needs urgently a guy who can bring them back to their DNA - that is not just a gibberish talk by blinded Cruyffistas but its an actual necessity about them at this point of time..It takes a little bit more than just to copy-paste Guardiola's style of play and tactics to be a good manager but it's a good start
Yes, only 4 titles in 5 seasons. What poverty. Can’t wait for Xavi to bring them back from the brink of destruction and be declared a genius.
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I want to make sad jokes about valverde but then i remember they won the league both seasons with him and are currently 1st...
Ah well. We'll always have Rome. And Liverpool.
Ah well. We'll always have Rome. And Liverpool.
My heart wants this to happen. My head wants him to either be an assistant to a Barcleona boss for a couple of seasons or manage the B team for a few years. This will represent a return to Cruyff/Guardiola ideals. Where I think he has a half a chance of succeeding is his experience under multiple Barcelona managers who won some silverware. Yes, having Messi will help. I wonder how he'll find coaching players he once played with.
That would be pretty cool, but I’d hate to see Xavi declared ‘a fraud’ and chewed up by football fans online because he didn’t win everything.
Obviously, but would not mind seeing him at Carrington.
highly unlikely that we would hire someone like him. Barca do love themselves a manager from Argentina though, and here you have someone close to their style and ethos being inspired by Bielsa
I know we are not going to hire him. Doubt our club has even heard of him. Still, his approach to football is more relevant to how the best teams in the world play, unlike OGS, Allegri or Mourinho.
I like Poch, but his inability to make Tottenham systematically break down deep sitting teams and the lack of effectiveness in the final third is a problem. In their buildup, passing and pressing i think he is among the best coaches in the world, but in the final third, something is missing.
Taking over Barca as they surely must start to think about like after Messi is a tough job.
I don't think authority will be a problem for him. He's good friends with Pique, Busquets, Alba and first and foremost Messi. Those players are very powerful in the club and not accepting his authority will be like challenging them. So he'll have the backing of both team and club officials.
That being said, the team might not be best in the world. Material but it is surely up there. They've got Messi, Suarez, Griezmann and Dembele in attack and de Jong, Arthur, Busquets and Vidal in midfield ffs. The defense may not be. On the same level but is definitely competitive. I don't see many teams rivalling that. For me, Barca, Liverpool, PSG, City and Juve are roughly on the same level of quality with Bayern trailing behind a bit.
Two things keep me optimistic if this was to happen tomorrow:
First one is that all his managers praised his football brain and desire to keep learning, even if he isn't the right fit for us right now, I'd rather fail under Xavi with him learning how to manage the squad and get a better start for the next season, than winning the league or the cup with Valverde with dreadful football, no improvement towards the future and being embarassed in the UCL another year.
Second one is that almost everything he talks about in this interview makes sense and debunks his "only possession football and we deserved to win" aura that was projected after some post-game interviews and incendiary Spanish articles.
I'd recommend watching this to anyone that can understand Spanish at a basic level, one of the most insightful and rich interviews I've seen of this sport in the last decade.
First one is that all his managers praised his football brain and desire to keep learning, even if he isn't the right fit for us right now, I'd rather fail under Xavi with him learning how to manage the squad and get a better start for the next season, than winning the league or the cup with Valverde with dreadful football, no improvement towards the future and being embarassed in the UCL another year.
Second one is that almost everything he talks about in this interview makes sense and debunks his "only possession football and we deserved to win" aura that was projected after some post-game interviews and incendiary Spanish articles.
I'd recommend watching this to anyone that can understand Spanish at a basic level, one of the most insightful and rich interviews I've seen of this sport in the last decade.
Is Valverde actually going then?
He seems teflon despite their poor results.
Can certainly see Xavi managing them one day.
Remember aswell Frank Rjikaard had just been relegated to Dutch second division when he got the job in 2003 so always seems to me Barca don't care that much for previous aslong as you share their ideology vision.
He seems teflon despite their poor results.
Can certainly see Xavi managing them one day.
Remember aswell Frank Rjikaard had just been relegated to Dutch second division when he got the job in 2003 so always seems to me Barca don't care that much for previous aslong as you share their ideology vision.
Messi and Suarez, yes, they are still elite, though none of them has pace and workrate and the only one who does have it is permanently injured. I don't remember Démbéle playing 5 games in a row at Barca in 2 years.
Busquets, Rakitic, Vidal are all finished. Maybe Busquets can be revived with the right tactics for a season but generally he's been more bad than good since at least Euro 2016. Arthur barely played this season. Rumour is he has caught an STD and enjoys the party life too much. Barca deployed a midfield of Vidal-Rakitic-DeJong in the last Clasico. That reminded me of the Khedira-Diarra-Granero days of Real Madrid.
The fullbacks are mediocre. Since Dani Alves Barca have a rightback problem, neither Roberto nor Semedo are convincing. Alba looks horrible this season though he might be revived for a season or two as well.
Griezmann's position is not the left wing but he can't play anywhere else with Messi and Suarez in the team.
If Barca is still a top 5 club in the world it's mostly down to Messi and Suarez scoring and assisting every game. If both were to be injured from tomorrow until end of season, Barca would most likely struggle to get top 4 in Spain, let alone be top 5 in the world.
That's also why I don't get the hate for Valverde. People must be blinded by the former big names who are past it by now. Being in the pole position for 3 years in a row in the league and making CL semis and losing 3-4 overall against the best Liverpool team in decades is job very well done. I don't care that Barca "bottled" a lead. Barca were losing away from home in the CL years before Valverde. 0-3 to Juventus and 0-4 to PSG just the season prior under Luis Enrique.
Managers like Pep, Tuchel or Allegri can get knocked out by Monaco/Spurs, Manchester United's children team or Ajax and still be regarded as tactical geniuses. Funny how that works.
The reason barcelona won the CL only 3 times in the Messi era, explained
But seriously, Valverde is no genius and wasn't doing a great job, but he wasn't doing a bad job either. The sooner you guys accept he was handed a bunch of square pegs and round holes and he mostly found good working solutions, the easier the transition
Your team is now where we were in 2017/18, except you lack the mental flexibility and adaptability to adapt
Jesualdo Ferreira is better.
Xavi and Barça agree to talk about everything again in June. Now it doesn't come. Soon more information in @ESPNDeportes @ESPNFC
The reason barcelona won the CL only 3 times in the Messi era, explained
But seriously, Valverde is no genius and wasn't doing a great job, but he wasn't doing a bad job either. The sooner you guys accept he was handed a bunch of square pegs and round holes and he mostly found good working solutions, the easier the transition
Your team is now where we were in 2017/18, except you lack the mental flexibility and adaptability to adapt
Too many Barca fans who started watching in the glory era from 2006 onwards now take the moral high ground of "rather play the right way and lose than win ugly". But that will quickly vanish (just like a good portion of the "fans") once Messi and Suarez are gone and Barca will experience some trophyless seasons in a row. Then they'll even ask for Mourinho.
These fans haven't experienced 2 trophyless seasons in a row since 2008. Imagine hounding out a manager who is about to win 3 leagues in a row. La Liga isn't Bundesliga or Serie A either. They are up against the biggest club in the world who recently won 3 CLs in a row. For that alone they deserve Xavi to fail miserably, though he is one of my favourite players of all time so I don't hope so.
The reason barcelona won the CL only 3 times in the Messi era, explained
But seriously, Valverde is no genius and wasn't doing a great job, but he wasn't doing a bad job either. The sooner you guys accept he was handed a bunch of square pegs and round holes and he mostly found good working solutions, the easier the transition
Your team is now where we were in 2017/18, except you lack the mental flexibility and adaptability to adapt
The reason is we have a pragmatic manager that might serve to stady the ship like in his first season after Neymar left and our midfield was devoid of life, he used the 442, found working solutions like you said and did an almost pefect job with the tools he had, but the Roma game (not just that game, 1st leg vs Chelsea too where Willian could've nailed us 3 times and sent us home) showed huge flaws that a manager can't have if he wants to perform at the level Real Madrid or Barcelona need to perform.
But in two and a half years he hasn't been able to accomodate players like Griezmann, Dembele, Coutinho or Arthur in the starting 11, I wouldn't even be shocked if Xavi came tomorrow and suddenly De Jong kicked up 2 levels his performances, and he's also wasted great squad options like Semedo, Deulofeu, Alcacer, Malcom, Denis Suarez and lately Firpo and Aleña. He makes a good job working with workhorses like Lenglet, Vidal or Paulinho, and while you need that kind of players to win trophies, you need to mil the most from your creative ones, and he's failed to do it, not only that, when push comes to shove the kind of players he seems to extract the most from, like Paulinho or Vidal, don't even start in the bigger games.
We're not in your 17/18 January, your best midfielders had 2/3 more elite seasons on their legs and not a lot of potential coming through (Isco was already burned a lot of times, Asensio... at least everyone knows now what Asensio is only good at), we have a team with young blood in De Jong, Arthur, Dembele and Semedo that can easily be starters, hungy players that don't come from winning 2 UCL titles and need to earn that silverware in Lenglet, Sergi Roberto, and Griezmann. We basically have all the pieces we need to shake this team up and start trying to do bold and beautiful football, yet we're being hold down but a manager that wants no risks while keeping a core of players clearly past it in our starting 11 everytime we face a real challenge.
When you say we lack the mental flexibility you mean our players or our board?. Because I think this group could thrive under a different manager, the board are the ones holding everything down, starting with Valverde because they feared sacking him and due to their incompetence signing a worst manager, now at least they're doing something, maybe out of fear and desperation, but sometimes actions taken out of fear can lead to success, it's not like Bartomeu was on his way of doing something of value in the rest of his presidency.
I feel like mentioned in your post because you're replying something that was quoting my post.
I started watching this team 26 years ago, swallowed the whole post-Figo era while proudly defending that at least we had an ideal of football and even if we didn't win anything I was most of the time enjoying the way we played.
Don't know if you're a Barcelona fan trying to "outrank" based on the moral high ground of Titles > Everything else or if you're just judging from the outside and ignoring that, for most of old-school Barcelona fans here in Spain it was never about winning a lot of titles sacrificing whatever's necessary to get them, but to follow this team because they're enjoyable on the pitch and you identify with the way Cruyff guided us to, don't really know before that because I'm not old enough to talk about pre-Cruyff since before the 80's there wasn't a lot of Barcelona fans outside of Catalunya that you could tal to through the last decades about why they followed a team that was behind Atletico de Madrid in the pecking order.
Most of the pre 2006 era fans would tell you the same, we stick to our principle of enjoying football instead of titles because we'd rather be entertained for 52 games a season to win just a Copa del Rey, than score 40 goals in the whole season to scrape by a UCL title winning all the legs in penalties. If we thought that titles are the end-all of football we'd be masochists nor only for not picking Real Madrid, but siding with the club everyone will laugh at not only when we lose but also when Real win (and they do it, a lot)
If he's coming in as a yes man to to let the players continue to run the team, he'll go the same way as Valverde. I think Pep will probably go back eventually, though not with the current president there.
Barcelona need a manager who puts the team first, not pandering to the big egos in the dressing room continually.
Barcelona squad is not adding up to the sum of it's parts last few years, paying far too much for players who haven't made much impact, £100m odd each for Coutinho, Dembele and now Griezmann, still far too reliant on endlessly giving the ball to Messi given such huge investment and been awful in some of the big games away from the Camp Nou.
Barcelona need a manager who puts the team first, not pandering to the big egos in the dressing room continually.
Barcelona squad is not adding up to the sum of it's parts last few years, paying far too much for players who haven't made much impact, £100m odd each for Coutinho, Dembele and now Griezmann, still far too reliant on endlessly giving the ball to Messi given such huge investment and been awful in some of the big games away from the Camp Nou.