Xavi Hernandez blows up at Joan Laporta over 2024 Barcelona sacking – “He completely failed me”
· Yahoo Sports
With less than one week to go until the Barcelona presidential vote, Xavi Hernandez has appeared to thrown a spanner in the works. Joan Laporta has been the overwhelming favourite to be re-elected, although that could now be in doubt after recent comments from the former player and manager.
Xavi claimed that Laporta was the reason that Messi did not return to Barcelona in the summer of 2023, when his Paris Saint-Germain contract expired. He landed another blow during an interview with La Vanguardia (via MD), as he has alleged that the 63-year-old is not even the true leader of the Catalan club – rather, he says it’s Alejandro Echevarría, who is a close advisor to Laporta.
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“I returned to Barça as manager because of him, but he ended up failing me. Why? He dispensed with me as a coach without telling me the truth, conditioned by a person who I think is above the president – that is Alejandro Echevarría. He is the one who dispensed with me as coach.
“That’s how this Barça works, it’s practically led by Alejandro Echevarría. (Laporta) was a person with whom I had an intimate relationship, of friendship and that is why he is perhaps the biggest disappointment in my departure from Barça. He completely failed me.”
Xavi tells-all on Barcelona sacking
Xavi also went into details on the circumstances surrounding the decision for him to leave his role as Barcelona head coach in the summer of 2024, which opened the door for Hansi Flick’s arrival.
“In January of my last season as coach I told them that from June I will not continue for the good of the club and for my personal good. From there, the team is winning and it stays that way for two or three months until we lose in the Champions League to PSG and in La Liga to Real Madrid.
“They constantly tell me that I have to stay, they try to convince me. I actually do a face-to-face meeting with Alejandro because I know that he is the one who decides everything and I tell him how he sees it, I say ‘look, I have doubts because you are telling me to continue but I don’t see it clearly’ and he tells me that yes, they are preparing for next year, that they are planning, that the president is clear about it…
“But the elimination against PSG happens… At that moment Alejandro called me, I remember t because I was coming home from school with the children, and he told me we had to meet, that they had had a board of directors and most of them did not see my continuity clearly, and Alejandro told me to come to the training ground. There I told him that there was no problem, that I had already said that I was leaving and I had no need to continue.”