It was late at night and the cold was setting in under the fog of Montjuïc when a handful of journalists tried to close the editions of their newspapers in the press gallery. With the stadium already empty, and with the main actors already packed into their cars, those responsible for security, the only ones with a say in the place, were only interested in ensuring that those heavy feathers left there as soon as possible and They would vomit in the open field those destructive chronicles that bothered the coach so much. Damn ‘environment’.
The late, untimely and delayed announcement of Xavi Hernández’s capitulation as Barça coach caught everyone off guard. To the footballers, who found out from the alerts on their cell phones. To the members of the board, especially those who think they matter a lot when in reality they matter nothing – they will never have the power or influence of the non-manager Alejandro Echevarría. He even caught the boss on the wrong foot, Joan Laporta, that despite experiencing one of his well-known guttural and chromatic-effect anger in the box after attending to another humiliating sports collapse, he did not expect to end the night naked. He tried to stop Xavi with his antics, but the coach, who didn’t want to find a horse’s head in bed either, had already made his decision. You just had to find a critical moment to announce it.
Xavi acted like a toxic lover: he left without having left. Because it will still continue to say good morning and good night to you. Imploring, yes, for the heartbreak suffered and charging, of course, against those who did not spend two and a half years congratulating him on his achievements. There were, of course. He rescued Koeman’s skinned Barça in the post-Messi era and managed to win a League and a Super Cup. The sins have nothing to do with the titles – those that came and those that escaped – not even with the four European eliminations, much less with the commitment to teenagers, almost always an alibi in times of ruin. The great sin, the one that really hurts, has been the inability to give the team its own identity that would bring it closer to the fans and distance it from institutional surrealism. In short, it would remove football from the box. Maybe it was impossible.
Xavi believed everything Laporta told him, the executing arm of the plethora of agents who cannibalize the club. Or at least he assumed it without question. He thought Lewandowski would score more goals than years per season. He believed that Koundé could be a period center back, when he barely survives as a winger. He accepted that Raphinha arrived when the one he really wanted was Dembélé. Then the disappointment would come. He continued collecting the orders from the Mendes factory – João Félix and Cancelo -, despite the fact that neither one nor the other, as good as they are egomaniacal and incoherent, have resolved any deficiency. And he found that the only position that he should have really reinforced, Busquets’ midfielder, was going to be occupied by Oriol Romeu, when in his torrid dreams he imagined a Barça with Kimmich. The money, through the sale of assets, would be invested in the boy Vitor Roque, ‘Tigrinho’. Another day ‘Messinho’ will arrive, another Brazilian, who for some reason the achiever André Cury already proclaims that he is the good one.
Laporta says that the club is “under control.” That’s why, 20 years after that first mandate in which he could listen to Johan Cruyff or Txiki Begiristain, he has to get into a little room with Rafa Yuste, Enric Masip, Alejandro Echevarría and Deco to decide the future of Barça. That is why the investment funds are dividing the shield piecemeal. That is why the media and emotional ground is being prepared to privatize the entity.
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Xavi, tired of being a spokesperson and defender of miseries – his own and those of others – has left Laporta naked.
And the president, even if he doesn’t believe it, now he is alone.