Xavi Hernandez is criticised following his comment about Barcelona’s rivalry with Real Madrid

La Liga just released a documentary on Netflix, providing fans with some unseen moments from the Spanish top-tier competitions. One of the chapters shows a statement of Barcelona manager, Xavi Hernandez. 

In one part of the documentary, Xavi mentioned that one of the motivations for Barcelona is to always be better than their archrival Real Madrid. This sparked a controversy among the fans on social media.

People stressed on Xavi’s mentality

“The most important thing for Barca and Barca’s fans is to be above Real Madrid,” wrote one of the Real Madrid fan-based accounts on X. “These guys do not care about winning trophies, only beating Real Madrid.” 

Many labelled Xavi as a guy with a weak mentality, focussing on a so-called ‘rivalry’ instead of their own team’s success. 

“That is why a Barca player can drop stinker upon stinker but once he scores of gets a good game against Madrid, all stinkers are forgotten and he’s hailed a hero,” said one other account on Xavi’s statement. 

Xavi has a quite decent reputation with Barcelona. When taking over the job from Ronald Koeman in November 2021, many people doubted a man who only has managerial experience with a third-world football country Qatar. 

However, he silenced his doubters by winning the La Liga and the Super Cup in the following season. His success started to show a downfall in the season. In May, Barcelona announced Hansi Flick as the team’s latest man-in-charge to replace Xavi in the 2024/25 season.

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