Barcelona legend Xavi has admitted he let his standards slip during his final season as the first team head coach, which ultimately led to his departure in the summer of 2024.
Speaking at a conference this week, Xavi was self-critical and revealed he was no longer as demanding as he was during his excellent first full season as coach in which the team won La Liga and the Spanish Super Cup and played with a real intensity and sense of pride.
Those qualities all disappeared during a tumultuous 23-24 campaign filled with injuries, inconsistent performances and a general apathy that led to an ugly Champions League exit at home to Paris Saint-Germain and no trophies, and Xavi took the blame for that outcome.
“I began my coaching career at Barca with high expectations for both the players and the club. The club was coming from a period where there weren’t many demands, but my mistake was maintaining those high standards for only one year, from when I arrived until we won La Liga and the Super Cup.
“Later on, I was able to be self-critical and I said to myself: ‘Damn, what happened to me?’ I had lowered those high standards and the players no longer had the same attitude, the same respect, the same effort. The standards kept dropping until, in my last season, we didn’t win anything. I learned a lot from this. I had to be self-critical.”
Xavi is now carefully preparing for his next job, rejecting approaches left and right as he waits for the right opportunity to return to management. Learning from previous mistakes is key to growth, so here’s hoping Xavi can learn from what went wrong in his last season at Barça and apply those lessons in his next stop.
