Barcelona’s narrow win over Sevilla this past weekend officially marked the end of Xavi Hernandez’s spell at the club.
The Spaniard is all set to leave the club at the end of the season. As Xavi nears the end of his term at Barça, reports have emerged about his poor management of the players.
It was revealed earlier that several players, including Robert Lewandowski, were reportedly unhappy with Xavi’s training regime.
Xavi wanted to offload four players
Now, a fresh report from ESPN has revealed that Xavi Hernandez wanted to get rid of four Barcelona players if he had continued at Camp Nou.
The four players in question include Lewandowski himself, as well as Joao Felix, Joao Cancelo and Vitor Roque.
The Lewandowski saga has been well documented in recent days, as the Polish international had emerged as one of Xavi’s biggest defectors during the second half of the campaign.
Lewandowski was unhappy with Xavi’s training regime and he also showed discontent with the way the coach subbed him off in recent matches. Xavi, to that end, wanted to get rid of Lewandowski this coming summer.
As far as the Portuguese duo Felix and Cancelo are concerned, the former was never liked by Xavi in the first place.
The reason Felix joined Barcelona was due to the influence of Joan Laporta and Jorge Mendes. The player, for his part, played well in certain instances, albeit with a lack of consistency.
Cancelo, meanwhile, started the season extremely well but his form faded as the season continued. During the final stretch of the campaign, the Portuguese international started offering acres of space to the opposition.
Keeping that in mind, Xavi wanted to get rid of both Felix and Cancelo, which would have come in the form of Barcelona not making any effort to retain their services.
Finally, Xavi wanted to offload Vitor Roque in the coming summer – a desire that came on the back of the Brazilian’s horror start to life in Catalonia.
Barcelona paid the big bucks to sign Roque in January. But his performances have been far from impressive. One of the reasons behind Roque’s downfall has been the poor treatment from Xavi Hernandez.
The player’s entourage has maintained that Xavi has not offered proper reasoning or transparency over his decisions.
However, with Hansi Flick all set to take over things at Barcelona, Roque is likely one of the players who stand to gain and may have their fortunes turned upside down.
