FC Barcelona Demand Xavi Wins Champions League Next Season

FC Barcelona coach Xavi Hernandez has revealed a demand from the club to win, or at least compete in, the Champions League next season during an interview on Movistar football television programme Universo Valdano.

Legendary midfielder Xavi has been in Barca dugout since November 2021, when he replaced the scorer of the winning goal behind the club’s first triumph in the competition in 1992, Ronald Koeman.

Following that victory over Sampdoria at Wembley, Barca then embarked on a 14-year drought ended only when Koeman’s compatriot and former Netherlands teammate Frank Rijkaard oversaw a 2-1 defeat of Arsenal in 2006.

As the likes of Ronaldinho and Deco led the way in the final clinched by Juliano Belletti’s winner, Xavi started on the bench for Rijkaard at the Parc des Princes after his season was disrupted by a serious knee injury.

Some seventeen years on, however, he hopes to emulate Rijkaard’s trajectory and revealed to Jorge Valdano that president Joan Laporta has already made comparisons between their paths.

“The president compares it a lot with Rijkaard’s season,” Xavi said. “In Rijkaard’s first season he does not win anything, he finishes second, but in the second half of the season we already start to see things.

“In the following season we win La Liga which is what we have done now. And in the next one is when the league is won and we are fortunate to win the Champions League,” he added.

Xavi revealed that winning the Champions League is “surely what is going to be required of us this season, [or] at least to compete to win it.

“The club’s goal is to compete to win the Champions League,” he further stated.

This has been taken by SPORT as an indicator that Laporta has made it clear to Xavi he must compete on the continent and return the club to the top of Europe where it was last seen when he was still a player in 2015.

Four-time Champions League winner Xavi has granted Barca dominance in Spain again, and they came close to competing a treble in 2022/2023 while scooping the Spanish Super Cup and reaching the Copa del Rey semi-finals.

Ultimately, however, it is the top prize in club football that he, the club and its fans will want to truly feel like they have returned to the summit after spending the turn of the decade in the wilderness.

Before even talking about going all the way, however, Xavi must first get his men to the knockout phases in the wake of two consecutive, embarrassing failures to progress out of the group stage.