What is going on with managers leaving massive clubs? Barcelona have just been hit with MASSIVE NEWS as manager and club legend Xavi is stepping down from his managerial role at the end of the season.
I know Barca is a pressure cooker, but what the media has done to Xavi is utterly ridiculous.
Despite winning the Copa de Espana AND La Liga last season, Xavi is leaving Barcelona after just two seasons in charge due to the insane and completely ridiculous amount of scrutiny and pressure the Barca and Catalonia media has placed on his job. And, if you couldn’t tell, I think this is a completely disastrous result for the club.
This is how you know your club’s local media is toxic!
So, if you haven’t heard the breaking news by now, then let me just repeat it one final time: Xavi is resigning from Barcelona at the end of the season. He must have seen Jurgen Klopp’s shock departure and decided to one up it by leaving Barca after just three seasons in charge.
Why is that you may be wondering? Well, it’s pretty simple as even though Xavi is one of the greatest players in Barcelona’s history (and one of the greatest who ever touched a football) and the man who ended Barca’s longest title drought in over twenty years last season, the sad fact is that the Barca media is unsatiable and uncontrollable.
It will devour and destroy everything and anything in its path to get a story and that includes the club itself as they have just killed the fire from the club’s most promising manager since Pep Guardiola first took charge.
I understand that Barcelona have had a poor season (by Barca’s lofty expectations) thus far as they have been knocked out of the Copa Del Rey, were beaten handedly by Real Madrid in the Copa de Espana final, they face a tough foe in Napoli in the Champions League Round of 16, many of their top performers from last season have not been up to par this year, the defense is nowhere near as dominate as it was last season, and Barca is a full 10 points behind Real Madrid (1st place) and Girona (2nd place) in 3rd.
Has this been a good season for Barca? No, evidently not. Has this been a season where the club needed to fire Xavi and start over? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!
Perhaps Barca’s moronic media has forgotten that half of the squad is under 25 and that the club legends, such as Pique, Jordi Alba, and Sergio Busquets, who were invaluable in winning the La Liga title for the club last season all departed by the start of the campaign, but this Barca team is a WORK IN PROJECT. A work that was a good two or even three years ahead of schedule with that title win last season.
I know we all remember Barcelona as the all-conquering, all-destroying juggernaut who could light up the strongest of defenses and stifle the most lethal offenses of yesteryear, but that team is dead and buried. In fact, the only man who can claim to have been a part of the four Champions League wins (2006, 2009, 2011, 2015) the club has seen in the 21st century and still be a part of the club is…Xavi.
And, as of right now, the only two players who were apart of the 2015 CL win are Sergio Roberto (who’s a veteran bench warmer these days) and Marc-Andre Ter Stegen. Just two players! And the Barcelona media really expects this team to contend with Real Madrid, Liverpool, Man City, Bayern, PSG, and Inter Milan? REALLY!?!?!
Yeah, winning the La Liga title last season was a fantastic accomplishment that shows the potential of this squad, but this team doesn’t have that legendary star talent we saw in the past. The youngsters on this team are good, but they’re nowhere near as talented or battle-hardened as Leo Messi, Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, Andres Iniesta, Victor Valdes, Gerard Pique, Pedro, or Carles Puyol were when they were this age.
And the new additions to the team are nowhere near as talented as likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Samuel Eto’o, Ronaldinho, Dani Alves, Thierry Henry, David Villa, Luis Suarez and Neymar were when they were bought to bring in more competition, depth, and quality.
So, to make a long story short, the media expecting greatness from a burgeoning roster is just as stupid as expecting a bird to fly without developed wings. And, if you think I’m being too harsh on the Barca media, then you guys need to hear Xavi himself speak on the local media: “You asked me many times that if I’d be the Sir Alex Ferguson of Barca…the truth is that it will never happen here….You guys (the media) won’t allow it-being Barca coach is so difficult….You see how they kill you, they criticize you, it affects you.”
Must I say anything more about how toxic and useless the Barca media is?
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