How Guardiola almost forced Xavi to sign for Real Madrid

FT Desk

11 Jan 2022 05:14 CST
3 min read

Real Madrid’s former scout has revealed that Xavi was very close to leaving Barcelona for the Blancos as a teenager.

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Xavi is regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of Barcelona and has now returned to the club as coach.

He burst onto the scene as a teenage wonderkid in the late 1990s but there was initially frustration in the Xavi camp that he was not getting enough gametime.

In January 1999, Marca reveals that Xavi was left on the bench during Barcelona’s home match against Athletic Bilbao, with manager Louis van Gaal picking Pep Guardiola instead.

This infuriated Xavi’s father Joaquin, who immediately complained to Real Madrid Catalonia-based scout Manuel Angel Romero.

Xavi could have joined Real Madrid

"They do not know what player they have, what a player Xavi is, it seems that they only look at Pep," Joaquin told Romero.

"Tomorrow if you want, let's go to [Real] Madrid."

Romero passed on Xavi’s father’s frustrations to Paco Jimenez, who at the time was working with Real Madrid coach Vicente del Bosque.

"I said to Paco: 'S**t, did you hear? Tell the club,'" Romero told MARCA.

"He looked at me very seriously. 'What do you want? To get in trouble?’," Paco replied to me.”

In the end, the transfer did not go through and Xavi would soon displace Guardiola as Barcelona’s key central midfielder before creating history at the club.

🎙| Sergio Busquets will be alongside Xavi tomorrow at the press conference ahead of the game against Real Madrid in the Super Copa semi-final. #fcblive pic.twitter.com/pPQFIFTmcG
— BarçaTimes (@BarcaTimes) January 10, 2022

Guardiola would never truly win back his first-team place and would leave the club in 2001 to join Brescia.

"Of course, I would have signed Xavi," recalls Romero. "I was at CE Mercantil and I wanted to sign him when he was very young. His father was Terrassa coordinator.

"We were in the same category. Xavi was smaller, but he already played with Alevin A. He was terrific! I wanted to sign him. I spoke with his father, who had a metal carpentry and we talked about how to get the boy to go from Terrassa to Sabadell.

"But then Mr. Oriol Tort arrived and, logically, he went to Barcelona. It was what he dreamed of and wanted to do."

Xavi will face his first Clasico as coach on Wednesday when Barcelona take on Real Madrid in the Spanish Super Cup in Riyadh.