Most of Barcelona's players were long gone when they found out their coach had gone too. As a midfielder M Xavi Hernández mastered space and time, controlling everything, but as a manager it is just not the same and on Saturday night he was late. He had watched his team concede five at home for the first time in more than 60 years, falling to a defeat against Villarreal which he called a portrait of their season, self-inflicted and absurd. Immediately after it finished, he said on TV he felt like he had been hit by a sledgehammer, his task now to lift footballers feeling low; and then he disappeared.
Half an hour passed, an hour, an hour and a half. Staff looked at watches, the dressing room emptied. Upstairs, Xavi was talking to the president, Joan Laporta. It was a "human" conversation, he said; it was also a long one. When he eventually appeared again, he revealed he was soon to no longer be the coach. As the minutes went by, under the stand they suspected that something was up; when he came with his wife Nuria and brother Oscar some time after 10pm, they knew it was. "I have decided I will not continue beyond 30 June," Xavi told the media. He had not told his players.
Xavi said the decision had been made days ago and it wasn't really a surprise. He had linked his continuity to Barcelona winning trophies and then watched, one by one, as they lost them: defeated by Girona in the league, Real Madrid in the Super Cup final, and Athletic in the Copa del Rey, conceding four in all of them. Three days earlier he had talked about a new era beginning without him and one day before he said he had little time left.
At that point they were 10 points off the top, not even the best team in Catalonia let alone Spain. No one expected him to continue next season; not many wanted him to.
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