Most of Barcelona’s players were long gone when they found out that their coach had gone too. As a midfielder 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 had gone on TV and said he felt like he had been hit by a sledgehammer, his task now to lift footballers feeling low; and then, while those he sees as his executioners waited in the Montjuïc press room, he had disappeared.
Half an hour passed, an hour, an hour and a half. Another 90 minutes that didn’t feel right. Staff looked at watches and rolled eyes, keen to head off down the hill and home, the dressing room emptying, the stands empty ages ago. 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.
