Thierry Henry has rubbished suggestions that Xavi is not the right coach for Barcelona, or that the job has come too early in his managerial career, claiming things would currently be much worse without the Camp Nou legend at the helm.
Having cut his teeth as a coach at Al-Sadd in Qatar, Xavi was appointed by Barca just under a year ago. He eventually steered the team to a second place finish in La Liga, making up for a woeful start under Ronald Koeman and avoiding the disaster of missing out on the Champions League.
Barcelona have been in good domestic form so far in 2022/23, winning all but two of their 11 La Liga games so far and had been top of the table until defeat to Real Madrid in this month’s Clasico.
But the Champions League has been a different story. They have failed to win any of their last four games in the competition and are already resigned to dropping into the Europa League for the second year in a row, even with a group game still left to play.
Xavi has been working against a backdrop of financial unrest throughout his tenure and has had to find ways to gel a new look squad following a busy summer of transfer activity. Despite the club’s finances improving in the short-term, there is remains potential for Barça to still be badly bitten in the future following a recent warning from La Liga president Javier Tebas.
Henry, who played with Xavi for three seasons at the height of the club’s success under Pep Guardiola, has backed his former teammate to continue steering the ship.
“At the end of the day, results always count and that’s what we recently saw in England with the dismissal of Steven Gerrard,” the Frenchman said as a pundit on CBS Sports Golazo.
“But if at this moment Barcelona had another coach in charge then the volcano would erupt. It would be worse than now.”
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