Xavi will be Barca's head coach but I don't know when - Joan Laporta
Barcelona president Joan Laporta has revealed that he has been in contact with Xavi for months, but it is not entirely clear whether the former legend will replace Ronald Koeman.
"
My opinion about Xavi as a manager is he is in a process learning, evolving, I have really good references from close people who know him better than me in that way,"
Laporta said at a press conference on Friday.
"I talked with him two months ago when we gave Ronald Koeman this confidence because I understand that we had to give him those months, the team needed some time to recover.
"I have a great relationship with Xavi, I have been speaking with him in the last month, I know his opinion about this squad, what he thinks has to happen. We talk as two friends and in this case, my opinion is a really good one.
"I am talking to him because he loves football, he is a huge Barca fan, it is one of his goals in his life.
"If he is the one able to manage this squad, I have a great relationship with him and he is a possibility because we will see how everything will continue evolving.
"These are private conversations between friends and I cannot explain what we talked about.
"I already told you and I cannot explain anything about our options because it will not be professional and it will affect our plans. I am sorry, but I cannot tell you anything.
"I have always said one day he will be Barca's head coach but I don't know when. We have great references about Xavi at Al Sadd.
"All our reports about Xavi are positive. We can talk a lot about Xavi but I cannot give you more details. He is in all the papers, but we also have other options."
Laporta seems to regret his decision to give
Ronald Koeman
a chance because he believes the Dutchman should have been fired sooner.
"
Probably, yes,
" he said. "
Looking back it is easy to analyse, we felt Koeman deserved confidence to recover some injured players and it was a way to motivate the manager
.
"I looked for some positives. Probably we had to make an earlier decision, I assume the responsibilities of this decision.
"The situation was not sustainable. We needed to act. We were not on course to achieve the objectives of the season, which is to win titles."
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