Cazorla: “Xavi is undervalued”

Xavi Hernández will face what could be his last Clásico against Real Madrid as FC Barcelona coach. Or not. After announcing at the beginning of the year that he would be leaving the culé bench, talk continues every week about the club’s attempts, with president Joan Laporta at the helm, to have him change that script. A Spanish football legend, with whom he was in the dressing room in the best Spanish team of all time and experienced his transition from the grass to the bench in the ranks of Qatari Al Sadd, clarified in an interview for The Guardian that, in his opinion, “Xavi is undervalued” as Barça coach. The former international assured this Santi Cazorlawho at 39 years old is advancing his career in Oviedo.

“It’s sad that he’s suffering in his own home, he’s undervalued,” said the veteran midfielder. “Xavi arrived at one of the most difficult moments in the club’s history, he won the League and the Super Cup, but it was not enough,” he added.

Cazorla recalls the change in perspective that seeing the other Xavi as a midfielder and as a coach was for him. “Xavi surprised me. As a player he never raised his voice and now…”, he pointed out. “On the first day we were losing. I saw him throwing boots, insulting, shouting. I asked him later: ‘Xavi, what happened to you today?’ He told me: ‘I have changed completely. The locker room won’t respect you.’ I thought, ‘Is it really necessary?’ I don’t see that in myself, but then I don’t see it in him either,” he explained.

The former player of Recreativo de Huelva, Villarreal, Málaga, Arsenal and Al-Sadd dreams of returning to the First Division with the Carbayón club. “Oviedo deserves it, nothing else matters,” he said his professional plans are short-term: “I’m not looking beyond this season. Then we will sit down, see what the club wants, what I can provide. My decision does not depend on the division we are in. “If my withdrawal means that Oviedo will go up, I will not play this weekend,” he concluded.