Xavi Hernández, the Barça coach who will leave the team at the end of the season, collected some outstanding bills from the press by taking advantage of Barça’s qualification for the Champions League quarterfinals by beating Naples (3-1).
In his appearance at the post-match press conference, the Terrassa coach criticized the treatment received by the media, as a result of the team’s poor performances, such as the defeat against Shakhtar in November.
When asked what he had told the players to give their best version, he commented: “I told them to calm down, that no one had to die today. There has been a lot of unfair criticism. At the time it was said that we were the ‘jester.’ of the Champions’. Is this necessary? Playing with us with this pressure… [Written by] Journalists who cover Barça and who are from Barça, in theory. Calm down. And with this match that we are showing today, what do we do “With the jester of the Champions League, what do we do?”
Xavi’s opportunistic words were referring to the report that journalist Ramon Besa wrote in El País after the defeat against Shakhtar in the group stage (1-0) last November. Xavi did not like the title of that chronicle at all: “Barça, defeated by Shakhtar, is the jester of Europe.”
The renowned journalist from El País explained in the RAC1 program Tu Diràs that Xavi contacted him after publishing the chronicle in November. “I’m not surprised because as a result of the article Xavi sent me a message saying that he was very upset by the article, that he was very angry and that he believed it was very inaccurate.”
Ramon Besa commented that he tried to explain why he described the Blaugrana team as “Europe’s jester”: “It is a team that loses to the bottom of Europe and that comes with an erratic European trajectory. It even lost to Antwerp, when the team “The board and the sports director invited him to make a new call. They didn’t trust him too much either.”
Xavi stuck out his chest for qualifying for the round of 16, and for the fact that the team’s ability to advance to the round had been called into question after the draw in Naples (1-1).
“We are among the eight best teams in the Champions League, which is said early. I already said that we were under construction. For me this team has a lot of merit, being in the quarterfinals and playing well against Naples. Yesterday you said that on big stages the team was not up to par, well it is.”
