Xavi Hernández becomes desperate, cries out and becomes angry. He does it with the game of his team and pays for it, sometimes, with the referees. The protests of the coach, who spends most of the games standing in the technical area, have been a constant since he arrived at Barcelona. To the point that for the second consecutive season the Terrassa coach will have to serve a one-game suspension due to the accumulation of warnings.
Since it premiered in November 2021, Xavi has already been shown 22 cards, 21 of them yellow and one red. The expulsion occurred at the Getafe Coliseum, in the first game of the League 23-24, and cost him two games of punishment.
The referees are now much more aware of the slights and disapproval of their decisions. Furthermore, they have the fourth referee to warn them. Xavi has seen how since his arrival in the League he has become the most cautioned coach.
On several occasions, the coach has confessed that his intention is to control his bad temper and difficult behavior. Even against Villarreal, the afternoon he announced shortly after that he would not fulfill his contract, he went to a television camera to complain: “It’s a shame,” he said, once the VAR annulled a penalty in favor of his team.
The entire coaching staff (the second coach, Òscar Hernández, the third coach, Sergio Alegre, and the goalkeeper coach, José Ramón de la Fuente, have also been expelled) are working to reduce this tension and have more patience, although they also defend that they do not They are the ones who protest the most.
“I will try not to receive the fifth yellow,” said Xavi before visiting Athletic in San Mamés, something he did not achieve. “But you can’t tell me that I’m not involved, huh,” he said, half jokingly, in the preview. “I try to transmit that intensity to the players,” he tried to explain about his performances in the band and his protests.
Now, the Barça coach will not be able to sit on the Montjuïc bench to receive Mallorca. Last year he could not lead the duel against Valencia, also at home. Then he saw the fifth yellow on matchday 23. In this course it was in San Mamés on matchday 27.
Despite the fact that when he landed he went the first seven games without being cautioned, Xavi gets a card every six games on average. Athletic is the rival that drives him the most and has already received three yellow cards in the duels against the red and whites, more than in the classics against Madrid (2) or in the derbies against Espanyol (1).
There is another fact that speaks of the nervousness with which Xavi experiences the games in the technical area and that is that 17 of those 22 cards were seen when the team was not winning on the scoreboard. This season, with the team’s irregular play, already lost two titles and far from the lead, he takes the cake with nine cards.
