Barcelona President Admits Talks with Xavi

Barcelona president Joan Laporta said he is in contact with the 41-year-old former Barca midfielder, Xave Hernandez, following the sacking of Ronald Koeman on Wednesday.

Koeman was dismissed after a 1-0 away defeat by Rayo Vallecano.

But Al Sadd tweeted: “Xavi has a two-year contract and is fully focused on the team’s upcoming matches.”

Xavi is favourite to replace Koeman and Laporta said: “I have always said one day Xavi 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.”

Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Laporta was asked whether he waited too long to make a decision on Dutchman Koeman’s future.

“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.”