Barcelona presidential candidate Victor Font has revealed in an interview that if he is elected, he wants Xavi to return to Camp Nou to run his sporting project while maintains that Ronaldo Koeman could stay as the club’s head coach.
The presidential election is slated to take place in March 2021 and Font will be running under-fire president Josep Maria Bartomeu.
In an interview with Cadena Ser last month, he described plans for his long-term project in Barcelona, revealing that he would look to replace newly appointed head coach Koeman with Xavi.
He said: “If I am president, Koeman will not be the coach. Xavi understands that all the pieces of the club have to fit together,”
“A board of directors that lets whoever leads the sports project to do his work, which in our case would be him.”
However, Font has now come out to clear the air on his previous comments, claiming to be misunderstood and that Xavi would only play a key role behind the scenes, rather than replace Koeman.
Speaking on talkSPORT when questioned on his initial comments, he said: “It was taken out of context,”
“What I said was that in the last seven years we have been working on designing a project, a project that has many different pieces, and obviously the sports organisation is a very relevant part of that complex puzzle.
“We’ve been working on what the sports organisation would look like with the leadership of Xavi Hernandez, and what I said is, if we have the honour of being chosen by the members and we become the board of the club, we would like to implement the project we’ve been working on.
“Xavi as the leader of the sports organisation would be making the decision of how to handle the situation of Koeman, and I’m sure that if Koeman does well Xavi will take care of that in the right way,” per Goal.
Xavi, who is the head coach of Qatar side Al Sadd, has revealed he would not rule out a potential return to the LaLiga giants where he grew into one of football’s greatest ever players.
Speaking to Sport, Xavi said: “I’ve said it a lot of times but I want to take footballing decisions at Barcelona,”
“They came for me in January, we were speaking. I told them the circumstances and timing weren’t right. It’s clear that after the elections the stage would be set, of course. I’m not ruling anything out.”
Xavi had earlier rejected Barcelona when contacted over the head coach job after the sacking of Ernesto Valverde in 2019, leading to the hiring of Real Betis manager Quique Setien.
