Spanish football club, Barcelona may have hired their former ace midfielder and captain Xavi Hernandez as the new manager to replace Ronaldo Koeman.

Press reports said today, Thursday, that the Spanish club Barcelona has reached an agreement with its former star Xavi Hernandez to take over the position of coach of the team.
And the newspaper “Sport” reported that Barcelona reached an agreement with Xavi only 12 hours after the dismissal of Dutch coach Ronald Koeman, after the defeat at Rayo Vallecano with a goal without a response on Wednesday evening, so that the Catalan club suffered its fourth defeat in the last six matches in all competitions.

Xavi, 41, graduated from Barcelona’s youth academy and starred with the first team between 1998 and 2015 and won 25 titles, including four titles in the Champions League and eight titles in the Spanish League.

Xavi moved to Qatar’s Al Sadd, where he ended his career in 2019 and is currently coaching the team with a contract that extends until 2023.

There is a penalty clause in Xavi’s contract with Al Sadd worth one million euros (one million and 160 thousand dollars), after he confirmed earlier that he aspires to coach Barcelona one day.

But according to the newspaper “Sport”, Barcelona needs to hold more talks with Al-Sadd, and at the same time indicated that the agreement is expected to be concluded before the end of Thursday.

Neither Barcelona nor Xavi have commented on this speculation yet.

Barcelona faces many problems, most notably the debts that burdened the team after it crossed the one billion euro barrier, in addition to the departure of Argentine star Lionel Messi and French striker Antoine Griezmann during the last summer transfer period.