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Sporting Director Robert Fernandez’s Impact on Barcelona Will Mark Club’s Future
- Updated: September 7, 2016
Barcelona legend Xavi Hernandez spoke on radio show El Larguero on Cadena Ser on Tuesday night and brought up an interesting idea Gerard Pique had mentioned.
The defender—likely in a semi-jest, semi-serious musing—suggested to the Al Sadd player that he would be the club’s president in the future, while Carles Puyol would be the sporting director, Xavi would be the coach and Sergio Busquets would be the assistant.
It sounds like Blaugrana fan-fiction, but Barcelona have an impressive record at recycling players into other positions when their careers end.
Former head coach Pep Guardiola and current manager Luis Enrique both played for the club, of course, as did Barcelona legend Johan Cruyff.
Puyol has already started to work on Pique’s dream, having studied various subjects such as finance, marketing, legal aspects, technology, communication and more at Las Rozas, the Spanish Football Federation’s headquarters.
He even worked as assistant to former sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta—another ex-player who took a role upstairs—for a brief period in 2014. Unfortunately, the former goalkeeper was axed in early 2015 and Puyol chose to walk soon afterwards. It is hard not to believe he will be back, though.
The man who replaced Zubizarreta was Robert Fernandez. He played for the club between 1986 and 1990, winning two Copa del Rey titles and a European Cup Winners’ Cup, and the decision was announced by director Albert Soler on July 20, 2015 in Los Angeles.
With Barcelona banned from registering any players during that summer, there was no rush to replace Zubizarreta, so the club took time to choose wisely.
Being a sporting director at Barcelona is not an easy job—that much was shown by Zubi’s dismissal. Things were turning ugly midway through Luis Enrique’s debut season, with Barcelona struggling to find form. The former Camp Nou goalkeeper became the fall guy.
Some of his transfer dealings were criticised, notably Douglas and Thomas Vermaelen; the former had played only one game and the latter none thanks to injury at the time Zubi was sacked.
Between that and the FIFA sanction held over the club, Josep Maria Bartomeu decided to fire the sporting director in the aftermath of a 1-0 defeat by Real Sociedad that threatened to derail the whole season, with even Lionel Messi agitating after he started that game on the bench.
Zubizarreta’s sacking felt like the president was playing to the …
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