Xavi Hernandez has kept most of his recent thinking on Barcelona to himself, and used nearly an hour on Prakhar Gupta’s YouTube podcast to walk back through the dressing rooms he grew up in.

The one prediction that will follow the club into the season is his verdict on Lamine Yamal.

“He will become the best in the world. He has all the potential to reach the very top,” Xavi said of the 19-year-old winger, in comments carried by AllFootball.

“I saw a true talent. I saw a player who stood head and shoulders above his peers.”

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Laporta pulled the plug on Messi’s return

The revelation of the interview was Xavi’s version of the failed 2023 return of Lionel Messi. He said the two had been in contact for four months, that the entire coaching staff wanted the deal done, and that Joan Laporta was the one who ended it at the last moment.

“I was 100% in favor. It should have been our ‘last dance’ at the Montjuïc Stadium, like Michael Jordan,” Xavi told the podcast, as reported by AllFootball.

“President Laporta decided he did not want to re-sign Messi.”

Xavi called the reversal “very strange” and said the club president had exchanged views with him on the subject for those four months before the sudden turn, Infobae wrote of the same interview.

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“It was heartbreaking,” he added.

He had to tell Messi personally that the club would not complete the signing.

Ronaldinho, Iniesta and the pecking order

Xavi worked through his rankings of the older Camp Nou generation with the same certainty on Gupta’s show. He placed Andres Iniesta as the greatest Spanish talent he had ever seen, and rated Sergio Busquets as the best holding midfielder in football history.

Ronaldinho’s arrival in 2003, Xavi said, changed Barcelona’s mentality on a level with Johan Cruyff. And on Neymar, the verdict was equally direct: at his Camp Nou peak, no player in the world had come closer to Messi.

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Pedri and Vitinha as the closest to himself

Asked who most resembles him in the current game, Xavi picked two names in the same breath.

“I think it’s Pedri at Barcelona and Vitinha at PSG,” he said.

“They combine the vision of a number 6 with the playmaking ability of a number 8; they are a perfect hybrid of these two roles.”

Hansi Flick still has the job

Xavi coached Barcelona from November 2021 until May 2024, delivering one La Liga title before parting ways with the club. Hansi Flick replaced him that summer, and remains in the dugout for the 2026-27 season, taking a Barcelona side with a 100% record into their trip to Levante on Tuesday.

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