Andres Iniesta is not plotting a route back to Barcelona, and he is not shutting the door either.
The former Spain and Barcelona midfielder was asked by Mundo Deportivo, in an interview carried on Monday, whether he could one day coach the club where he won nine La Liga titles and four Champions League trophies.
“Destiny will decide what should happen. Obviously it would be a wonderful thing if I continued my coaching career, given what Barcelona means to me, but it is not something I set in my mind as a specific goal,” Iniesta said.
It is the most direct answer he has given on the subject since taking charge of his first senior team.
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Four months into his first job
Iniesta took over at Gulf United in the summer, moving from the UAE Pro League, where he spent his final season as a player at Emirates Club, down to the UAE First Division. The Dubai side, founded in 2019, is pitched at youth development.
“The programme, the project is amazing. I love to work with young players,” Iniesta told The National ahead of his first match in August.
He has repeatedly framed the role as a classroom rather than a shop window.
“I also have to learn, I have to improve with my staff, with my players.”
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The Guardiola, Xavi line
The idea of a Barcelona icon serving an apprenticeship elsewhere before coming home is familiar. Pep Guardiola coached Barcelona B before his senior appointment in 2008. Xavi Hernandez spent nearly three years at Al Sadd in Qatar before returning to the Camp Nou dugout in November 2021 to replace Ronald Koeman.
Iniesta is in no hurry to follow them.
“Time will reveal everything, but it is true that I am enjoying this beginning very much. Not only because of being a coach, but because of everything that comes with it,” he said.
Any Barcelona vacancy is a long way off in any case. Hansi Flick is the club’s head coach for the 2026-27 season, in his third campaign in charge.
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From Kobe to Dubai to the dugout
Iniesta left Barcelona in 2018 after more than two decades at the club, moving to Vissel Kobe in Japan. He spent five seasons there, winning the 2019 Emperor’s Cup, before a single season at Emirates Club in the UAE top flight. He retired as a player in October 2024, almost two years before the Mundo Deportivo interview.
His family has stayed in the Emirates since the Emirates Club move. “It’s easy for me, for us as a family. We have been living here for three years,” Iniesta said of taking the Gulf United job.
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