Whose Barcelona legacy is greater, Xavi or Andrés Iniesta?

Barcelona have struggled to find successors to both Xavi and Andrés Iniesta

Andrés Iniesta and Xavi are two of the greatest midfielders of all-time, and certainly the best of their generation. They are good friends, and their partnership on the pitch has been crucial for Barcelona as well as the Spanish national team.

Both players now ply their trade in Qatar and Japan as they come to the end of their illustrious careers. But their chemistry on and off the field, which has yielded results for both club and country, nullifies the comparison of their legacies at Barça.

The basis of the judgement of their legacies has to be the difficultly associated with finding a successor. Talent exists in world football, but players of world-class stature emerge very rarely. With that parameter, Andrés Iniesta seems to have trumped Xavi.

Xavi left the club in 2015, after 17 years of service. Initially, Barça struggled to find a successor. The club courted then Dortmund star İlkay Gündoğan for a long time, but the move never materialised. Finally, club scouts found the ‘next Xavi’ in Grêmio starlet Arthur.

The Brazilian youngster has turned out to be a photocopy of Xavi. Everything from his turns to his passing is reminiscent of the former Barça captain. It cannot be doubted that Arthur Melo is the successor to Xavi for Barça and on the world arena.

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But Barça have totally failed in finding a successor to Iniesta. The signing of Philippe Coutinho has been an utter failure if he was to be the replacement for Andrés Iniesta in the first-team. There can be many reasons for the club’s failure on this front, but one is the likeliest.

The most probable reason why Barça failed is the fact that Andrés Iniesta is irreplaceable, in the truest sense of the word. Another Iniesta simply cannot emerge, because another Iniesta does not exist, not in La Masia, not in De Toemkoest, not in La Fábrica.

It is true that the search for Iniesta’s successor has not lasted as long as that for Xavi’s successor. Many poor signings were also made during the search for a replacement for Xavi in the first-team, but Ivan Rakitić was also signed in that process.

But the club has signed one player to succeed Iniesta, and the amount spent on him clearly earmarks him as the definite successor to Spain’s World Cup hero. But Coutinho has failed miserably in that role, and is currently starring down the left flank.

A proper successor to Andrés Iniesta can never be found. His uniqueness as a midfielder certainly trumps that of Xavi, who reinvented the conventional midfielder to fit the tiki-taka philosophy. Iniesta is the ultimate playmaker, and has proven to be capable of everything.

His silky dribbling, close control and unimaginable vision makes him the embodiment of the modern playmaker. In that regard, Iniesta surpasses the likes of Andrea Pirlo, who belong to the same generation of amazing midfielders.

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The only player who even comes close to matching Iniesta is his compatriot Isco. But the Real Madrid is still a long distance away from matching his legacy. In an answer to the question no one wants to ask, Andrés Iniesta beats Xavi Hernández in the battle of legacies.