Aside from a short stint in Doha with Al Sadd, Xavi has spent much of his life at Barcelona, and with that comes a certain distrust of the old rivals Real Madrid.
The current Barca manager was born in Terrassa in Catalonia, and joined the Barcelona youth ranks very young. He went on to make over 500 appearances for the first team before becoming the manager back in 2021.
He’s experienced incredible success as both a player and now as a manager following last year’s La Liga triumph.
As well as being a fine player and a very promising manager, Xavi has never been one to hold back his thoughts, especially if he believes that Barcelona are being targeted or Real Madrid is being favoured. So it was no surprise to hear his comments during his press conference for this weekend’s game against Bilbao.
Xavi indicates that Real Madrid receive preferential treatment from La Liga
Real Madrid defender Nacho was sent off against Girona for a very ugly and high challenge and quickly tagged with the automatic three-game suspension that comes with a straight red card.
That three-game suspension meant that the Spanish defender was set to miss the El Clasico meeting between Real Madrid and Barcelona on the 28th of October.
However, Real Madrid appealed that suspension despite it seeming a fair punishment for a bad challenge, but this is Madrid and La Liga we’re talking about.
The Spanish Football Federation’s appeal committee agreed with Real Madrid, reducing the ban from three games down to two, meaning Nacho will be available for selection against Barcelona.
Xavi was surprised by that decision and hinted that Real Madrid receives preferential treatment from La Liga when it comes to such matters:
"“The reduction of Nacho’s ban is surprising. Last year Lewandowski was suspended for three games, we asked for it to be reduced and we were not even listened to.”"
I think it’s hard to argue that the decision was surprising if you’ve seen the challenge, but then again should we ever really be surprised when a decision goes the way of the golden children in Madrid?