‘Get rid of toxic footballers’ – Players named, as Xavi faces ‘immediate’ Barcelona task

Xavi Hernandez is now back at Barcelona and in place as the club’s manager, which has brought a wave of optimism around the Catalan club.

Eyes are already looking forward to the January window, but there’s also improvements which can be made without any additions, as explained by Sport on Wednesday.

The new boss is trying to change the whole ethos around the club, and bring back some of that Barcelona DNA he embodied so well during his days as a player at the Camp Nou.

Sport say ‘the level of demand is going to go up’. That’s on the pitch during matches, in all training sessions, and even off the pitch.

Xavi is said to want the squad, especially senior players, to concentrate fully on Barcelona, and therefore give less prominence to other projects they have going on.

Whilst that would appear to be a dig at Gerard Pique, the defender isn’t one of the ‘toxic’ footballers named by the Catalan newspaper.

It’s stated an ‘immediate’ task for Xabi is to ‘get rid of toxic footballers’, with those named as Philippe Coutinho and Samuel Umtiti.

Quite how he’s going to do that isn’t explained, and Barcelona have repeatedly failed to find a new home for the Brazilian, whilst the Frenchman has made it clear he wants to stay where he is.