Former Barcelona coach Xavi Hernández has said that club president Joan Laporta prevented Lionel Messi from returning to Barça because he feared a potential internal conflict and power struggle at the club.
Speaking about the period when Messi was weighing his options after leaving Paris Saint-Germain, Xavi said he believed a reunion at Barcelona was possible and that, from a football perspective, the move made sense. According to Xavi, the obstacle was not sporting but institutional, with Laporta reportedly concerned that bringing Messi back could shift the balance of influence inside the club.
Xavi, who played alongside Messi during one of Barcelona’s most successful eras before later coaching the first team, has long been an advocate for Messi’s importance to the club’s identity. He has previously described Messi as the best player in Barcelona’s history and indicated that, in his view, Messi’s return would have been positive both on and off the pitch.
In his recent comments, Xavi suggested that Laporta worried Messi’s presence might create competing centres of authority between the dressing room and the boardroom. He framed the decision as one rooted in politics and governance rather than tactics or team building, saying the president was anxious about the perception of who truly led the club and how much influence Messi might hold if he came back.
Xavi’s remarks add another layer to the ongoing discussion around Messi’s departure from Barcelona in 2021 and the subsequent attempts, or lack thereof, to bring him back. At the time, the club cited financial and structural obstacles under Spanish league regulations as reasons Messi could not renew his contract. Later, when Messi became available again, he ultimately chose a different destination instead of returning to Camp Nou.
Xavi did not provide detailed specifics about any private conversations with Laporta or Messi, nor did he outline the exact timeline of the internal deliberations. However, his account reinforces the idea that, beyond financial and regulatory constraints, internal dynamics and concerns about institutional control also played a role in Messi’s absence from Barcelona in the years that followed.
The comments come against the backdrop of continuing debate among supporters and observers about how Barcelona managed the end of Messi’s long spell at the club and the opportunities that may have existed to engineer a comeback. Xavi’s perspective, as both a former teammate and former coach, offers an insider’s view of how high-level decisions and fears about power structures can influence major player moves at one of world football’s most prominent clubs.
