Barca Universal
·5. Oktober 2025
Watch: Barcelona legend Xavi rates Real Madrid icon higher than himself

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Yahoo sportsBarca Universal
·5. Oktober 2025
Xavi Hernandez defined an era, not only for Barcelona but for world football and is rightly considered one of the greatest players to have ever graced the field.
The former Barca manager, after all, formed a lethal trio with Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets, and not many in the history of the game can claim to have had a better career or a better legacy than him.
In a recent event, however, content creators Adrian Contreras and Unai Zaballa posed the legend with a challenge where he had to stay silent until he heard the name of a midfielder better than him, and the list, quite unsurprisingly, ran very long.
The influencers began by naming players of the current generation, including Arda Guler, Gavi, Kobbie Mainoo, Eduardo Camavinga, Pablo Barrios, Tijjani Reijnders and Fermin Lopez, and Xavi understandably maintained his silence.
Then began a crop of slightly more established names in Martin Zubimendi, Federico Valverde, Enzo Fernadez, Alexis MacAllister, Jude Bellingham, Florian Wirtz and Pedri Gonzalez and Kevin De Bruyne, but the Barcelona legend did not budge from his silence.
His decision became increasingly more difficult as players from his era began entering the list, including Andrea Pirlo, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and Claude Makelele, and the player still managed to retain his crown over the legends.
Finally, however, he broke his silence when the name of Real Madrid legend Zinedine Zidane came out, admitting that the French maestro may have been a better player or had a better legacy than him.
While Xavi’s humility allowed him to make the concession, there is a strong case for the Spanish legend to claim to have a career even better than Zidane’s.
The only real competition he may have would be with his own teammate and friend, Andres Iniesta and perhaps Real Madrid’s legend Luka Modric.
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