On a bright autumn Monday in Barcelona, over 10,000 people found a good reason to skip an hour or two of work. They made their way to Camp Nou - not for a match, not for a concert, but for a promise. They were there with their flags and in some cases their children, to witness and celebrate the return of a favourite son.
On the pitch, Xavi Hernandez, the captain of Barcelona for much of what was the club’s golden era - four European Cups in nine years up until 2015 - signed a contract to become the fourth different head coach in the last 20 months. “Welcome back!” announced the big screen set up behind him. Fans had prepared banners on a similar theme, willing Xavi to apply his intimate knowledge of the club he grew up in, from studious academy kid to metronome of a peerless midfield, as a cure for Barca’s apparently chronic decline.
The occasion made an evident impact on the star of the show. “I’ve got goosebumps,” he told the supporters spread across the upper tiers of the stadium. “The way I have been received makes me very emotional.” He later joined the crowd in spontaneous chanting.
But Xavi was quick to stress that hard work lies ahead - “maximum effort” - and he is under no illusions about the size of the challenge. Xavi, who spent the last two weeks negotiating his release from Qatar’s Al Sadd, where he has been coaching for the last two and half years, touched down in Catalonia on Saturday.
That evening he watched Barca, who sacked Ronald Koeman as coach nine days earlier, concede a 3-0 lead at Celta Vigo and come home with just a point. They sit ninth in La Liga, and closer in points to the bottom of the table than the top. In the Champions League, they have lost two of four group matches so far by 3-0 and face a tight tussle with Benfica, who beat them by that score, to qualify for the knockout stage.
“This is a difficult moment in a sporting context and financially,” acknowledged Xavi, who, according the club’s president Joan Laporta, contributed a part of the settlement with Al Sadd to rescind his contract in Qatar. Barcelona’s debts - over €1 billion ($1.16bn) - and unwieldy salary bill meant that during the last transfer window, they were unable to pay transfer fees and obliged to let Lionel Messi leave for Paris Saint-Germain and Antoine Griezmann join Atletico Madrid on loan.
Messi, a Barca teammate of Xavi’s in 399 matches, had wished the new coach "good luck", said Xavi. Much as he might wish he could still call on Barcelona’s greatest ever player, Xavi said firmly: “Messi is not here now, we have to work with the squad we have.“
Some are former colleagues, and from the likes of Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen and Sergi Roberto, Xavi asks “they must take the lead. I have friendships with some of the players but they will be in a dressing-room where there are clear rules. When there are rules, things always work better.”
About 15 kilometres away in San Cugat, Pep Guardiola, another former Barcelona captain and head coach, was at a golf course attending a fund-raising event. Guardiola, Manchester City’s manager, did not attend the Xavi presentation, but his name loomed large, as it has throughout Xavi’s adult life.
“Pep was a reference for me as a player and as coach,” said Xavi, who followed Guardiola into the first team as a midfielder of vision and leadership, and played his best football under Guardiola after Guardiola’s appointment, by Laporta in 2008, as a then novice head coach.
The comparison is unavoidable. Xavi, 41, has limited experience coaching, just as Guardiola did before he guided Barcelona to a Treble, and two further Liga titles and another Champions League in four seasons in charge.
Xavi, emphasising that his Barcelona need “a medium- to long-term plan,” acknowledged he will be labelled the New Guardiola, but that being a former club idol as a player is no guarantee of being a success as coach. “I hope to belong in the group with Pep and Zidane [an iconic footballer and then a decorated coach at Real Madrid] rather than the others.”
Koeman, who scored a European Cup-winning goal for Barcelona, ranks among the "others": He lasted just over a year as their head coach.
Xavi will spend his first few days on the training pitch assessing the return dates of 11 injured players - including Ansu Fati and Pique; Sergio Aguero is being assessed for a possible cardiac problem - and without those away on international duty. When they return, the challenges are immediate: a local derby against Espanyol for Xavi’s opening night at Camp Nou, and the potential decisive hosting of Benfica three nights later.
He knows what is expected from those fixtures. “This is the hardest club in the world to coach,” he said. “You have to win and win well.”
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Tonight's Chat on The National
Tonight's Chat is a series of online conversations on The National. The series features a diverse range of celebrities, politicians and business leaders from around the Arab world.
Tonight’s Chat host Ricardo Karam is a renowned author and broadcaster who has previously interviewed Bill Gates, Carlos Ghosn, Andre Agassi and the late Zaha Hadid, among others.
Intellectually curious and thought-provoking, Tonight’s Chat moves the conversation forward.
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The years Ramadan fell in May
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Hili 2: Unesco World Heritage site
The site is part of the Hili archaeological park in Al Ain. Excavations there have proved the existence of the earliest known agricultural communities in modern-day UAE. Some date to the Bronze Age but Hili 2 is an Iron Age site. The Iron Age witnessed the development of the falaj, a network of channels that funnelled water from natural springs in the area. Wells allowed settlements to be established, but falaj meant they could grow and thrive. Unesco, the UN's cultural body, awarded Al Ain's sites - including Hili 2 - world heritage status in 2011. Now the most recent dig at the site has revealed even more about the skilled people that lived and worked there.
Correspondents
By Tim Murphy
(Grove Press)
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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UAE
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Japan
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Review: Tomb Raider
Dir: Roar Uthaug
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Daniel Wu, Walter Goggins
two stars
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Key changes
Commission caps
For life insurance products with a savings component, Peter Hodgins of Clyde & Co said different caps apply to the saving and protection elements:
• For the saving component, a cap of 4.5 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 90 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term).
• On the protection component, there is a cap of 10 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 160 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term).
• Indemnity commission, the amount of commission that can be advanced to a product salesperson, can be 50 per cent of the annualised premium for the first year or 50 per cent of the total commissions on the policy calculated.
• The remaining commission after deduction of the indemnity commission is paid equally over the premium payment term.
• For pure protection products, which only offer a life insurance component, the maximum commission will be 10 per cent of the annualised premium multiplied by the length of the policy in years.
Disclosure
Customers must now be provided with a full illustration of the product they are buying to ensure they understand the potential returns on savings products as well as the effects of any charges. There is also a “free-look” period of 30 days, where insurers must provide a full refund if the buyer wishes to cancel the policy.
“The illustration should provide for at least two scenarios to illustrate the performance of the product,” said Mr Hodgins. “All illustrations are required to be signed by the customer.”
Another illustration must outline surrender charges to ensure they understand the costs of exiting a fixed-term product early.
Illustrations must also be kept updatedand insurers must provide information on the top five investment funds available annually, including at least five years' performance data.
“This may be segregated based on the risk appetite of the customer (in which case, the top five funds for each segment must be provided),” said Mr Hodgins.
Product providers must also disclose the ratio of protection benefit to savings benefits. If a protection benefit ratio is less than 10 per cent "the product must carry a warning stating that it has limited or no protection benefit" Mr Hodgins added.
