Vicente Moreno and Xavi: brief meeting, long rivalry

Xavi Hernández has known what it’s like to play a derby for 30 years, when he joined Barcelona’s youth football team from Jabac Terrassa. He has enjoyed it (and cried) as a child, professionally and now as a coach. In fact, he has so internalized the importance of these games that fate wanted him to debut as Barcelona coach against Espanyol in the first round.. For Vicente Moreno everything is new, this course, the last participant in a long rivalry that has been presented today at the RCDE Stadium.

After the training session, Xavi Hernández went to Cornellà, a town just a few kilometers from the Sant Joan Despí Sports City. A journey as short as the meeting with the Valencian coach. Both have chatted for about three minutes in the locker room area, where they have also taken a photograph with the shirts of each team, while later they have gone out for another three minutes to the center of the field and have posed for the graphic media.

Already in the first round, Xavi showed admiration for Moreno, for Espanyol’s defensive organization and the good work he was doing. At that time the parakeet team threatened Barça in the standings, but now they languish away from those European positions in search of a reaction to avoid trouble in the final stretch of the championship.

As players, Vicente Moreno and Xavi only met once in their First Division career. In fact, they barely played 28 minutes on the pitch, one against the other, in the 2009-10 campaign in a Barça-Xerez match that ended 3-1. oneTwo years before, both had already faced each other in Second B, in a match between Valencia B and Barcelona B that was resolved 0-1. A Moreno who was looking to make the leap to Second A and a Xavi, barely 18 years old, who was beginning to be a player with projection for the first team, who would later captivate Louis van Gaal.

Both have been dealing in professional football for 30 years, with opposite trajectories that now come together in this derby, a long rivalry that the RCDE Stadium after a year in LaLiga SmartBank and that this afternoon, With a spring sun, it hosted the brief meeting between technicians.