“Foreign coaches took the English game – long ball, No.9s – and improved it”

His first purchase with a youth-team pay packet of 4,000 pesetas (about £20) was a toaster, bought on Las Ramblas for his mum.

By 1997, he was a Barcelona B regular. A year later he made his official first-team debut under Louis van Gaal, against Mallorca in the Spanish Supercopa, and scored in a 3-1 aggregate defeat.

Despite a disastrous start, losing four consecutive games in December, Barcelona won the league, and Xavi was voted Spain’s breakthrough player. In April 1999, he excelled as Spain won the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in Nigeria.

Yet despite being the world’s most promising 19-year-old, Xavi was worried – worried about the comparisons to his idol Pep Guardiola, and even taking his hero’s place. Impressed by what he’d seen in Nigeria, Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani was prepared to pay Xavi’s release clause.

“Pep was 27 or 28 and in the best condition of his life,” Xavi recalls. “My dad said: ‘It’s better you go, because here they’ve got a ready-made team’. There didn’t seem to be a place in the team for me, while Milan said I’d play with Demetrio Albertini in midfield.”

It feels incongruous to hear Xavi talk about the mere possibility of playing in another European team – yet it very nearly happened. “My brothers said I should go, too,” he adds. “My mum was the only one who thought I should stay. Ultimately, it didn’t feel right. The legend goes that she stopped it, but the decision was mine.”

However, Xavi’s Camp Nou life would get worse before it got better. Van Gaal used him sparingly, and it took Guardiola’s departure for Brescia in 2001 for his diminutive successor to cement a first-team place. Yet Xavi was tacitly blamed for his idol saying goodbye. From that 1999 Liga title, Barcelona went six years without a trophy.

“Barcelona weren’t even in the running for any titles in that spell,” says Xavi, wearing a disappointed expression for the only time during our conversation. “The press looked for a scapegoat, and I was the best target. I was slow. I was ‘out of date’. I should be put down. Barcelona couldn’t play at Europe’s top level with me in midfield and had to look for taller, stronger players.

“We had a philosophy, but they wanted a change because of three or four years without a trophy. I understand criticism, but they were really strong. Some became personal, which affected my home life and hurt me a lot. It was like ‘Xavi has no merit’.”

The Spanish press had even dubbed Xavi Parabrisas, or ‘the windscreen wiper’, because supposedly all he ever did was pass the ball from side to side.

“You have two roads with critics: you get depressed or you fight,” he says, heartache replaced by iron-willed conviction. “I’m stubborn and pig-headed and this hardened me to prove what I can do. Bit by bit, I reached the top of the game. I’m very proud of that.”

At one point, Barcelona even sounded out potential suitors for his sale. What helped keep Xavi sane were European trips to England. He made his European debut – before his Liga bow – coming off the bench at Old Trafford in September 1998, to spark a love of English fandom that persists to the present day.

“There’s no comparison between the English football fan and the Spanish one: the respect there is for the players, win or lose,” says Xavi. “I remember winning 3-1 at Anfield in November 2001, playing incredible football against Liverpool. The fans remained for the whole game and never stopped applauding their team. I mean, we couldn’t have played better, but in the 90th minute they were still applauding Liverpool. I couldn’t believe it. I was speechless.”

Warming to the theme, he skips forward to the present day. “I spoke to Juan Mata and David de Gea at the end of the season before last. Manchester United finished seventh, but after the final