Xavi Hernandez gave El Pais an interview in which he analysed football in recent years. "Talent will always beat physique. The day that doesn't happen the game will be very boring," he said.
He explained how rondos help Barcelona's creativity ("People think the rondo is just for fun, no! ... It obliges you to look what's around you, where the free men are. At Barcelona we understand football like space-time." He highlighted Busquets, Messi and Iniesta as masters of space and time.
Xavi said that in football today there are "more Simeones than Guardiolas" and "now the only team in the world that is trying to dominate the game from the first to last minute is Man City".
On Mbappe he said: "Neymar will be the reference point for the next three or four years and after that it will be Mbappe. If Mbappe was taken by a Guardiola he would go from an 8.5 to a 9.5."
And on Messi: "He sees he's got a marker and he knows how scared they are of him so another one will come and when he has a 3 on 1, he passes it. I saw that in LeBron James."