10 footballers who will never leave their club

#3 Xavi Hernandez & Andres Iniesta

Following the retirement of long-time club captain Carlos Puyol, Barcelona have announced that the Messi-Xavi-Iniesta-Busquets quartet will rotate the captain’s armband among themselves. This decision, though a unique one, is eminently understandable because these are the players who have defined Barcelona over the last decade or so, a period for which they have reigned over all of Europe.

With Xavi the facilitator, Busquets the destroyer and Iniesta the creator; the Barcelona midfield has lorded over all other midfields for the longest time, and once they leave, Barcelona will need to find a new recipe for world-domination.

Busquests is the youngest in this midfield of three, and made his senior debut in 2008. Iniesta was enrolled in La Masia as a homesick 12-year-old in 1996, and Pep Guardiola is known to have famously told Xavi after watching the promising lad, “You're going to retire me. This lad [Iniesta] is going to retire us all.” Xavi is the most senior of these three, the Catalonia native was brought into the La Masia fold in 1991 at the age of 11.

Xavi was pushed into the senior Barcelona team in 1998, but was only to find his feet after Iniesta’s debut at the same age four years later in 2002. Their ruthless combination once frustrated Sir Alex Ferguson so much that he had said, “I don't think Xavi and Iniesta have ever given the ball away in their lives. They get you on that carousel and they can leave you dizzy.”

The two have been at several times linked with moves to big clubs like Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, but they have been equally vociferous in quashing all such possibilities as rumours.

Xavi

Years At Club: 23Appearances (Senior Team): 725Goals: 83

Iniesta

Years At Club: 18Appearances (Senior Team): 509Goals: 50