Luis Enrique vs Xavi: How many times have they met and who has won more?

They were team mates with Barcelona and Spain during their playing days but how do they stack up as rival coaches?

The Champions League has a habit of reuniting former team mates, friends, rivals, colleagues… or pitting them against each other. Luis Enrique’s links to Barça go right the way back to his playing days. He was one of the few players brave enough to “cross over to the dark side”, swapping Real Madrid for Barcelona in 1996. There was never much doubt where his allegiances lay after that.

He was an undisputed starter in the first team under a succession of coaches and one of the elder figures and dressing room leaders when one of the most promising young midfielders to emerge from La Masia was breaking into the senior side. Luis Enrique and Xavi appeared together on the same pitch in the 1-3 win at Mestalla in October 1998. Louis van Gaal handed Xavi, still a couple of months away from his 19th birthday, his debut and a place in the starting XI.

That was the first of 128 games they played together for Barcelona over six seasons plus a handful of games together with Spain - the last, a forgettable quarter final defeat to the hosts at the Korea/Japan World Cup.

During his managerial career, Luis Enrique has come up against several of his former team mates: Pep Guardiola, Abelardo, Frank de Boer and Sergi Barjuan. So has Xavi: Van Bommel and Rubén Baraja. But the two have never faced each other from the dugout - Wednesday’s quarter final first leg will be the first time that they have crossed paths as coaches.

Luis Enrique was appointed at PSG in July 2023 after several years at the helm with Spain’s national team. Xavi has been in charge at Barça since November 2021 and this is his first encounter with PSG as a