Xavi: FC Barcelona's fifth Liga champion as player and coach

Very few people have achieved as much in football as Xavi Hernández. As an FC Barcelona player, he won 25 major club trophies, and as a coach he already has two more. 

Two of the managers he won the league under, Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique, had done the same in their own playing days at the club. Before them, only Josep Samitier and Johan Cruyff could also claim to have been league champions as both a Barça player and manager.

Xavi has indeed joined a very select group. 

First and last

Josep Samitier was a member of the Barça side that won the very first Spanish league championship in 1928/29, a success he would later repeat from the manager's dugout in 1944/45.

From the first ever league, to the most recent, 78 years later, we find Xavi coaching the team to the domestic title, having already lifted the trophy as player on eight occasions between 1999 and 2015. 

In between, we had Johan Cruyff, a league champion as a player in 1973/74 and the mastermind of the Dream Team that won four leagues in a row between 1991 and 1994.

One of the Dutchman's most prized players in that era was Pep Guardiola, who won six leagues as a player and went on to be a fabulous manager too. The current Man City boss won three consecutive Liga titles as Barça coach from 2009 to 20111.

A former playing colleague of Guardiola's, Luis Enrique, a league champion with Barça in 1997/98 and 1998/99, would also later become first team manager. And the Asturian also delivered managerial success, guiding Barça to a second treble in 2014/15.