Xavi Hernández looked back over his 17-year career in an interview with El Periódico.

His footballing role models: "As a youngster, the player I looked up to was Bernd Schuster. When I got put in central midfield, I used to watch him play and I'd be transfixed. Later I began to model myself on Pep: the way he'd play one-touch passes, how he'd accelerate, the way he'd slow things down, how he shaped himself to receive the ball, looking around in every direction first".

Grounds: "The Camp Nou is the best stadium in the world. It seems bigger than it really is. The Bernabéu is also a great place to play, after the Camp Nou. And 'La Catedral', San Mamés, both the old one and the new one".

The match he remembers most fondly: "The pinnacle, the crowning game, was the 5-0 against Real Madrid. Nothing compares, although the 6-2 away was also amazing. What football, what dominance. We had the ball all the time: when we lost it, we won it back instantly. It was football at its most sublime. The Real Madrid players' heads had dropped as they came off 2-0 down at the break. We ran into the dressing room: we couldn't wait for the second half to begin... we could have scored even more. We were gunning for them because of everything they'd been saying about us".

His soft spot for Athletic de Bilbao: "I love Bilbao. I was there at Christmas, for the Basque Country vs Catalonia match, and though I was wearing a cap, people stopped me on the street. They treated with me such affection and admiration... It's a shame I didn't get to play for Athletic for a couple of years".

His struggle to win over the critics early in his career: "I didn't get recognition until 2008, when I'd been in the team for ten years. If I leaf through papers from years gone by, it makes me laugh: they said I was obsolete, that Edgar Davids made me look good, that I only moved the ball from side to side, they called me 'the windscreen wiper'..."