XAVI HERNANDEZ ASTAFU SOKA LA KIMATAIFA

hysically unimposing but allergic to giving the ball away, Xavi Hernandez will go down as Spain's greatest ever player, the man who best represented a generation that won three major international trophies back-to-back, and rivaled the Brazil 1970 side for the accolade of ‘best ever’.He was in Vienna in 2008 when Spain ended its 44-year wait for a trophy winning the Euros, he was in Johannesburg two years later as they became World Champions, and in Kiev in 2012 as they completed the hat-trick.

He was also in Nigeria in 1999 alongside Iker Casillas as the seeds of senior success were sown with an Under-20 World Cup triumph. Spain’s golden era started with his emergence and in Brazil it appeared to have ended with his demise.Left out of the third group game against Australia his last two matches were a 2-0 defeat to Chile and a 5-1 reverse against Louis van Gaal’s Netherlands. But those losses will be forgotten long before the victories in Austria, South Africa and Ukraine.Spain were terminal big-tournament failures in 2008 – a different hard luck story every two years – and Luis Aragones was an unpopular coach going into the tournament having ousted Real Madrid legend Raul and handed leadership responsibilities to Barcelona midfielder Xavi.The pay-back came throughout the tournament but none more so than in the final when his clever lofted pass over the German defence on the half hour put Fernando Torres through to beat Jens Lehmann for the only goal of the game.At 28-years of age that might have been the peak for Xavi but he was only just getting started. Two years later he swaggered through the World Cup picking holes in the rival defences that now tended to line up eight-men deep against the Spanish.

He got his hands on the World Cup after Andres Iniesta scored the winner against the Dutch and would stand alongside him a few month later on the Ballon d’Or podium. Many Spain fans still see it as an injustice that he finished third and not first in the voting.