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Xavi Simons just said the quiet part out loud. In a recent appearance on The Sports Agents podcast, the former FC Barcelona youth prospect revealed that the club’s management explicitly told him they didn’t believe in him, effectively pushing out a player who would go on to become one of European football’s most exciting talents.
What Simons actually said
Simons spent nearly a decade training at La Masia, Barcelona’s legendary youth academy. He left for Paris Saint-Germain at age 16 in 2017, a departure that puzzled fans at the time.
“It was clear from their side that they didn’t believe in me… they told me, ‘We have other players we believe in and want to offer you a contract, but you’re not one of the players who are truly part of the project.'”
Simons noted he had avoided discussing his departure for years, preferring to let his performances on the pitch speak for themselves. Since leaving Barcelona, he has enjoyed stints at PSG, RB Leipzig (on loan), and PSV Eindhoven, with links to a potential return to Barcelona persisting, though no transfer has occurred as of now.
The fan token paradox
Barcelona has been one of the poster children for sports tokenization. The club’s BAR fan token, launched on the Chiliz blockchain through Socios.com, was pitched as a way to give supporters a voice in minor club decisions and deepen engagement with the institution.
Fan tokens remain largely speculative assets that track club sentiment and match results rather than providing meaningful governance rights. The decisions that actually matter, like which 16-year-old prodigy gets told he’s “not part of the project,” remain firmly in the hands of traditional management structures.
Sports assets and the valuation problem
Barcelona’s financial troubles over the past several years have been well-documented. The club has operated under significant financial constraints, relying on creative accounting mechanisms to register new players while managing enormous debt. Retaining a player like Simons, who was already in-house and on minimal wages, would have been one of the most capital-efficient decisions the club could have made.
What this means for sports crypto investors
The sports tokenization market has cooled considerably from its 2021-2022 peaks. The gap between what fan tokens promised, democratized access to club governance, and what they deliver, speculative exposure to match-day sentiment, remains enormous.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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