{"id":842115,"date":"2026-08-03T15:51:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T15:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/842115\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T15:51:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T15:51:14","slug":"fc-barcelona-officially-announce-their-new-sports-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/842115\/","title":{"rendered":"FC Barcelona officially announce their new sports director"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Barcelona has hired Xevi Pujol as sports director for three seasons, succeeding Juan Carlos Navarro. The former Manresa and Baskonia executive is tasked with revitalizing the squad after the team failed to reach the EuroLeague playoffs and suffered a domestic finals loss to Valencia.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/teams\/60-barcelona.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FC Barcelona<\/a> have <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/FCBbasket\/status\/2084244632381133080\" rel=\"nofollow\">officially announced<\/a> the arrival of their new sports director, who was hired after <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/players\/2839-juan-carlos-navarro.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Juan Carlos Navarro<\/a> assumed the role of club ambassador.<\/p>\n<p>Xevi Pujol is taking over Barca&#8217;s sports section for the next three seasons.<\/p>\n<p>The Spanish executive worked as a sports director at <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/teams\/709-baskonia.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz<\/a> last year, but they have managed to negotiate his departure.<\/p>\n<p>The 36-year-old executive has built a strong reputation in Spanish basketball through his work at <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/teams\/372-baxi-manresa.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Baxi Manresa<\/a>, where he helped assemble competitive squads that reached the Basketball Champions League final and also competed in the Liga Endesa playoffs and Copa del Rey. He is known for identifying talent early, including players such as <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/players\/21280-sylvain-francisco.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sylvain Francisco<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/players\/35325-chima-moneke.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chima Moneke<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>His success in Manresa led to a move to Baskonia, where he continued his rise in the EuroLeague environment. In his first season, the club won the Copa del Rey under head coach <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/persons\/962-paolo-galbiati.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Paolo Galbiati<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>However, his situation in Vitoria has not been fully stable, with reports of internal disagreements inside the club&#8217;s basketball structure.<\/p>\n<p>Now Pujol is set to lead Barca after their disappointing EuroLeague campaign,\u00a0where Barcelona finished 9th, forcing them into the play-in stage.\u00a0They opened with a win over <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/teams\/74-crvena-zvezda.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Crvena Zvezda<\/a>, but were subsequently eliminated by <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/teams\/2222-as-monaco.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AS Monaco<\/a>, falling just short of a playoff berth.<\/p>\n<p>Domestic results were similarly underwhelming, as a fifth-place regular-season finish in Liga ACB was followed by a loss to <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/teams\/677-valencia-basket.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Valencia Basket<\/a> in the finals.<\/p>\n<p>                                                    <a href=\"https:\/\/basketnews.com\/plus?utm_source=basketnews_com&amp;utm_medium=bn_plus&amp;utm_id=UA-259273-31&amp;utm_campaign=banners_free_content_for_not_members_bottom_2\" class=\"banners_paid_content_info_block_white banners-paid-content-info-block-white\" data-google-interstitial=\"false\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>                                                <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"bn-plus-img img-fluid\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/bn-plus.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                                            Subscribe to BN+ and get access to exclusive content.<\/p>\n<p>                                                            <\/a><\/p>\n<p>                                If you like our content, please <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=basketnews.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a> and add us as your preferred source. It helps us a lot, and we are committed to delivering you the very latest basketball news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barcelona has hired Xevi Pujol as sports director for three seasons, succeeding Juan Carlos Navarro. The former Manresa&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-842115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}