In the eyes of 70% of GiveMeSport fans, Andres Iniesta is a better midfielder then Xavi, who ended the vote with a sorry 30%.

Two of the greatest midfielders football has ever seen were put head-to-head in a poll voted for by GiveMeSport fans and Iniesta won the vote by a landslide.

Both players starred in key roles during the 2010 World Cup, leading Spain to their first ever World Cup.

Teaming up for both club and country, the pair were seen as the backbone of the team.

Both playing in the Spanish first division (La Liga), the two starred for Barcelona and are seen as one of the best midfield duos ever.

The overall winner of the poll Iniesta played a crucial role in the heart of Barcelona’s midfield for 16 years, racking up 442 appearances and popping up with 35 goals.

Iniesta was first spotted by Barcelona at the age of 12, while playing for Albacete Balompie in a junior seven-a-side tournament in Albacete.

He attracted the attention of scouts from clubs around Spain, however, his parents knew Barcelona's youth team coach Enrique Orizaola and he persuaded them to consider sending Iniesta to the Barcelona youth academy.

What a decision that turned out to be as Iniesta captained his side for three seasons before handing over the armband to a certain Lionel Messi.

Iniesta has been named in the FIFA FIFPro World XI nine times and was chosen in the UEFA Team of the Year on six occasions. He was named in the All-time UEFA Euro XI and he won the UEFA Best Player in Europe Award in 2012.

He was named the IFFHS World's Best Playmaker in 2012 and 2013. Iniesta was runner-up to teammate Messi for the 2010 FIFA Ballon d'Or and finished third place in 2012.

Xavi, who ended the vote with 30%, also had a dazzling career for club and country.

Partnering up with Iniesta in midfield, Xavi had 17 long years at Barcelona with 505 appearances and 58 goals in that time.

Xavi appeared 63 more times for Barcelona than Iniesta, however, was at Barca for a season more.

Xavi was awarded the IFFHS World's Best Playmaker award four times: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. He was included in the UEFA Team of the Year five times (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012), and was included in the FIFA FIFPro World XI on six occasions (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013)

Xavi was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Sports in 2012.

Xavi joined the Barcelona youth academy at age 11 and was brought up through the ranks until he was one of the best midfielders the game has ever seen, similar to what happened with Iniesta.

I prefer xavi because he was the architect of dt barca n spain glorious team...just like Sergio busque currently controlling tinz in barca..
iniesta was more attack minded than xavi but xavi controlled the the tempo n balance of the glorious midfield..
remember pep saying, u dnt know d work of xavi but when u take him out, it would reveal itself..

Back in 1999, Guardiola was still playing in midfield for Barca and he had been joined in the dressing room at that time by a young Xavi. The latter was seen as his successor but, in the youth ranks at La Masia, another talent was emerging. And this one, Pep predicted, would outlast them both.

Watching a 15-year-old Iniesta in action in the Nike Cup, Guardiola turned to Xavi and said: "You will retire me, but this kid will retire us both."
And later, he presented a shy and starstruck Iniesta with the winner's trophy.

Pep Guardiola: My debt to Andrés Iniesta and how he opened my eyes on tactics.

In an extract from a new book, Guardiola reveals the backing he got from Iniesta during a tough start at Barcelona and describes him as a ‘master of space and time’.

Late summer 2008. Barcelona lose 1–0 in Soria against little Numancia on the opening day of the league season. A tough baptism for the debutant coach, Pep Guardiola, made all the harder when the result isn’t much better in their second game against Racing Santander, a 1–1 draw at the Camp Nou.
Two weeks into Guardiola’s career in charge of Barcelona’s first team and they still haven’t won.

In the media, it seems that only one voice defends the manager, but at least it is the voice: Johan Cruyff. That softens the blow, his authority alone enough to challenge the doomsayers, but still they prophesise doom. “This Barcelona looks very, very good,” Cruyff writes in his weekly column for El Periódico de Catalunya. “I don’t know what game the rest of you watched; the one I watched was unlike any I have seen at the Camp Nou in a long time.”

Cruyff, the great ideologue of the Catalan club, its philosopher king, had seen Guardiola coach the B team and was impressed; now he stands against the tide, alone in defending him. “The worst start to a season in many years. Just one goal scored, and that was a penalty.

That’s an inescapable truth, numerically speaking,” he admits. “But in footballing terms, this must be read a different way. And Guardiola is the first to read it differently. He’s no novice, lacking expertise, and he is not suicidal. He watches, he sees, he analyses and he takes decisions.”

Guardiola himself agonised over those decisions too. He was holed up in his Camp Nou office, down in the basement where there was no natural light, going over the situation again and again, rewinding and replaying the videos, re-reading his notes, wondering what to change but convinced of one thing: his idea, Cruyff’s idea, had to be maintained. He would persevere, however hard it became. And support was about to come from an unexpected source.

He was still going over it, endlessly, when he heard a knock at the door. “Come in.”

“Hello, míster.”

A small figure poked his head around the door, and spoke calmly. “Don’t worry, míster. We’ll win it all. We’re on the right path. Carry on like this, OK? We’re playing brilliantly, we’re enjoying training. Please, don’t change anything,” said Andrés Iniesta.

Guardiola couldn’t believe it.

The request was short, but heartfelt, deep. It caught Guardiola off guard, barely able even to respond. If it was a surprise that anyone should seek him out to say that, it was even more of a surprise that it was Iniesta, usually the silent man. It came as a shock, even more so when Iniesta closed by saying: “¡Vamos de puta madre!”

“De puta madre,” roughly translated as, “We’re in fucking great shape, we’re playing bloody brilliantly.”

“This year we’re going to steamroller them all,” he added.

And then he closed the door and left.

That’s Andrés. He doesn’t say much, only what he really has to. It’s like scoring goals: he doesn’t score often, either.
But when it’s needed, there he is.

Guardiola will never forget Cruyff defending him in print. And he will never forget Andrés appearing at his door. He’ll never forget that they were right, too. At the end of the 2008–09 season, Barcelona had won six titles. All six.

“People usually think that it is the coach who has to raise the spirits of his players; that it is the coach who has to convince his footballers; that it is his job to take the lead all the time,” says Guardiola. “But that’s not always the case. It wasn’t the case at the Camp Nou for me, and in my first year at Bayern Munich something similar happened as well.

It’s not often things like that happen and when they do, they rarely come to light. People always think the coach is the strongest person at a club, the boss, but in truth he’s the weakest link. We’re there, vulnerable, undermined by those who don’t play, by the media, by the fans. They all have the same objective: to undermine the manager.

“You start, you lose at Numancia, you draw with Racing, you just can’t get going, you feel watched and you feel alone and then suddenly, there’s Andrés telling me not to worry,” Guardiola continues. “It’s hard to imagine, because it’s not the kind of thing that happens and because it’s Iniesta we’re talking about, someone who doesn’t find it easy to express his feelings.

And after he’d gone, I asked myself: how can people say that coaches should be cold when they make decisions? Impersonal? That’s ridiculous! How can I be cold, distant, removed with Andrés? Sorry, no way. Eighty-six per cent of people didn’t believe in me [according to an online poll]. Lots of people wanted Mourinho. We hadn’t won, hadn’t got going. And then Andrés comes and says that! How am I supposed to be cold? It’s impossible. Sod that! This goes deeper. This isn’t cold, calculated, and nor should it be. There’s no doubt: Andrés will play with me, always. Because he’s the best. And because things like that don’t get forgotten. Why did he come to my office? I don’t know.”

Andrés and Cruyff were proven right; Guardiola’s decision to maintain that philosophy was vindicated. In week three Barcelona scored six against Sporting Gijón and never looked back; everything fell into place, it all worked so smoothly.

Within a few months, they had become a model to aspire to. Not just because of the results – no one had won a treble in Spain before, still less six trophies from six – but because of the way they played, the way they treated the ball, fans, even opponents. Theirs was a different approach, a way of seeing and expressing football that was embodied by players like Iniesta.

“We never seem to treat Andrés the way we should; we don’t seem to recognise him. He’s the absolute business as a player,” Guardiola says. “He never talks about himself, never demands anything, but people who think he’s satisfied just to play are wrong. If he thought he could win the Balon d’Or one year, he’d want to win it. Why? Because he’d say to himself: ‘I’m the best.’

“I think Paco defined him perfectly,” Guardiola says. Paco Seirulo was Barcelona’s former physical coach, the man from whom Lorenzo Buenaventura learnt; now Guardiola makes Seirulo’s description his own. “Andrés is one of the greats. Why? Because of his mastery of the relationship between space and time.

He knows where he is at every moment. Even in a midfield where he’s surrounded by countless players, he chooses the right path every time. He knows where and when, always. And then he has this very unique ability to pull away. He pulls out, then brakes, then pulls out again, then brakes again. There are very few players like him.

“There are footballers who are very good playing on the outside but don’t know what to do inside. Then there are players who are very good inside but don’t have the physique, the legs, to go outside. Andrés has the ability to do both. When you’re out on the touchline, like a winger, it is easier to play. You see everything: the mess, the crowd, the activity is all inside.

When you play inside, you don’t see anything in there because so much is happening in such a small space and all around you. You don’t know where the opposition is going to come at you from, or how many of them.

Great footballers are those who know how to play in both of those environments. Andrés doesn’t only have the ability to see everything, to know what to do, but also the talent to execute it; he’s able to break through those lines. He sees it and does it.

“I’ve been a coach for a few years now and I have come to the conclusion that a truly good player is always a good player,” Guardiola says. “It’s very hard to teach a bad player to be a good one. You can’t really teach someone to dribble.

The timing needed to go past someone, that instant in which you catch out your opponent, when you go past him and a new scenario opens up before you … Dribbling is, at heart, a trick, a con. It’s not speed. It’s not physique. It’s an art.”

Lorenzo Buenaventura says: “What happens is that Andrés brakes. That’s the key, the most important thing. People say: ‘Look how quick he is!’ No, no, that’s not the point. It’s not about speed, about how fast he goes; what it’s really about is how he stops and then, how he gets moving again.”

Guardiola adds: “Tito Vilanova defined him very well. Tito used to say: ‘Andrés doesn’t run, he glides. He’s like an ice hockey player, only without skates on. Sssswishhh, sssswishhh, sssswishhhh …’ That description is evocative, very graphic, and I think it’s an accurate one.

He goes towards one side as if he was skating, watching everything that’s going on around him. Then, suddenly, he turns the other way with that smoothness he has. Yes, that’s it, Andrés doesn’t run, he glides.”

Guardiola adds: “Sometimes in life, it’s first impressions that count and the first impression I have of Andrés was the day my brother Pere, who was working for Nike at the time, told me about Iniesta.
I was still playing for Barcelona myself and he said: ‘Pep, you’ve got to come and see this kid.’ It was before the final of the Nike Cup.

I remember getting changed quickly after training and rushing there, dashing to the stadium. And yes, I saw how good he was. I told myself: ‘This kid will play for Barcelona, for sure … he’s going to make it.’ I told myself that, and I told Pere that too.

“On my way out of the ground after that final when Andrés was the best player on the pitch, I came across Santiago Segurola, the football writer. I said to him: ‘I’ve just seen something incredible.’ I had this feeling that what I’d just witnessed was unique. That was my first impression of Andrés.