Madrid (AFP)
Who will Setién coach FC Barcelona in the Champions League in early August? Comforted by the management of the club on Monday, the technician did not convince, and was still in an ejection seat before the last game of the season on the Alavés pitch, Sunday (3:00 p.m. GMT).
Too much disillusionment? While Barça already had no destiny in hand to continue to believe in its Liga title chances on Thursday, the Catalans dug their own hole conceding their first defeat since the resumption of 2-1 competition against Osasuna, for their last championship match at Camp Nou.
All eyes then turned to Quique Setién: the volunteer technician for the kamikaze mission to straighten out the Barça season in place of Ernesto Valverde in January missed his bet, and his place on the blaugrana bench has gone to again found threatened.
- Setién "hopes" to continue -
"Quique Setién will lead the team for what remains of the Liga and the Champions League. Our desire is to go to the end of his contract, and that he remains next season," assured the president of the Barça, Josep Maria Bartomeu, Monday in an interview with the regional channel TV3.
But the man recruited to return his DNA to Barça failed in his mission.
After an impressive first game on January 19 against Granada, where the Blaugranas had made 1,005 assists (including 921 successful, or 92%) to get closer to the best quotas of the great era Pep Guardiola (2008-2012), Barça continued to bogged down in its nightmare season, punctuated by disappointing results (including the 2-0 defeat in the classic return from Liga to the Bernabeu, March 1) and scandals in series.
And after the setback against Osasuna on Thursday, the assurance conveyed by President Bartomeu fell apart: "I hope to be Barça's coach in the Champions League", timidly dared to pronounce Setién when leaving the field, Thursday evening .
A reversal accentuated by the loss of the national crown to the benefit of the sworn enemy, Real Madrid, and by the black anger of captain Lionel Messi, who punched the table live on TV Movistar + Thursday evening: " It is necessary to make a self-criticism, starting with the players, but a global self-criticism, "thundered the Argentinian.
- "Total divorce" -
"We didn't want to end this way, but it sums up our whole year a bit: we were a very irregular team, very weak, beaten to the intensity or the desire, which cashed easily," stormed the six-fold Ballon d'Or, calling with a start: "We will have to change in depth if we want to fight for the + Champions +, because otherwise, the match against Naples (in the knockout round of C1 return, August 8 ), we will also lose it ", summed up the" Pulga "(bullet, in Spanish).
"Setién's project is dying: the reasons for a total divorce," headlined Marca, the best-selling newspaper in Spain, in its online edition on Friday, adding that "the future of the technician is in abeyance".
A forecast shared by the Catalan newspaper Sport, which headlines "Setién staggers" this Saturday, while Mundo Deportivo specifies that Setién and Bartomeu met on Friday to discuss his future on the blaugrana bench.
Sunday against Alavés, it will be the Catalans' last chance to start before their eighth of C1 against Naples, August 8 at Camp Nou (7:00 p.m. GMT), where Barça will seek to win after the 1-1 go to access the big poster that will wait for him in quarters, against Chelsea or Bayern Munich.
© 2020 AFP