Madrid (AFP)
After the defeat, the revolution? Humiliated by Bayern Munich 8-2 in the Champions League quarter-finals, FC Barcelona launched the reconstruction site on Monday, with an extraordinary meeting of the club's management committee.
Management, coach, sports director, players: the future of all will be debated on Monday from 11:00 am during an extraordinary meeting of Barça's management committee, which needs "changes" to rebuild after the Lisbon debacle.
"There, yes, we hit rock bottom. Coaches and players come and go, but it's been several years since we've been able to be competitive on a European level. The club needs changes. And I does not speak at the level of the coach or the players, but structurally, the club needs changes of all kinds ", launched the Catalan defender Gerard Piqué Friday evening after the match, at the microphone of Movistar.
"Decisions will be announced and explained in the coming days, some of which had already been recorded before, even before the resumption of the Champions League," Barcelona President Josep Maria Bartomeu reacted immediately, also in the hot seat after a goalless season of title, a first for 13 years.
- Setién and Abidal threatened -
The first to pay the price for "the most important crisis in the modern history of Barça", as the Spanish trade press has described it since Friday, should be coach Quique Setién.
Appointed in January in place of Ernesto Valverde to restore color to the Blaugrana game, Setién did not succeed in his mission, and got lost in a suit too big for him. Even though the roots of Barca's ills predate his arrival, he remained unanswered, haggard, and failed to convince.
To replace him, the former Argentine coach of Tottenham Mauricio Pochettino and the current coach of the Dutch national team (and ex-Barça player) Ronald Koeman, seen Sunday at Barcelona airport, hold the rope ... even if the names of Xavi, Thierry Henry, Laurent Blanc or Maurizio Sarri have also circulated.
According to the press, the second to leave the ship should be Eric Abidal. The French sporting director, in isolation after being in contact with Samuel Umtiti (tested positive for the new coronavirus), has failed to give substance to the Catalan sporting project.
His management of the dismissal of Valverde in January is in particular in question: Abidal had gone to offer the place of Valverde, still in post at the time, to the legend blaugrana Xavi, current coach of Al-Sadd in Qatar until the summer 2021. A month later, Lionel Messi had urged him to "own his decisions" and "name names", after Abidal blamed the players for the dismissal of Valverde in an interview.
- Messi, a future in question -
At 33, the future of the Argentinian superstar and six-time Ballon d'Or is also unclear. The "Pulga" (chip, in Spanish), exasperated by the level and the project of the team, has still not reacted publicly after the rout in Lisbon.
Messi is slow to renew his contract (which runs until 2021), but would like to avoid ending up plumbing the club that gave him everything. The European press is already hastening to announce it in England or Italy, but a source at Barça confirmed to AFP on Monday that he did not communicate his wishes to leave the club. Its future will be anyway discussed this Monday by Bartomeu and others.
The president of Barça, under fire of criticism since the beginning of the year, could also bring forward the date of the elections for the presidency of the club (scheduled for the summer of 2021) next March, during which he cannot stand. represent.
Even before, even if for that he would have to submit his resignation, which is rather improbable according to the Catalan sports press.
Challenged by successive sports failures, by the "Barçagate" scandal in February (a slanderous affair on social networks) and by the resignation of six members of the board of directors in April, Bartomeu should however end his six-year term, before leaving the hand to a successor supposed to embody the renaissance project of FC Barcelona.
© 2020 AFP