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Ernesto Valverde always assumed that he was part of an industry in which he saw himself as a strange element. It was just one more piece of the assembly line. Expendable and disposable. And so Barcelona was reminded after executing this Monday a deferred dismissal, away from the values ​​that are assumed to the entity, and settled with a statement. Quique Setién will replace him from now on . Because football never stops.

Josep Maria Bartomeu dismissed Valverde as 17 years ago Joan Gaspart did with Louis van Gaal . Evolution, in reality, was involution. Beyond the fact that the cessation of the Dutchman had been the last one on the Barça bench to date, he invited an extreme parallelism. Not as for the coach's job, because Van Gaal lost the position leaving his team three points down and 20 first place, and Valverde has had to pick up his gear with his League leader team. The last coach to exit through the service door occupying the first league place was Radomir Antic, with Real Madrid in 1992 and Ramón Mendoza as president . The similarity of situations, in fact, lies in the presidential work. In the inability of the gerifalte on duty to prevent a job removal, something relatively everyday in this show business industry, becomes a vaudeville. Although without any grace.

Quique Setién, a 61-year-old Cantabrian and convinced apostle of Cruyffismo despite the fact that he curses never having been trained by the Dutchman - "he would have let me cut my little finger", he usually says-, he will take the place of a Valverde who is always he recriminated his pragmatic proposal. The maneuver should sustain that environment that demanded a return to the aesthetic origins of the game.

It will be this Tuesday when Bartomeu shows his face in the media pulpit along with the technical secretary, Eric Abidal, and both can thus explain, not only the reasons for the dismissal, but also the run-over search for a relay. It should not be forgotten that Setién arrives after Barcelona meets the negatives of Xavi Hernández and Ronald Koeman ; that some executives claimed the position for the technician of the subsidiary, Francisco Javier García Pimienta ; and that the leaders were convinced that the option of Mauricio Pochettino , who maintains a good relationship with Bartomeu and is close to Ramon Planes, attached to the technical secretariat - would have raised the Barca fans.

Barcelona did not get rid of Valverde at the end of his first season as coach after being badly eliminated by Roma in the Champions League. Bartomeu barred to terminate the contract, but thrashing Sevilla in the Copa final calmed down. Nor did he do it at the conclusion of the second, when the team returned to glean in Europe, this time in Anfield, and this time he did not know how to get up in the Cup final against Valencia. The termination, however, has come at the most unexpected moment. After losing a semifinal in a debatable weight tournament, the Spanish Super Cup played in Saudi Arabia . After the team, beyond the running of Atletico in the twilight, completed one of his best performances of the course. And without Valverde being exempted from his four trophies, two conquered leagues, a Copa del Rey and the 2018 Super Cup.

Valverde, who had a contract until next June, but with a clause that allowed him to continue another year as long as the parties agreed, he had been attending to the movements of his foremen with special disbelief and displeasure . Nobody informed him that the trip to Qatar undertaken by Abidal and the club's CEO, Òscar Grau, had as its main objective to seduce Xavi Hernández to take his position as coach. Barcelona had tried to put a screen against reality by publishing a photo of its emissaries with Dembélé, who is recovering from his injury in Doha.

After two days of negotiations with Xavi Hernández, the former Barcelona midfielder rejected the proposal to immediately join the position. Xavi committed to the Qatari government through his work as an Al Sadd coach, but also with one of the main electoral opponents of the current board, businessman Victor Font , the position came from the most poisoned. With the season started and sailing the club under the fog that anticipates the abyss.

Ronald Koeman, as much as one of his great unfulfilled dreams is not having trained Barcelona yet, also rejected the proposal . It was not going to be he who planted the Dutch national team five months after the Euro Cup began. The casting of applicants showed that neither the technical secretariat (Abidal and Planes), nor Bartomeu, two-headed president while also holding the responsibilities of the sports vice presidency, had a clear course. From Pochettino, who should never have been in the position of turning his back on his farm in Murphy to sit on the Camp Nou bench, priorities passed to an extreme cruiserie like Quique Setién. And always with the open possibility of ascending from the subsidiary a man of the house like Francisco Javier García Pimienta.

The last day of Ernesto Valverde's work in Barcelona put the entire institution in front of the mirror. The leaders allowed the coach to conduct the training as usual. In conclusion, the one who arrived at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper was Bartomeu, who finally decided to meet him before the board approved the sentence. The coach took the car and the windshield offered a metaphorical image. Barça's shield, upside down. Valverde smiled .

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