Barcelona, the day before yesterday, confirmed the news circulated a few days ago about the abandonment of the services of his coach, Ernesto Valverde, but the controversy remained about the identity of the new coach, until the club revealed, through an official statement, the contracting with Atletico Madrid player and Real coach Former Betis, Kiki Setian, for the season and half of the season, and exactly until June 2022, blocking that way on giving opportunity to his former superstar Xavi, who was putting all the indicators on the path of technical management of «Blaugrana».
Valverde led his last training session on Monday, bid farewell to his players, and Spanish media quoted him as saying that he would discuss post-dismissal with his agent. On the other hand, Kiki Sittian is the last coach to beat Barcelona in his stronghold, in November 2018, in the league, 4-3 when he was coach for Betis, and he is the 61-year-old with an offensive tendency, and press reports indicated that the contract with him was carried out hastily after attempts to attract Xavi, as well as the Italian Alegre.
On the other hand, Valverde has become the first coach to be sacked by Barcelona in 17 years, exactly since he abandoned the services of the Dutch coach, Van Khal. Four main reasons stand for ending Valverde's dream of continuing with the Catalan, at least until his mission ends in the summer of next year.
1 - Guardiola's legacy
Barcelona lived a golden period with its star and former coach, the current coach of Manchester City, Pepe Guardiola, between 2008 and 2012, when he achieved 14 titles, including six historic in 2009. As a result of what was achieved during the era of Guardiola, the aspirations of the Barcelona fans were only accepted by preserving That legacy or approaching it, so every coach who came after him felt tremendous pressure, especially at the level of the Champions League, which remained a knot for coaches: the late Villanova, Tata, and Valverde, with the exception of the 2015 title won by Luis Enrique.
2- The presidential elections
Several media outlets in Spain, from the newspapers "Mundo Deportivo", "Marca" and "S", revealed that the upcoming elections for the club’s presidency in 2021 hastened the issue of dismissal, especially since Joseph Bartomeo, who won the presidency since 2015, does not want to sacrifice his future with the club By continuing to hold onto Valverde, amidst a huge public anger over the team's modest results in recent years, especially at the European level.
3- Liverpool, Rome and Jeddah
Three stations played an important role at the end of Valverde's career with Barcelona prematurely, as the team ran under the leadership of the former Bilbao coach, bitterly lost the opportunity to win the European Champions League twice and in a "comic" way, against Rome and Liverpool, and in both games he won 4-1 in the quarter-finals. And 3-0 in the semi-finals in a row, but lost 2-0 and 4-0, then the last chance came of the Super Cup in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. After advancing 2-1 and controlling length and width, he lost 3-2 from Atletico to leave empty-handed from The competition, which went in favor of the rivals Real Madrid.
4- Technical stubbornness
It is taken on Valverde that, as he described before pro-Spain newspapers, he is "technically stubborn", in that he does not change much of his conservative style, besides that he does not settle on some options despite its success, especially for players like Brazilian Arthur who started strongly and then disappeared, along with many other players. The club contracted them without any benefit from them, led by Dembele and Coutinho. The coach also failed to tackle the defective defect that was behind the loss in playoffs, especially in the European Champions, so that it was clearly repeated in the Atletico Super Cup match.
Kiki Setian is the last coach to beat Barcelona in his league stronghold, while he was technical director of Real Betis in November 2018.
The last coach to be sacked was Dutchman Louis Van Khal, in 2003.