"The day I leave I will do it calmly." And Quique Setién, without any shine in his eyes, relaxed the gesture. Six months as a Barcelona coach have been enough to see the end of the road.

The jokes and laughter were protagonists in those first pre-pandemic trainings. The footballers, between the bewilderment for some exercises that had little to do with high-level sports practice - the game of the blind chicken from the beginning of February was very surprising - and the curiosity to discover how their new coach tried to motivate them, changed fast your mind. From enthusiasm they became suspicious, with the assistant Eder Sarabia in the eye of the hurricane for his visceral and hearty ways. And from suspicion, to displeasure. Even the lack of respect towards the foremen in the last stage . Until the house was smashed in Balaídos, there where Barcelona left half the League, and alsothe already little hopes of a at least professional coexistence between a gentrified and uncontrollable staff by an immobilized president, and an overflowing technical body . "There have been specific situations that are difficult to resolve," confessed the coach.

Josep Maria Bartomeu, president of Barcelona, ​​has met Setién twice in the last 18 days. In the first meeting, surrounded by the capitostes of the sports management -as much as it is the president himself who makes the decisions- , he made it known to the coach that he should not fear for his position. Last Friday, a day after confirming the loss of the league title and the subsequent club blow by Leo Messi to his coach - "everything has gone wrong since January" - Bartomeu tried to calm the coach. But he also wanted to make sure, once the locker room opinion was pressed, that Setién could resist until the end of the Champions League.

Messi's sentence

"But when Messi puts the cross on you, all you have to do is carry it on your back," says a club source, however. From the executive offices of the Camp Nou they do not see anything clear that Setién should be the one to lead Barcelona against Naples on August 8. The reason, the total disconnection of the coach with a template that does not trust his command .

Next week, once the League is over in Vitoria, Bartomeu will have to re-evaluate with his directive which way to go. With several setbacks to consider. The economic one is one of them. But above all it conditions the difficulty of finding a coach who can take over from Setien immediately. That is, the same problem in January, when Xavi Hernández, Ronald Koeman and Mauricio Pochettino rejected a job for which Massimiliano Allegri was also valued .

The technician of the subsidiary Francisco Javier García Pimienta, despite the reputation gained in the club for his work in the lower categories, does not have the approval of the technical secretariat that Eric Abidal commands . His arrival, yes, would be welcome in the dressing room. Messi knows him from Cadet A. While the desired Xavi, although he included an exit clause in his last renovation with Al-Sadd of Qatar, he would prefer to disembark on the Camp Nou bench in June 2021, after passing through the polls. .

Setién, while trying to turn his back on the scaffold, tries to decipher what happened these six months. And to understand what happened: "I will not say that I am the same."

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Know more

  • Quique Setién
  • Leo Messi
  • First division

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