Laporta wins time with Koeman in a surreal setting

In

spectacle and contradiction converge. As if football were the same as that of those times when the president made and unmade, without apparent explanation, with more than fifty journalists crowded in front of a fence or in front of the door of a Rococo restaurant.

, the Wembley hero, arrived at the Camp Nou offices shortly before eight o'clock in the afternoon, briefcase in hand, along with his historic representative,

. There, in addition to Laporta, the sports vice president,

, and the football director,

,

were waiting for him.

. They were together for just under half an hour. It did not take more. Nothing was decided. Nothing materialized. They simply made an appointment for a new meeting with a date to be determined.

It will be Laporta who ends up making the final decision on the person in charge of the bench with several conditions. The sports area has already made it known to the president that, after analyzing the season, Koeman has earned the fulfillment of the remaining year of his contract. The Barcelona president, however, has never been convinced of the Dutch coach's continuity. But it is faced with two major problems. The dismissal of Koeman would cost him about 7.5 million euros, a figure that would suffocate even more a club pending to survive thanks to the credits of Goldman Sachs. Furthermore, after weeks of probing the possibilities offered by the coaching market, there has been no way to find a suitable candidate for the bench.

, one of Laporta's favorites, signed his contract as a German coach on Tuesday. While the possibility of

as Barça's first coach continues without being contemplated by the president. He considers that he lacks baggage and it is not clear that he is the right profile to purge several of the veterans from the locker room.

Koeman has always stated that his intention is to fulfill his contract, despite the fact that in his last public appearances he attacked the directive without complexes for not having ratified it. Laporta did not do it when the coach won the Copa del Rey, and not in the weeks in which Barcelona ended up falling apart in the League. Barcelona has always defended that its function is not to publicly ensure the permanence of a coach with a current contract.

The incoherence is such that on the same morning this Tuesday, Barcelona advanced in the signing of Liverpool midfielder

, precisely one of the requests that Koeman had been making since last summer. The Dutch international, who will turn 31 next November, would arrive with the letter of freedom. In addition, the other Dutchman Koeman has claimed since the same day that former president Bartomeu offered him the position, forward

is also very close to dressing as a Barça player this summer once he fulfills his contract with Olympique Lyonnais. Once the Champions League final that will face Chelsea against Manchester City concludes, the signings of two other free players will be announced, the forward

and center-back

.

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