SPAINaction for four months – raising the
possibility that he might not play for the
club again – and five days later they had
lost their coach.
Within hours, Barcelona’s sporting
director Eric Abidal and the club’s CEO
Oscar Grau had travelled to Qatar, where
they offered his job to Xavi, who turned it
down. “It was too soon,” he would say a
few days later. But it was out in the open
now, and so Barcelona were backed into
a corner. It was going to be very hard to
keep Valverde now and for him to have
any kind of authority. And so there was
an accelerated search for a replacement.
Although that was played out in public,
Valverde still wasn’t told. They asked
Ronald Koeman. They spoke to Thierry
Henry. To Mauricio Pochettino. And then
they phoned Quique Setien.
“I was walking past the cows in my
town when they rang me yesterday,” he
said at his presentation. “And the next
morning I was at the training groundcoaching the best player in the world.”
That was pretty embarrassing for the
Barca president Josep Maria Bartomeu,
sitting next to him trying to claim that this
hadn’t been done in a hurry.
Valverde was sacked with Barcelona
top, only the second coach to suffer that
fate, after Radi Antic at Real Madrid. In
two years, he had won two league titles,
one Copa del Rey and reached the Final
of another.
But there had been doubts about the
way they played, a sense of lost identity
which Setien was signed to restore, and
they had regressed this season, winning
just four of 10 away games in La Liga.
Worse, those Champions League defeats
had weighed heavily, for how they
happened as much as the fact that they
happened. Twice they saw three-goal
leads slip away.
Now another lead slipped, and
although it was in the Super Cup, it was
the last straw. What many couldn’t work
out was the timing. Why now? Why not
before? In truth, few complained about
the decision. What they didn’t like was
the manner with which it was managed,
the fact that it forced them into seeking
a solution faster than was advisable.
“I would have liked to have done things
differently,” Bartomeu conceded.
On the Monday morning, knowing that
Barcelona were openly negotiating with
replacements, Valverde had taken the
training session, a public expression of
how badly this had been handled. It
would be his last, which was common
knowledge even if at the club they
pretended otherwise.
At the end of it, the president was
waiting, to deliver the news he already
knew. Ernesto Valverde, tired of it all, was
sacked. An agreement was reached: they
would pay off his contract and he could
go. He was free.
As he left, behind the wheel of his car,
photographers snapped away. Barcelona’s
ex-coach smiled and waved. He looked
happier than he had for months.and twenty million reasons in fact. And
now Barca were coming back, fallen at
the first. Valverde would fall not long
after. Going to Saudi Arabia cost the
title, their best player of late, and their
coach. But, hey, at least it had gained
them loads of cash.
Afterwards, the players defended
Valverde, suggesting it was not his fault.
Luis Suarez spoke of individual errors,
as did Antoine Griezmann, while Messi
insisted: “We have to be more united
than ever.” His words were a little less
committed than normal, perhaps, but
when he was asked if he was defending
the coach he insisted that he had just
said that and walked away.
Barcelona flew out the next morning.
They had lost the Spanish Super Cup,
they had lost their best striker, with Luis
Suarez going under the knife for an
operation on his meniscus and out of
“I was walking past the cows in my
town when they rang me yesterday.
And the next morning I was at the
training ground coaching the best
player in the world” Quique SetienClose...Arturo VidalUnited...Lionel Messi
reflects on defeat