VALVERDE’S
BARCELONA
RECORD
Ernesto Valverde brought titles at a
time when few expected him to. Euan
McTear reflects on Valverde’s Camp
Nou tenure.Ernesto Valverde’s first matches at
Barcelona were disastrous. His team
took on Real Madrid in the 2017 Spanish
Super Cup and they were demolished
5-1 on aggregate. With Neymar having
abandoned the club to join Paris Saint-
Germain and with Real Madrid having
won the league title the year before,
people were expecting Los Blancos to
win the championships by double digits.
The title was one by a 14-point margin,
but by Barcelona. Plus, that was ahead
of Atletico Madrid, with Real Madrid 17
points behind the Blaugrana. So, what
happened? Well, Real Madrid’s domestic
collapse played a part, but Valverde
turned Barcelona into a machine when
so many doubted his ability to do
so. They lost just one league game
that season, towards the end of the
campaign when they were already
champions, and also won the Copa del
Rey by smashing Sevilla 5-0 in the final.
The following campaign, Barcelona
retained the league title and this time
finished 11 points ahead of Atletico and
19 ahead of Real Madrid. While they
didn’t win the Copa del Rey that year
and while they suffered Champions
League heartbreak in both of Valverde’s
full seasons, what the Coach did to
turn crisis into confetti should not be
dismissed.
Overall, Valverde’s record at Barcelona
was 97 wins, 32 draws and 16 losses, to
go with two league titles, one Copa del
Rey and one Spanish Super Cup. That’s
not bad at all.Once this story was leaked, though, the
writing was on the wall for Valverde. The
main problem was that Barcelona didn’t
have a replacement lined up. Ronald
Koeman and Mauricio Pochettino were also
linked with the post, but in the end it was
given to the much-less-high-profile Setien.
He certainly wasn’t first choice. He was
more likely fifth or sixth choice.
Setien is an interesting character. Born in
Santander in the north of Spain, he played
for his hometown club Racing Santander
to begin his career, also representing
Logrones, Atletico Madrid and Levante
before hanging up his boots. He moved into
coaching, but it took several years for him
to make a name for himself in this field. It
wasn’t until he took over at Las Palmas in
2015, already aged 57, that he coached his
first match in Spain’s top division, while he
didn’t really become a well-known name
until taking over at Real Betis and leading
the Andalusian club to the Europa League.
His results were good, but it was his style
that really made Setien stand out. His teams
were regularly second only to Barcelona
in LaLiga’s possession stats and he is a
self-confessed disciple of the work of Johan
Cruyff. “I would have given my little finger
to have played in Cruyff's Barcelona team,”
he once said. For the fans who’d grown
tired of the fairly successful but generally
lacklustre brand of football that the team
were playing under Valverde, this was like
a second Christmas to see the club go out
and hire such a messianic tactician.
Yet there was a reason Setien was available
and had been out of work since the summer
of 2019. “I was just going for a wander
in my village past the cows yesterday,”
was how he put it during his official
presentation. At the end of the 2019-20
season, on the same day that Real Betis
earned a 2-0 victory away at Real Madrid in
the season’s final match, Los Verdiblancos
decided to let Setien go. For all of Real
Betis’ possession, which was the second-
most in the league with an average of 59.4
percent, they didn’t score enough goals.
They had the ninth-fewest shots per game
and the eighth-fewest goals. It was pass,
pass, pass, pass, pass, pass...
At Barcelona, there’s an expectation that
the team will play well and also score lots
of goals. Yet Setien’s Barcelona reign didn’t
start off that way. In his very first game, a
far from daunting home fixture against mid-
table Granada, Barcelona broke passing
and possession records for the season,
with 1,005 passes attempted and 82.6%
possession, but they only scored once in a
1-0 victory. A few days later, in a Copa del
Rey game at third-tier Ibiza, it was more
of the same as the ball was rarely out of
Barcelona’s control but as they spent most
of the game losing 1-0 and failed to have
their first shot on target until the 67th
minute. Eventually, they won 2-1, but it
wasn’t looking good and a 2-0 defeat at
Valencia shortly afterwards confirmed that
this wasn’t going to be easy.
The problems at Barcelona run deeper than
the coaching. There are internal conflicts,
recruitment has been poor for several
years, the squad is ageing, finances are
tight and they’ve had to finish the season
with Ousmane Dembele and Luis Suarez on
the medical report. Perhaps Valverde did
a better job of keeping everything ticking
over than it seemed. Setien now has to try
to win trophies while dealing with off-the-
field political issues and a general air of
distress.
If he doesn’t win titles, then he could be out
and sent back to the cows and the village
he came from. His contract runs until 2022,
which is longer than many expected, but
there are presidential elections scheduled
for 2021 and current president Josep Maria
Bartomeu, who cannot run for another
term, confirmed at Setien’s presentation
that there is an option in the paperwork
for a new administration to make a change
next summer, when Setien would have one
year left on his deal. What this means is that
Setien will probably be given next season as
well, but that he’ll have to work to convince
a potential new boss to keep him.
That new boss could even be businessman
Victor Font, who is set to run in 2021 and
who is closely linked to Xavi. In some
people’s eyes, this is why Xavi turned the
current Barcelona board down now, as he is
believed to be waiting for Font to take over
and for a hire to be made next year.
It's a soap opera at Barcelona right
now, with old and new characters. As
entertaining as it is for the neutrals,
Barcelona fans just want to see some good
football.ABOVE:
Former Barcelona
midfielder Xavi
Hernandez was the
club’s first choice
successor, but he
declined the post
BOTTOM:
Quique Setien was
eventually appointed
but already questions
are being asked
about his suitability
for the job