01/13/2020 – 20:24 | 23:24 – 01/13/20
- He leaves with four titles (two leagues, between them) after two and a half campaigns
- The Cantabrian coach signs until 2022 with the elections on the horizon
- This Tuesday will be presented at the Camp Nou and will debut before Granada
The Ernesto Valverde era in Barcelona is already past. The club, after the debacle of the Super Cup and endless rumors, has announced the dismissal of Txingurri thus ending two and a half seasons leading the first team in which LaLiga has won twice, a Copa del Rey (lost another final) and another Spanish Super Cup, the competition that ended up being the last blow for Viandar de la Vera. His substitute, a Quique Setién who gets the great opportunity of his career after leading Las Palmas and Real Betis, among other groups, and who signs until 2022 with the elections to the Blaugrana presidency on the horizon.
Four titles but the feeling that he never knew how to take over the reins of one of the most complicated costumes in the world. In the shade, due to the so-called Champions League disasters in Rome and Liverpool, the Valverde stage as coach of Barcelona closes with another failure in the fight for a championship, although after signing the 80 best minutes of the season in addition to be a leader in LaLiga and stand in the round of the top continental competition.
Because against Atlético de Madrid, the culé team did not deserve to lose in the semifinals. But football is like that and a bad final straight match led to the rojiblancos going 2-1 (with two other goals voided in Barça) and that led to the last anger of the directive against his coach. That one that never gave the full confidence of Josep María Bartomeu and its surroundings and was only saved in June 2019 by the insistence of the strong block of the wardrobe, with Leo Messi in the lead.
After tense days in Can Barça, trips to Qatar and clandestine meetings but telegraphed loudly, Bartomeu has met with Valverde on the return to training to communicate his dismissal. That has been a reality after the meeting with the Board of Directors this Monday, where the arrival until 2022 of Quique Setién has been closed and once it has also been announced, one that will be presented this Tuesday with the president, in order to explain everything that happened.
In this way, Valverde leaves and the Cantabrian coach arrives ('us' from Xavi and Koeman through), to urgently take the culé box before his official debut in LaLiga (Sunday, at 9:00 p.m. against Granada). With the Camp Nou present, the culé fan will dictate his sentence: support for the team before the new stage or criticism for being participants of the goodbye of the Txingurri.
Txingurri fell 'the brown' without Neymar
An Extremaduran coach who arrived in the summer of 2017 to take over from the successful, but short, stage of Luis Enrique in the dressing room. Already without Neymar from the beginning, due to his escape to PSG, Valverde had to reinvent himself (after losing his first Super Cup against Madrid) with the signings in extremis of Dembélé and Coutinho.
Two players who never knew how to get the expected match and also largely blamed their method, as in the aforementioned debacles of the Olympic of Rome, Anfield, Cup against Valencia or the last of Jeddah, as well as the difficult coupling of Griezmann, irregularities with Arthur or the strange substitutions of Busquets.
Conqueror of the two leagues he has faced, the first Cup and the second Super Cup, his triumphs were hidden under the technical superiority of Messi and company on the grass. Not the defeats, which weighed too much on the fans and were exhausting the patience of the board. That in his last year and a half in the club, there are elections in 2021, he has chosen Quique Setién as a relay until 2022, which suggests that he will be chosen for the bench of the continuity candidacy.
Racing from Santander, Poli Ejido, Equatorial Guinea, Logroñés, Lugo, Las Palmas and Betis in his career as a coach, Setién comes up with a much bigger challenge. Get in front of a much superior club in everything that represents the previous ones and move forward with a season that has become entrenched by the lack of confidence in Valverde, which exploded after falling into the reformed Super Cup.