“Ronald, we do not continue any more”, by Lluis Canut

With almost no time to settle into the aisle seats in the first row of the plane in which he was to fly back on Barça from Madrid a Barcelona, after having lost in his visit to Vallecas, Laporta told Koeman: “Ronald we do not continue any more ”. With this brief sentence, the president, with fluent language, had enough to dismiss a coach for the first time, because in his almost eleven years as Blaugrana’s top president, Jan He had not gone through the trance of dismissing a coach and more so when this is a legend for having been the author of the most important goal in the history of the club and whom he wanted to put on the bench of the Camp Nou, in 2003, newly elected president.

Not even in that first season, when the project faltered at the beginning Rijkaard, resigned to the bottom of the standings after having conceded a severe defeat in Málaga by 5-1. Even his sports vice president, Sandro Rosell proposed to relieve the black tulip by an interim coach, as Pere Gratacós, former player of the house and coach of the subsidiary, who had to act as a bridge waiting for the relief of Scolari, world champion with Brazil. But Laporta was not dazzled, because he had, no less than a certain Johan Cruyff as an advisor, who advised against the change.

For greater success, after incorporating a loan from the Juventus a Edgar Davids, the most profitable reinforcement in a winter market, with his arrival the team balanced and climbed up to second position, completing an undefeated second round, with a 1-2 victory in the Bernabeu, including, thanks to a second Vaseline goal from Xavi Hernandez. “Que n’aprenguin”, (“Let them learn”), he shouted defiantly Laporta, after closing with the you the loan for half a season of the Dutch midfielder.

Rijkaard spent five seasons in which he returned to the path of success with the conquest of two titles of League consecutive and the second Champions, the 2006 in Paris against the Arsenal. But the complacency that washed over a team accommodated by the magic of Ronaldinho and his subsequent nights of partying. That debauchery marked the end of Frank. Who ended up being relieved by Guardiola, which in the casting was imposed on Mourinho, and the Barça lived under the leadership of Messi the best years in its history.

But they already say that the second parts were never good and on his return to the presidential chair, Laporta, without the help of Cruyff, does not seem the same and the new advisers are far below Johan. This is the only way to explain the incomprehensible no-one to the figure of Koeman, especially after winning the Cup, in which his person was very weakened in the locker room due to the lack of support from the board, with the exception of the vice president Yuste. And there is no worse situation in a team that the players see the coach on the tightrope, because they loosen up and thus a League was lost, losing points in an incomprehensible way in the last days against teams like Granada, Levante and Celtic.

What followed was worthy of the script for a South American television soap opera in which Laporta, after dispensing in a matter of hours of Messi and return to Griezmann al Athletes, on the last market day, without counteracting it with quality reinforcements, he fell in love and fell out of love with Koeman as if it were a cloying song of Burnet. “Pay me and I’m leaving,” the disoriented ‘mister’ came to say to his president when they met before visiting the Wanda Metropolitano, “But if you keep me you have to defend me,” he added.

The truce came too late because the hunt could no longer be stopped and more so when the ‘brother-in-law’ had already resolved the differences for the desired return of Xavi, cheered by his media crowd. Bill Salvador Sostres, one of the relatives of Laporta, that he would have preferred to bet on the Italian glamor of Pirlo, but Jan He no longer decides everything and those of the pasta prefer to play more safely with the arrival of another symbol, which he had as a reward from the generous Bartomeu the collection of a year’s tip without gambling, while now he is being discussed Koeman the collection of the entirety of your contract.