BARCELONA, Jan. 14 (SportsFinding) –
Ernesto Valverde was dismissed on Monday by the Board of Directors of FC Barcelona based on the bad feelings of the team, and the bad omens in order to get a title this season, in a maneuver that many people have not liked and which ends the stage of a 'Txingurri' that goes with good results although with a ballast in Europe.
Valverde has won more than twice as many games as the sum of those he has drawn or lost. In addition, his balance of goals in favor of conceded goals is more than positive, and he has led LaLiga Santander in 80 of the 95 days in which he has been in office.
A large percentage of success in LaLiga Santander that resulted in the achievement of two titles in the first two seasons and, in the current one, leaves the leading team although with the same 40 points as Real Madrid, with 19 contested days.
Numbers that make you think of a cessation, except if you add a Copa del Rey and a Spanish Super Cup to the winners of the coach in his Blaugrana stage. However, it has had a lot of weight in the decision of the president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, the two tough defeats in the Champions League.
Not being able to win the last Copa del Rey or the recent stumble in the new Super Cup in Saudi Arabia, falling in the semifinals against Atlético de Madrid in a duel they won in the absence of ten minutes to go, have influenced the cessation like the loss of Barça DNA and an offensive and colorful game that was increasingly difficult to see on the grass.
These negative points have caused Bartomeu to say goodbye. And, on May 16, 2019, he said he would tell Valverde that he had “the support of the Board and the president.” “He is the coach we want. We recently renewed him,” the president told the media in the presentation of a book about the figure of Kubala, in Barcelona.
Days later, on May 23, 2019, before the Senate Blaugrana, he put “in value” to the 'Txingurri'. “It is someone who discreetly, with respect and from intelligence is managing our team and the progressive incorporation of new values. I mean Ernesto Valverde, in whom we fully trust,” he said.
But those statements, after the blow of Anfield in which the Blaugranas stayed out of the Champions League final by losing 4-0 and letting out the 3-0 advantage of the first leg at Camp Nou, were followed by the defeat in the final of the Cup against Valencia CF.
Even so, Bartomeu opted to give Valverde one more year of confidence and allowed him to continue taking the reins of a team that had not demonstrated, on that fateful night of Anfield, to have learned the lesson of a year earlier in Rome, when he also they let go 4-1 of the first leg, then in quarters.
The bet of the club was to give confidence to Valverde and he, with a squad to which Antoine Griezmann or Frenkie De Jong arrived to give a new air, did not start the course well by losing in his previous home, San Mamés, against Athletic Club. In the 19 days of this League, the team has lost three games, something not usual in recent courses.
In fact, in the first season only one League match was lost, and in the second campaign there were three defeats – one of them in the Camp Nou against Real Betis de Quique Setién – and, the last one, already with the title won. A setback that can also be placed in the 'cons' of Valverde.
In the 'pros', it has given solidity to Barça in LaLiga despite this irregular start. He leaves the leading team, and I live in the Champions League after overcoming, as a leader, a difficult group with Inter Milan, Borussia Dortmund and Slavia Prague. And, in the Copa del Rey, with everything to play and achieve.
So it does not seem to be a purely sporting or resulting issue that Valverde does not follow on the Blaugrana bench. The game, the sensations, that 'feeling' so on the order of the day, seem to have tipped the balance towards its goodbye. A goodbye, by the way, convulsed and far-fetched, names and meetings with their possible substitutes coming to the fore when Valverde was still leading training sessions and had a valid contract. A management that hardly enters the values of being 'more than a club'.