Quique Setión’s move to Barça is still wreaking havoc on both the locker room and the offices. The coach who had to improve the performance of the squad after the dismissal of Ernesto Valverde, Xavi’s refusal to jump on the bench at the Camp Nou and the discarded option of Pochettino, continues with open fronts. And this was one of the first to pay the consequences of the Lisbon shipwreck (2-8 against Bayern), the definitive symbol of a drift that also caused Messi’s bureaufax and the block resignation of Josep’s board. Maria Bartomeu.
Setión was not only unable to turn Valverde’s bad dynamics upside down, to win a title, to bet on youngsters or to deal with certain footballers, but now, five months after his dismissal, he still has a case open. with the club for just over four million euros, which is what he has left to collect from a contract, valid until June 2021, which Bartomeu broke unilaterally.
One year from the start of Barça’s end
The fact that Barça’s management, which in January had approved the liquidation of Valverde in exchange for eleven million, tried to save a third of this figure when it comes to expelling Setión is clear. The plan to avoid spending was to look for arguments to justify a proper dismissal. Thus, the former Betis coach received a letter in which the club tried to explain why he had stopped counting on him. As reported by Cadena SER, the letter, dated September 15, based Setién’s alleged “inability” on unfulfilled promises, poor results in the three competitions, difficulty in applying his criteria and “lack of public leadership and notorious “in relation to his main assistant, Eder Sarabia.
A strategy of dubious moral height that from the club, where right now there is no money or people with powers to solve the issue, they see it as a way to delay payment to the maximum. “They are desperate. They want Setión to get tired, but he is in no hurry because they are not waiting for him anywhere,” they point out from the Camp Nou, where they are clear that the case will not go to trial because the next president will come to office to put out fires “. Therefore, in practice, the debt with Setión will be like the postponements that the manager agreed a few months ago with the players. The entity has until June 30 to pay it off.
From Valverde to Koeman, Barça have suffered severely from a pandemic and will end up spending close to 20 million in compensation, because the Dutch coach did not leave his national team for free. But the collateral damage of so much instability on the bench not only has an economic reading – it also affects in terms of dressing. The last example is played by Sarabia, who unlike Setión did reach an agreement to leave the club and start flying alone. Although he had offers from Segona teams, he accepted the offer to coach Andorra, from Segona B, a team owned by Gerard Piqué, with whom he met a few months ago at Barça.
Piqué, a free soul
That the Catalan center-back, now a long-term injured player, has relied on the Basque coach to try to take his project to professional football has surprised the Barcelona environment, but not so much among his teammates, who knew that Piqué maintained a good relation with Sarabia and acted, along with Sergio Busquets, of mediator when some heavy weights criticized the methods of Setión and its assistant of head. “He Back goes for free, it was already seen in the salary negotiation “, sources close to the locker room remind the ARA, in reference to the agreement that some soccer players closed in parallel to the collective bargaining to defer salaries. Others voices point out that the movement of the defense with Sarabia is “a low blow” for players like Messi or Jordi Alba, who after the famous cooling break in Vigo they threatened not to train if Sarabia did not apologize publicly for his attitude. “They reprimanded him for targeting top-tier players as if they were regional,” they retort.
Piqué, like Messi, did not agree with Valverde’s dismissal. “I didn’t find it consistent to do it in the middle of the season,” the center-back acknowledged The vanguard. However, he did not align with the Argentine or Suárez when judging Setión and Sarabia, which also affected other men with specific weight such as Ter Stegen and De Jong. “With Koeman, the respect for the coach has been restored, but for months now the dressing room has not been a pineapple”, they observe in Sant Joan Despí. Even Messi himself, who ends his contract in June, hinted at this in a recent interview: “There are new people and it’s hard to join as before.”
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