Just get to the sports city of Sant Joan Despí after the disastrous 3-0 draw in Lisbon, the Barça dome met in the offices. It was three in the morning. The immediate future of Ronald Koeman he was, again, on the table, with the time the president hurried Joan Laporta, also caught up in the calendar, as the team plays this Saturday in Madrid against Atlético de Madrid. Suárez i Griezmann, two stars donated by the club.
There are three candidates to succeed the Dutch. Xavi Hernandez, current coach of Al-Sadd and the leader of the sports project of Víctor Font; Robert Martínez, a Belgian coach who could leave his post, after paying 1.8 million euros, but after the League of Nations, and Andrea Pirlo, the former coach of Juventus, as revealed by Catalunya Ràdio.
Every name is a world. Xavi would mean the return to the origin with which Laporta would try to clone the success he had when he opted for Guardiola in 2008, when he had just won the Third Division with Barça B. Robert Martínez is the most experienced of the three options, although without so much ideological connection with cruyffism, the philosophy that serves as a sporting reference and even vital to the president.
Un Rijkaard 2.0
Pirlo, who has only one experience in the elite and ended badly, in the Juventus (he had chained nine ‘scudettos’ until he arrived and suffered on the final day to get into the top four and reach the Champions League), would be the desperate search by Laporta to discover a Rijkaard 2.0. Then the Dutch coach landed in the Camp Nou after descending to Second with the Sparta of Rotterdam. Now, the Italian coach is unemployed after his first and failed experience in Turin, so it would be the easiest and cheapest way to choose Koeman’s successor.
In this talk, which lasted nearly an hour, between Laporta; Mateu Alemany, football director and head of this area; Rafael Yuste, sports vice president, i Enric Masip, the president’s advisor, all scenarios were addressed. From an immediate dismissal of Koeman, which would force him to choose an interim coach to sit on the bench of the Metropolitan, or wait for the outcome of this clash against the champion to take advantage of the league break to make the decision to fire Koeman and give the new coach, albeit without the international players who will be with their national teams, a few days to get their project up and running.
All eyes on Laporta
Laporta, who already unsuccessfully wanted to fire Koeman in the summer, is now being watched from all sides. From the environment, which demands a drastic decision helplessly witnessing the tremendous involution of the team (two Champions League games, two defeats, 0-6 in total and a single shot on goal in 180 minutes), and from the interior of the club, where several currents coexist on the future of the Dutchman.
Some people advocate for him to be fired today; others, ask for time when time runs out. But in the end, the decision will be solely Laporta’s, now devoid of the solid sports structure he had in his first term. Then, he was accompanied by the wise voice of Johan Cruyff connected with the daily work of Little Begiristain.
Both kept Rijkaard in his dramatic start and then opted for Guardiola when a powerful sector then of that board, in the spring of 2008, and Laporta preferred the Mourinho brand. Now, however, Laporta has a diffuse structure with Alemany at the helm, seconded by Ramon Planes as technical secretary, while Jordi Cruyff serves as director of international football ‘scouting’.
That’s why it all depends more than ever on Laporta, a president who has never believed in Koeman. Not when he won the only title in the last two years (the Copa del Rey) and much less now when Barça bleeds and jeopardizes its future in Europe.
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