Updated:01/10/2021 01:27h
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The only question after the debacle in Lisbon was whether it was worth burning the new coach at Wanda or whether his name was expected to be announced after Saturday’s game. Laporta has been inclined towards the latter, so that it can be taken for granted that Koeman will travel to Madrid. In the same way, the president is convinced that he wants to reach the assembly of delegates on October 17, and the subsequent match against Valencia, with someone other than Ronald Koeman on the bench. This ‘someone’ has not yet been decided, but the president will do everything in his power so that he is not Xavi and is Andrea Pirlo. The period of calm offered by the national team’s break will be used by Laporta to make a decision that will be key to deciding the luck of his second stage as president.
Aware of this, he does not want to rush, but the relationship with the technician begins to deteriorate. In Lisbon, the president was disappointed that Koeman did not deliver any message of support to the players, and he himself went down to the locker room to confront them. The board understands that the coach has exhausted his credit also in the dressing room and that there is therefore no argument to artificially prolong his continuity.
The president spoke informally yesterday with some journalists in the framework of the Aldo Rovira award for the best footballer of the 2020-2021 season. Aldo is the deceased son, in a traffic accident in 2009, of former director Josep Lluís Rovira. It was not exactly an ‘off the record’, but it was a conversation lasting a few minutes and he conveyed the idea he wants to a Cruyffista coach in his approach, but ‘Germanic’ in discipline, physical form and perseverance. They asked him for some proper names, such as Thomas Tuchel, current Chelsea manager, or Bayern manager, Julian Nagelsmann, who currently have a contract with their respective teams and therefore could not join Barcelona as quickly as the club needs. On Nagelsmann it must be said that, if he were available, he would probably be the president’s preferred coach, and he would hire him without thinking. So it refers to Bob Martinez, the candidate of Jordi Cruyff, the club’s technical direction has not issued favorable reports.
The Argentine Gallardo
Another name that was put in undulation yesterday was that of ‘Doll’ Gallardo, whose talent Laporta appreciates, but it weighs against him that he has no experience in European football, and the fact that it is not serious to claim a Germanic profile to end up signing an Argentine. Andrea Pirlo continues to be the favorite. Laporta he is ‘in love’ but not ‘convinced’, and wants to have more options before having the final conversation with him.
Laporta he knows that his time has come to act, and that precisely for this reason he was elected president. But he understands that it is detrimental for the new coach to condemn him to an almost certain defeat against Atlético, and he needs a few more days – and more talks with Pirlo on the type of football you would like to implement- to finish deciding. “We don’t have a coach,” ‘Jan’ confessed yesterday to his relatives, but that does not mean that steps are not being taken to find him. Despite the laziness that the president gives to Koeman, has practically vanished the hope that a miracle will happen in the Wanda that allows him to extend his confidence for a few weeks.
There has never been in the history of Barça a sequence of such bad results without the outrage of the stands looking towards the box. Nor had any president had such wide margins of understanding and patience, in the unanimity of the Catalan sports press. Two circumstances explain the phenomenon: the first, more fundamentally, is that everyone has understood that Laporta will be the president who faces the privatization of the club, and nobody raises their voice because everyone wants the best piece when the cast arrives. The second explanation, by no means minor, is that Koeman, not being the coach Laporta would like, is the president’s last excuse for not being blamed for the team’s failures.
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