García Pimienta against Barça, a duel of style | Soccer | Sports

“Thanks to Laporta I am here in Las Palmas,” said Javier García Pimienta in the press conference prior to receiving FC Barcelona this Thursday (9:30 p.m., Movistar La Liga). The Las Palmas coach spent 29 of his 49 years of life at Barcelona, ​​he has lived more time in the arms of La Masia than away from them. For the first time, Pimi will have to face the father who never loved him, who saw him born within the walls of the quarry, grow up as a youth football coach for 19 years, and who in 2021 fired him in a bad manner. The Catalan had to take his suitcases, his playing philosophy in pure Barça DNA style, and go somewhere else with the music. “His dismissal has upset him and his departure was a shame, because you see Pimi and the Barça style is non-negotiable. You go to Las Palmas and you see Barça B,” say sources close to the coach.

The Catalan has been lucky away from Barcelona. In January 2022 he took on the challenge of promoting to the Gran Canaria team and he achieved it. Now he is achieving the unthinkable: consolidating Las Palmas in the First Division – with 25 points they remain far from relegation. “I am living a beautiful story, enjoying football and making our game enjoyable,” says Pimienta. A style that radiates everything that came from La Masia. “We are going to try to take the ball away from them. If they don’t have it, they suffer, and if we don’t have it, we suffer too. We have to play a perfect game,” said the Catalan. Those who know him affirm that Pimi “is not going to change anything to play against Barça. He is going to go out for the game and if he dies, he will do it playing football.”

More information

“I’ve been there for many years and I don’t know how I’m going to feel, but we have to be brave and be protagonists,” said the Las Palmas coach, asked about his first match against FC Barcelona, ​​after an abrupt and unexpected departure ago. two years. “He was already renewed in words, but there is a fateful day in which he says goodbye en masse – in different locations in the Barça universe – to the entire nucleus that was left standing of Tito Vilanova,” say sources close to the coach. The club justified itself by arguing that it was for sporting, economic and change reasons. One of them was a supposed salary of one million euros, unaffordable for the club. According to García Pimienta’s entourage, this is “false information,” since his salary never reached half a million. The circle of the former Blaugrana coach, which focuses on a golf tournament in Mallorca attended by the club’s president, Joan Laporta. There the change of course took place, which led to the collective dismissal. “Laporta and his board were with the entire Guardiolista core and returned with changed ideas,” the same sources say. “Pimi paid for Titovilanovism. In Can Barça you were either from one family or you were from the other. It is a seal that one carries on one’s forehead forever,” say sources close to the coach after Pep and Tito’s entourage distanced themselves after the illness of the latter, who died in 2014, suffering from cancer. Sources present in Barcelona’s organizational chart, in 2021, confirm to El País that the reasons and terms of García Pimienta’s departure were those reported by those around him.

“Las Palmas, with the permission of Girona, is the revelation team of the season,” Xavi said at a press conference. Regarding García Pimienta, the one from Terrassa has been full of praise: “he is a great coach, very similar to what we are looking for. With a very offensive game and we know each other very well, personally and football-wise because we were teammates in Barça B.” “A humble guy, very simple, brave, who bets on young people, with nothing to lose and with Barça DNA running through his veins,” they describe from the circle of the coach of the Canary Islands team. “It will be a very difficult start and a fight for possession of the ball,” concluded Xavi, in reference to a very similar style of play between the two rivals.

While on the islands they are smiling thanks to the coach’s good work in the fiefdom of Las Palmas, in Barcelona Xavi Hernández’s men cannot allow themselves to fail. “Now there are more than enough words and we have to demonstrate our level on the field,” he says. Xavi.

You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on Facebook and Xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

_

2024-01-04 04:15:00
#García #Pimienta #Barça #duel #style #Soccer #Sports