Barcelona to fire Valverde. Quique Setién to take over

RoyH1

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Haven't see a thread on this yet. Just heard on the radio that at 21:00 CET Barcelona will announce that Valverde is no longer the Barcelona coach.
 

horsechoker

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Bloody hell. fired from Watford now set to manage Barca. Talk about falling upwards

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Tom Cato

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Barcelona continuing their tradition of having new, hungry managers manage the club over the accomplished old guard who switch clubs every 2-5 years.
 

Rasendori

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Quique Setién.

The detractors of Luis Enrique have criticised his propensity to be reliant on his attacking trident, with not enough emphasis on midfield. Irrespective if the transfers were down to him, the acquisitions of Rakitic, Turan, and Gomes has seen him lambasted for favouring physical midfielders, which has led to Barcelona having a paucity of options of those that can function as a metronome. As a result, Barcelona have been inconspicuous at times this season. Conversely, Las Palmas play a brand of football that would have those associated with Barcelona, enamoured. In La Liga, Quique Setién's Las Palmas average the second highest possession. For a team that are in adversity, in comparison to the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona, they're far from docile, accumulating draws against Real Marid 2-2 and 3-3 respectively, with Las Palmas having more possession on both occasions, coming back from trailing 3-0 down at half time despite having 71% possession and then coming back to make the game 3-3. Not quite Barcelona overturning a 4-0 deficit to PSG, but nonetheless enough to make neutrals that watched the game to feel rampantly optimistic. Perhaps the following streameable encapsulates Las Palmas enthralling audiences.


Furthermore, a sizeable number of academy prospects still linger in the purgatory of success and failure having struggled to break through into the first team without condemning themselves entirely, with perhaps the most notable example being Grimaldo, who left in acrimonious circumstances, in the sense that his contract wasn't renewed allowing him to leave in January, no buy back clause, he didn't make a single appearance for the Barcelona first team, with Luis Enrique preferring experienced alternatives to Alba in Adriano and Jérémy Mathieu and of course the fact that this was in spite of the fact that he was highly rated. Quique Setién predominantly has three established (probably 27 +) academy players (Mesa, Viera and Gomez as the CDM, LCM, RCM just like Barcelona had players who came from the academy as the CDM, LCM, RCM in Busquets, Iniesta, and Xavi) who are integral to the side for ball retention purposes, and he's voiced his frustration at the preference of physical players at youth level, as exemplified by "now I see that players are starting to work on tactical aspects from an early age,” he says. “After half an hour there are guys who have not touched the ball. Every day they are allowed to dribble less, and the taller boys are privileged.” In this way, you can see how he shares some of the ideologies of Johan Cruyff.


As a manager Quique Setién hasn't won anything. However, having won trophies isn't paramount when it comes to being a candidate for being the manager of Barcelona. In 2008, Mourinho was a manager that had won the Champions League and Europa league at Porto, and on the league twice in the Premiership, but according to the 9 point checklist drawn by Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain he didn't meet as much of the criteria as Guardiola, who had only been managing the B team for a year. This is derived from only two of the 9 points being related to football, with the other 7 being about culture. Enrique guided Roma to their worst league finish in a decade, as they failed to qualify for any European campaign, although he did take Celta Vigo to a top 10 finish who just finished above relegation the previous season. Similarly, Setién took promoted side to 11th when the odds were that they would be one of the sides that were relegated back to the Segunda. Quique Setién is Spanish, has La Liga experience, and values the culture of Barcelona.
I thought he'd be the one to replace Enrique. Above is from 3 years ago
 

mu4c_20le

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Top of the league and back to back titles not good enough then
 

PepG

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Quiqe Setien is 61 years old ffs..He is basically the spanish version of Maurizio Sarri..
 

RoyH1

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It's a move most La Liga followers on the Caf have been calling for, for ages.
Joke of a club and joke of a fanbase if you ask me.

Valverde has them in first place in La Liga and alive in both the Cup and the Champions League. While the football is not as attractive as it used to be, the Barsa board and fans might do well to remember that Xavi and Iniesta are gone and Messi is 32. The sense of entitlement down there is ridiculous.
 

BluesJr

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Joke of a club and joke of a fanbase if you ask me.

Valverde has them in first place in La Liga and alive in both the Cup and the Champions League. While the football is not as attractive as it used to be, the Barsa board and fans might do well to remember that Xavi and Iniesta are gone and Messi is 32. The sense of entitlement down there is ridiculous.
We could do with more of their attitude. They don’t accept nonsense and they demand the best. While I wouldn’t want us being quite as spoiled as them in this situation, I do wish the fans held the club to what should be extremely high standards considering our wealth and size.
 

RoyH1

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We could do with more of their attitude. They don’t accept nonsense and they demand the best. While I wouldn’t want us being quite as spoiled as them in this situation, I do wish the fans held the club to what should be extremely high standards considering our wealth and size.
Fair point that we could (and should) be much more demanding and ambitious. But what Barsa is doing is frankly ridiculous. Valverde is no Guardiola, but he's delivering. They have won back to back leagues for fecks sakes and are in first place.
 

JPRouve

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Fair point that we could (and should) be much more demanding and ambitious. But what Barsa is doing is frankly ridiculous. Valverde is no Guardiola, but he's delivering. They have won back to back leagues for fecks sakes and are in first place.
He should have been fired a long time ago, their good results are despite him. If it wasn't for Messi playing like a super hero every other games, their collective performances would see them 4th at best.
 

van Hooijdonk

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Not so sure about Setien. If he is the choice, let's hope he'll do the required job.
 

Suedesi

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Fair point that we could (and should) be much more demanding and ambitious. But what Barsa is doing is frankly ridiculous. Valverde is no Guardiola, but he's delivering. They have won back to back leagues for fecks sakes and are in first place.
Barca won 8 of the last 11 league titles so it's clear that the team is winning domestically with or without Valverde. It's the CL failures (Roma 3-0, Anfield 4-0) and the inability to tactically alter games that is his downfall.
 

R'hllor

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Guess they dont take bullshit, no league position or win % can mask most important thing in their eyes. Regardless of my opinion of their fans or club as a whole, seems they have a line and that line is not moving a inch.
 

mu4c_20le

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Guess they dont take bullshit, no league position or win % can mask most important thing in their eyes. Regardless of my opinion of their fans or club as a whole, seems they have a line and that line is not moving a inch.
Keeping Messi happy
 

carvajal

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They should have done it in the summer if they weren't convinced.
Sack him for the Supercopa, being leaders and after being first in the Champions League group is a bit weird, although I understand the culé feeling.
From what it is said Bartomeu and Valverde are very close, so I imagine that the board had to put a lot of pressure on Bartomeu.
Philosophy "Masía" + Aleñá / Puig or reincorporating Artur won´t be enough in my opinion and they will probably lose the regularity that Valverde provided,
so, as a madridista I am happy with the change.
 

Paul_Scholes18

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They should have done it in the summer if they weren't convinced.
Sack him for the Supercopa, being leaders and after being first in the Champions League group is a bit weird, although I understand the culé feeling.
From what it is said Bartomeu and Valverde are very close, so I imagine that the board had to put a lot of pressure on Bartomeu.
Philosophy "Masía" + Aleñá / Puig or reincorporating Artur won´t be enough in my opinion and they will probably lose the regularity that Valverde provided,
so, as a madridista I am happy with the change.
Yeah it is a strange move doing it now. They have done well so far this season. Not playing amazing football, but got the results with them.
It is no big difference from last season really apart from the fact that Real is better this season.
 

charlenefan

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Joke of a club and joke of a fanbase if you ask me.

Valverde has them in first place in La Liga and alive in both the Cup and the Champions League. While the football is not as attractive as it used to be, the Barsa board and fans might do well to remember that Xavi and Iniesta are gone and Messi is 32. The sense of entitlement down there is ridiculous.
While that may be the case no Barcelona side should go and loose 4-0 at Liverpool having been 3-0 up in the tie

Then there's what happened in Rome 12 months before that
 

RoyH1

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Barca won 8 of the last 11 league titles so it's clear that the team is winning domestically with or without Valverde. It's the CL failures (Roma 3-0, Anfield 4-0) and the inability to tactically alter games that is his downfall.
Not his fault that they squandered the Neymar money on Dembele and Coutinho. And Barsa has always had those kind of epic collapses, even when they're very good. You think the likes of Setién could have prevented that? Heck, even Guardiola has those kinds of CL failures.
 

VanKenny

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Joke of a club and joke of a fanbase if you ask me.

Valverde has them in first place in La Liga and alive in both the Cup and the Champions League. While the football is not as attractive as it used to be, the Barsa board and fans might do well to remember that Xavi and Iniesta are gone and Messi is 32. The sense of entitlement down there is ridiculous.

Barcelona is doing well DESPITE Valverde, not thanks to him. Messi has been on GOAT mode the last 2 years, same for the start of this season, we are where we are because of Messi and Ter Stegen mainly.

The team plays badly but still manage to win most games again, because of Messi. General feeling however is that if a good team catches us in the CL like Liverpool/City/PSG, they are going to absolutely destroy us unless Messi has an unreal performance.

Just last year Messi played incredibly good against Liverpool yet it wasnt enough, because the team as a whole played incredibly bad. To win la liga Valverde may be enough because its hard to make Messi play bad, but if you have the GOAT you should aspire for every title. The fact that Messi only has 4 CL's is a dissapointment in the eyes of every Barca fan.
 

Pink Moon

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Apparently his links to Espanyol means he’ll never manage Barca. Or so I hear.
Just proves how much of a moron he is then. It'd be like saying you'd never manage Bayern Munich because of your ties to 1860 Munich. You'd hope someone in this field would have a wee bit more ambition and brains than that.
 

JPRouve

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Not his fault that they squandered the Neymar money on Dembele and Coutinho. And Barsa has always had those kind of epic collapses, even when they're very good. You think the likes of Setién could have prevented that? Heck, even Guardiola has those kinds of CL failures.
It has nothing to do with the Neymar money, Barcelona have a strong team and in fact not using Dembélé against Roma and use his pace was exactly what Roma wanted. The problem is that they are just not good collectively, most of the time.
 

Ish

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Just proves how much of a moron he is then. It'd be like saying you'd never manage Bayern Munich because of your ties to 1860 Munich. You'd hope someone in this field would have a wee bit more ambition and brains than that.
In fairness, I speak under correction there though bud. I’m sure I read/heard that somewhere (most probably on the Caf) and I was never sure if it was Barca who wouldn’t employ him or if it was Poch who’s openly admitted that - & yeah, I’d tend to agree with you if Poch did say that.
 

ShoePolish

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Not sure about new guy, but sacking was coming. Has them in all cups still and 1st in league, but seems they won't wait for rot to set in, more than it already has
 

RedChisel

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As someone who doesn't pay much attention to the goings on in La Liga what has he done to warrant being sacked? Are they not top of the league and still in the Champions League?
 

BalanceUnAutreJoint

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It just shows how incompetent Barca's board is.
He should have been sacked after Liverpool, not for losing a Supercup game.

The sacking itself is fine but the timing doesn't make any sense.
 

carvajal

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As someone who doesn't pay much attention to the goings on in La Liga what has he done to warrant being sacked? Are they not top of the league and still in the Champions League?
They win but he has not improved virtually any player. Both Dembélé and Griezmann are still not fitting (although I think Valverde would not have signed them) and it seems that any strong team can eliminate them again in the Champions League. Some unreal strength .

In short, football is not pretty and as the board are not going to resign they have to sack the coach.