Part of the board wanted Valverde out, they were the ones leaking rumours to the press about possible replacements. Most notably Roberto Martinez. It was an attempt to apply pressure on Bartomeu, maybe get the public excited so he’d sack the coward we have now. It didn’t work because of the players, they wanted Valverde to stay so he stayed because we have too many heavyweights in the locker room (Messi, Pique, Busquets to name just a few).
The problem is the board, not Valverde or the players. Valverde is a coward, a poor coach who has not and will not do anything progressive or exciting. This is a coach who plays boring, pragmatic football with Barcelona. In addition to lacking courage, we found out in May this year that he completely lacks anything resembling pride and dignity. But this is not Valverde’s fault, he is the way he is and he belongs to a team struggling to stay mid-tier in Spain. He doesn’t belong in Barcelona and he has no place coaching a team in the Champions League.
The players also aren’t the problem. We have a great squad, plenty of world class players who’d be doing wonders under a different coach. They are very comfortable and complacent now, Valverde is a great fit for a team of complacent players who see an ooportunity to tailor everything to their liking. I can’t blame the players for wanting to do less when they see they can still be successful despite lacking effort. No team can manage itself.
This is where the board comes in. Bartomeu should have sacked Valverde last season. Not sacking him was a vote of confidence and a favour to the team that blamed itself after Rome. When it happened the second time, not only was it absolutely necessary to sack that poor excuse for a coach, it was also time to clear out a part of the dressing room. The board should have seen that we have an incompetent coach “leading” a team of complacent players, and that’s a situation that needed to be remedied this Summer. It wasn’t, the bleeding didn’t stop, it’s just that a bigger band-aid was put in the form of De Jong and Griezmann. We are attempting to solve our problems by stacking world class names in the squad and hoping that football changes somehow so you can win titles simply by having a lot of great players. It would be hilarious if it weren’t sad, and it’s sad because we watched Real Madrid attempt that already and we laughed very hard at them. We laughed for years, and now look.
The team is just too comfortable. We have the best goalkeeper in the world and the best player in the world, that alone is enough to accumulate most of the points we need with the other players doing average work. When you add a flash of brilliance here or there (Suarez, Dembele, now Griezmann and De Jong), Barça have enough to top the Madrid clubs. This is why I expect us to win the league this season, there’s too much individual quality upfront that we’ll score goals even without any coherent play, while Ter Stegen will keep most of the chances out despite the shortcomings in our defensive system. All in all we’ll likely end up as champions again, through Messi and boring, uneventuful, sad football by Valverde. I just hope something else happens during the season that gets Valverde sacked. Maybe if we meet Real Madrid in the CL and they whoop us, that could do the trick.