Joan Laporta is tired. He has gotten tired of waiting for Ronald Koeman to lift a Barça that is on the way to perdition. He has gotten tired and at dawn, at 00.15, he issued the official statement, in which he certified the dismissal of the Dutch technician. As soon as he lost the game in Vallecas (1-0), the leader met with the coach to announce that he was dismissed after months of complex institutional cohabitation.
Xavi, current coach of Al Sadd in Doha, is emerging as the great candidate to succeed Koeman, although the club does not rule out other avenues in which it has been working Mateu Alemany, football director and head of this area at the club. He is the great candidate, despite the fact that Laporta considered that he was still green and that it would be interesting if he passed through the Barça subsidiary first.
The club manages the idea of betting on an interim coach before Xavi arrives after the November national team break
At the moment, the club has not even reported on who will sit on the Camp Nou bench against Alavés on Saturday. Nor if there will be an interim technician waiting to close the negotiations with Xavi, already activated for several weeks when Laporta unblocked a tense relationship by crossing telephone messages
The coach who brought Bartomeu and never felt his Laporta has lasted only seven months. He already wanted to fire him last summer, but did not find any replacement. Then, Koeman, I already knew that it was a matter of time his departure from Barça. It has not known, as seen in the defeat against Madrid (1-2) and Rayo (1-0), to reverse the situation of a team, which currently occupies the ninth position in the League, so it has been precipitated his dismissal.
FC Barcelona has dismissed Ronald Koeman as coach of the first team tonight
– FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona_es) October 27, 2021
Laporta was fed up. And he was fed up, throwing Koeman in Madrid. “President Joan Laporta has communicated this to him after the defeat against Rayo Vallecano,” the club argues in a brief statement, made public after 12 at night, of just 11 lines. A cold and impersonal statement to sign the divorce with a coach who never saw part of his project.
Valverde, Setién, Ronald …
The Barça has not wanted, nevertheless, to give clues about the new manager of the Barça. Xavi is the only way left, however, for Laporta, trapped in a delicate situation because the team’s decline has led him almost to a dead end. Tired of Koeman not finding the key to reactivate the team, at dawn he made the decision that will mark his sports policy in this second term. Xavi would not come as he would have come if Víctor Font, the candidate who did believe in him, with all the power and control over the sports area.
Xavi, Víctor Font’s coach, is emerging as the most viable option to lead Barça
Laporta even said that he did not see Xavi qualified to lead the team, in addition to indicating that he had to go through Barça B as Guardiola and Luis Enrique did in their day. But the situation has been so poisoned by the president that he has no other options.
The Al-Sadd coach is willing to sign assuming that he will not have that power that Font guaranteed. But the club has not even wanted to announce who will lead the squad today after Koeman’s dismissal. What’s more, Xavi, who had twice said no to Bartomeu to lead Barça, had left a door open by getting his exit clause with the Qatari club lowered substantially.
Hot decision
Initially, the board said it would not make hot decisions. But after the match in Vallecas, the measure was taken to dispense with Koeman. He is the third Barça coach to be fired in less than two years after Valverde’s departure (Bartomeu fired him in January 2020), Setién (Bartomeu fired him in August 2020) and Koeman (Laporta fired him in October 2021 ).
At dawn the team arrived, with the coaching staff, at the sports city of Sant Joan Despí, already knowing the dismissal of the Dutchman, who locked himself in the locker room with his players and assistants. And Laporta, who was silent about Koeman’s future before and after his goodbye, is now finalizing the strategy to introduce his new coach. Although he has not opened his mouth, hatching the emergency plan with Mateu Alemany and Ramon Planes, the Barça technical secretary.
Laporta fires, for the first time, a coach
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Koeman fired and if he manages to sign Xavi, Laporta manages to divert the focus of attention on his figure in search of a new stimulus for a Barça that is playing its future in the League and also in the Champions League on Tuesday in Kiev. After offering him the renewal and ratifying it before losing to Atlético, the president has fired Koeman, something he did not do with Rijkaard or Guardiola. Now, furtively and at dawn, Koeman was fired.
At one in the morning he returned home. He was no longer a Barça coach.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com