“I never thought that I’d coach Barcelona,” Quique Setien tells The Athletic. “For me it was the opportunity of my life, fulfilling a dream.”
Setien’s appointment as Barcelona coach in January 2020 seemed, at the time, the logical result of over six decades connected to football. As he ascended the divisions from Lugo through Las Palmas and Real Betis, building a reputation as a purist whose coaching methods produced attractive football, the Catalan club was a huge influence, especially former Barca player and coach Johan Cruyff.
“At Barca, you did not have to implant the idea; it is where the idea was made,” Setien said. “Maybe that ideal had slipped a little, but I was going to Barcelona to coach the best players in the world, who had won so much before.”
Just six months later, Setien was leaving Barcelona, after the nightmare of a crushing historic 8-2 Champions League quarter-final defeat against Bayern Munich.
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Quique Setien’s Barcelona dream became a nightmare: ‘Nobody called to say I was fired, I heard on TV’
