Barcelona appoint Setien as manager after sacking Valverde

Quique Setien was confirmed as Barcelona's new manager Monday.The former Real Betis tactician was immediately drafted in following the dismissal of Ernesto Valverde after two-and-a-half years at the helm.Setien, 61, signed a contract that runs…

13.01.2020 23:01

Quique Setien was confirmed as Barcelona's new manager Monday.

The former Real Betis tactician was immediately drafted in following the dismissal of Ernesto Valverde after two-and-a-half years at the helm.

Setien, 61, signed a contract that runs until June 2022 with the back-to-back La Liga champions. He's a long-term devotee to Barcelona's proud playing philosophy.

"I remember when Johan Cruyff's Barcelona came along," Setien wrote for The Coaches' Voice in 2018. "You played against them, and you spent the whole match running after the ball. I said to myself: 'This is what I like. I would like to be in this team, and know why this is happening.'"

He continued: "I started to really watch football. To analyze it. To understand what I felt, and what I wanted to put into practice when I became a coach."

Setien, who oversaw CD Lugo and Las Palmas before Real Betis, inherits a side that's won just once in its last five competitive outings. The Santander native's first jobs in Barcelona will be to unite a dressing room that reportedly lost confidence in Valverde, devise a way to replace in-form Luis Suarez after he underwent knee surgery, and arrest the team's growing tendency to let leads slip in games.

Barca were 2-1 up against Atletico Madrid with nine minutes left in Thursday's Supercopa semifinal but lost 3-2. The result was reminiscent of the Catalans' infamous collapses to Roma and Liverpool in the two previous Champions League campaigns and was the final straw for the Camp Nou boardroom.

The Barcelona hierarchy only told Valverde it planned to sack him Monday evening, according to the Guardian's Sid Lowe.

Setien's debut in the Barca dugout is set to be Sunday's league visit from midtable Granada. He'll take on Betis, the club he left at the end of last season, on Feb. 9, with his inaugural clash against Real Madrid currently slated for Feb. 29.

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