Setien sacked: The wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time

After losing 8-2 to Bayern Munich, it was a matter of when, not if, Quique Setien would be sacked by Barcelona. The decision was made on Monday following the club’s board meeting and it was one that had been a long time coming; before the traumatising thrashing in the Champions League they had collapsed in the Liga title race and crashed out of the Copa del Rey to Athletic Bilbao.

The public humiliation that accompanied Barcelona’s heaviest competitive defeat since 1951 made Setien’s position untenable but, in truth, there were many reasons why his “reign” at Barcelona had very little chance of success.

Less obvious is why the club president Josep Maria Bartomeu, who is fighting to keep his own job, appointed Setien in the first place when Ernesto Valverde was fired in January. A clue is that nobody else was jumping to take on what remains probably the most prestigious managerial job in club football, including the chance to work with maybe the best player ever in Lionel Messi. Barca turned to the former Lugo, Las Palmas and Real Betis coach after being publicly turned down by their former player Xavi, with other options such as Mauricio Pochettino, Ronald Koeman and Max Allegri proving impossible for various reasons midway through the season. 

Any manager with a top coaching and playing career behind them, even with iron self-confidence and Teflon skin, would have struggled to come straight in and get the team playing at a level to meet the sky-high expectations at the Nou Camp. The competitive level of the playing squad has dropped alarmingly over the last few years, while the ongoing institutional turmoil and huge financial problems have contributed to a poisonous atmosphere, which makes being coach of this Barcelona a hugely difficult job.

Right from when he was appointed on January 13, Setien seemed overcome by the magnitude of a position which he admitted not even he thought possible for himself. There was also innocence in his widely mocked remark about walking with cows in his home village, and naivety when he announced that he could not promise to win lots of trophies but, “I can guarantee one thing — that my team is going to play well.”

That did not come to pass.

Setien’s long-standing adherence to a Johan Cruyff-inspired style of football was his main qualification. Getting Barca to return to playing with the panache of their treble-winning season under Pep Guardiola was the primary objective, while most would have been happy with the efficiency of Luis Enrique’s team which repeated that feat. In the end, Setien found himself going against his own ideas by trying and failing to copy the pragmatic and cautious approach which had made Valverde so unpopular.

The Cantabrian’s first game in charge, at home to Granada, saw the team ditch Valverde’s typical 4-4-2 for a more traditional Barca 4-3-3. The team made more than 1,000 passes, but still needed Messi to pop up with a late winner after Granada were reduced to 10 men. That should have been a warning, but Setien continued to publicly and privately claim that he could easily fix what was going wrong in the side, believing a bit too much that everyone at the club would be only too eager to learn more about his Cruyff-inspired principles. He spent a lot more time than Valverde talking about tactics, and “teaching” the players new concepts, even using a blackboard to get things across, and then admonishing his “students” in public for not picking up his lessons quickly enough.

As a sign of how little Setien understood what he was getting himself into, for years Messi has played as the “joker” during mini-games in training, joining whichever team has possession of the ball, but Setien threw him a jersey on their first morning together, treating him as just another squad member. That the Argentinian needed special treatment became quickly obvious as the weeks and months passed, and by the end the difference in their respective levels of power at the club was painfully clear.

One attempt to improve Barca’s performances included exercises in training that some of the experienced players in the squad considered “games for kids”, such as blindfolding a player for a version of the game “tag”.  The abrasive approach of his assistant Eder Sarabia, especially his gestures of frustration on the sideline when players made mistakes during games, also did not go down well. The players did not like the feeling that they were being treated like children. Especially by a coaching team whose playing CVs (Setien’s only trophy as a player was the 1984-85 Spanish Supercopa with Atletico Madrid) did not compare at all to the multiple title-winners they were issuing instructions to. His own childish glee at getting to coach such huge names, and even take part in some of the rondos during sessions, was also evident at the start. That sense of enjoyment faded considerably as time went on.

It was also unwise for Setien to do so many interviews, where he left many hostages to fortune by repeating how well he was going to get the team to play. He also complained regularly about things outside his control, from the five substitutes rule after lockdown, to the wind across the Nou Camp pitch affecting Barcelona’s build-up play. This contrasted with the tight-lipped approach of most of his predecessors, including Valverde, Luis Enrique and Guardiola. He enjoyed talking about the game, but also really wanted to be liked, and even joked about how he still had the technique at 61 to join in training. None of this was meant maliciously, but was a misreading of where his real energy and focus should have been.

Setien was also happy to join Bartomeu in fanning the idea that referees and the VAR system were favouring Real Madrid in the title race, especially immediately after lockdown when a number of 50-50 decisions went the way of Zinedine Zidane’s team. That may have been a way of taking pressure off his team but it also made him appear to be avoiding responsibility for Barcelona’s failings when they were regularly dropping points as their lead at the top of the table slipped.

His predecessor Valverde was less concerned about selling his own public image, and clearly sided with the players over the directors, having made a practical decision not to bother his older stars too much. That was probably the main reason he got the sack in January, going by the comments afterwards by sporting director Eric Abidal which annoyed Messi so much. It at least meant Valverde left having won two La Liga titles. All that has happened since has just strengthened his reputation both inside and outside the club.

Setien also damaged his standing in the dressing room by publicly backing his bosses during the strange business which saw Arthur Melo sold to Juventus before June 30 to ensure the 2019-20 books were balanced. His suggestion that Arthur was not the first signing to fail to live up to expectations at Barcelona led to an unfortunate public exchange with the Brazilian player’s mother, which was not a good look. “With Ernesto we did some things well and others badly,” an unnamed Barca player told El Pais as their La Liga challenge unravelled. “Now we’ve stopped doing the good things, and the bad things are worse.”

When results really started to go bad, so too did his relationships with key figures in the dressing room. Antoine Griezmann fumed after being embarrassed at getting just a couple of minutes at the end of the 2-2 draw against his former club Atletico Madrid. After the 2-2 draw at Celta Vigo, the crucial result which really killed their title chances, Luis Suarez was asked why Barca were dropping so many points away from home. “Coaches are there to do something,” was an enigmatic answer that nevertheless pointed the blame towards the sideline and away from the team. 

It is pretty moot whether Setien is really to blame for Barca’s historically bad season — their first since 2007-08 without at least one major trophy. Their record in the first half of the Liga season under Valverde was almost identical to the second half under Setien. They lost March’s Clasico but were top when football stopped because of coronavirus. Then Zidane’s side returned after the lockdown with renewed focus and remarkable consistency to win 10 consecutive games and seal the title. Setien’s squad was not nearly as deep as their rivals at the Bernabeu, and the results of an erratic transfer policy dating back at least five years were painfully exposed against Bayern.

Messi, Gerard Pique, Suarez, Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba and Ivan Rakitic have all been amazing servants to Barca but no team could carry so many players whose best days are clearly well behind them.

The huge divide between these senior figures in the dressing room and the boardroom, which culminated in Pique bluntly saying after the Bayern game that the club needed “structural” changes which were not to do with the players or the coach, dates from way back before Setien was appointed. That would have made taking over mid-season difficult for even the most diplomatic and experienced coach, so it was basically impossible for Setien, a quite touchy character who had left both Las Palmas and Betis with some glad to see the back of him. 

Setien’s reaction when things started to really go wrong was not good either. Saying “three draws was not so bad” and “nobody expected Madrid to win every game post lockdown” was not great, then the 2-1 defeat at home to Osasuna on July 16 was the final straw. Messi pointedly said afterwards that “we are Barcelona and we have to win every game.” It made it seem like Setien was making excuses for mediocrity. Messi’s standards were much higher, as he called out his own team for being “very inconsistent, very weak, beaten for intensity, beaten for motivation.”

The club captain’s call for self-criticism and changes led to speculation in the Catalan media that Setien could even be fired immediately. He might have been too but for the lack of anybody of sufficient stature to replace him, even in a temporary role. Most other figures with Barca DNA — such as Xavi, Carles Puyol and Jordi Cruyff — are all waiting until after next summer’s presidential elections before even considering returning. The current Barca B coach Fernando Garcia Pimiento is a highly-rated technician but has zero experience at senior level. The two former players in the Nou Camp hierarchy at the moment — Abidal and Patrick Kluivert — do not have enough coaching experience or, most importantly, the required respect from senior players to take over even in a caretaker capacity. 

“There’s just not much more I can do,” it was claimed Setien said in the dressing room after that Osasuna defeat. In public he remained more defiant. “I agree with Messi on some things, some self-criticism is good, but we shouldn’t throw out all we’ve done.” Again, it was not an advisable way to react to the club captain’s painfully honest criticism.

After the 5-0 win at Alaves on the final day, Messi pointedly spoke in public to call for no more changes or interruptions and for everybody to focus on saving their season by winning the Champions League. This was not so much an endorsement of Setien, as an acknowledgement that a new man was unlikely to be able to make things any better at short notice. Still, everybody knew that despite Bartomeu publicly saying Setien’s job was safe, his only realistic way of avoiding the sack was to bring the trophy back to the Catalan capital for the first time since 2015.

By the time the Champions League restarted last week, most of the idealism and joy had drained from both Setien’s public pronouncements and the team’s play. Injuries and suspensions left very little room for creativity in his team selection or tactics for the last-16 second leg against Napoli, so all the big names were in his line-up, which had no clearly defined shape. After the Italians had dominated the opening stages, Messi came up with a big performance to put Barcelona 3-0 up by half-time. But then they retreated and played very cautiously over the second 45 minutes, allowing Napoli to end the game with more possession of the ball, and more passes completed, something that would be unthinkable in the recent past. Afterwards, Setien and his players basically admitted that the team’s current limitations mean that they must play a lot more practically than they would like.

That caution was shown again in the starting XI against Bayern, the oldest Barca line-up ever for a Champions League match, when Griezmann was dropped to go to a 4-4-2 and include an extra midfielder in Arturo Vidal. The attempt to keep things tight by trusting the old heads lasted less than four minutes, with the midfield and defence picked apart as Thomas Muller opened the scoring.

Barca showed some fight at first, getting back level through David Alaba’s own goal and almost taking the lead when Messi hit the post, but tactically and physically they were being swamped, while Bayern kept scoring almost at will. As pointed out by Michael Cox for The Athletic, Setien was out-thought by Hansi Flick even before his team fell apart emotionally. It would have been difficult for any coach to come up with a plan to make up for the differences in physical and technical levels in the respective squads.

After that, there was no way Setien could keep going, and his post-match comments were about trying to keep his own self-respect and professionalism. He admitted that his “credibility” as a coach had been hurt by what had happened and that the result was “painful” and “humiliating” for Barca’s fans. He could not help dropping in a few characteristic phrases of self-justification, claiming that “we started the game quite well” and repeating both on Spanish TV and at the Zoom press conference that he had “only been at the club six or eight months.” Again the idea was that nobody could blame him personally for the disaster. Which was factually correct but not the leadership message that the moment required. 

There was no talk from Setien about how Barca could bounce back from the defeat, nor was he asked by reporters what changes he felt were necessary to the squad for next season. Everybody knew he was finished, but he was not going to resign as he still had two years left on his contract, although clauses within that mean he will not receive that full salary in his pay-off. 

Given Barca’s huge financial problems, and the fact that Xavi and any other senior players of the Guardiola era are waiting for a new president before returning, the new coach is likely to face exactly the same problems that proved too much for Setien to handle. Monday’s statement announcing his departure also outlined a big restructuring of the first team, in co-ordination with the current technical secretary (Abidal) and the new coach. The identity of his successor was not mentioned, although it was widely believed that an agreement with Koeman is close to being finalised, more because he scored the goal which won the club its first European Cup in 1992 than for his coaching CV. Pochettino’s past at city rivals Espanyol makes him a hard sell to already hurting supporters, while former Milan and Juventus manager Allegri reportedly asked for too much money when previously approached.

Whoever comes in will have a very stiff challenge on their hands, but will have to make a much better job of it than Setien managed. He was completely incapable of keeping his promises to improve how the team played, or to arrest a slide in performance and standards which began long before he took the job. He is not the most guilty for what happened, but neither was he at all prepared for what he was getting into. He was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. And what a price both he and Barcelona have paid. 

(Top photo: David Ramos/Getty Images)

Dermot joined The Athletic in 2020 and has been our main La Liga Correspondent up until now. Irish-born, he has spent more than a decade living in Madrid and writing about Spanish football for ESPN, the UK Independent and the Irish Examiner. Follow Dermot on Twitter @dermotmcorrigan