Quique Setien, the manager of Barcelona, has agreed with the talisman of the club Lionel Messi that the club has been ‘erratic and weak’ throughout the 2019-2020 season.
Messi said this after Osasuna stunned the former Spanish La Liga champions 2-1 in Camp Nou on the night their bitter rival, Real Madrid, won the Spanish La Liga title for the 34th time by defeating Villarreal 2-1.
Before the coronavirus break, Barcelona was looking like a team that will successfully defend the league title they won in the 2019-2020 season. They returned from the break as the table-toppers though with just a point.
All they needed to do was to win at least all their remaining 11 matches to keep them one point ahead of Real Madrid but they failed to do that in grand style. While their rival remained undefeated since they returned from the coronavirus break, Barcelona which used to be almost invincible in the league drew three matches and lost one out of 10 matches.
This technically meant that Real Madrid did not only worked hard to ensure that they overthrew Barcelona as Spanish champions, the inconsistencies of their bitter rival helped them to not only overtake them but to win the title with 6 points difference and with one game left to play.
Based on their performance, Lionel Messi believes that Barcelona gifted the title to Real Madrid and the Catalonian club should do “self-criticism” ahead of their UEFA Champions League round of 16 match against Napoli on August 8 at the Camp Nou.
“I agree with Messi on some things,” Quique Setien said on Thursday night. “We have to do self-criticism and if we don’t do it, it will cost us anything we want to do.
“We have tried to improve during these months that we have been here, there are things that have cost us and [overshadowed the] many times that we have done well.
“It all comes down to success, today the opponent shot three times and scored two goals, we had fifteen [shots] and we were not right.”
Quique Setien is not sure of his future in Barcelona
Barcelona is one of the biggest clubs in the world where being successful in terms of winning trophies every season is not negotiable. Once you are not winning titles and you are losing games you are ought to win as a manager, the exit door is a guarantee.
Quique Setien knows this harsh reality and he has admitted that he doesn’t even sure whether he would be around for Barcelona’s game against Napoli in August.
The possibility of losing his job before August is not just about the fact that they lost at home to Osasuna, it is the fact that the club played badly enough that their hope of winning the title for the 3rd conservative time fell in the hands of Real Madrid. Hence, it was not only about what Barcelona would play but what Real Madrid played.
“I hope to be the Barcelona coach in the Champions League but I don’t know”, Setien said. “I am responsible for our situation, as I am the manager of the team.”
“I hope we will face the Champions League this summer as a different team, but I am not sure about what happens next for me.”
Setien was appointed on 13 January 2020 to replace Ernesto Valverde due to situations like this. And as it stands, even if he is allowed to execute the remaining part of this season’s Champions League campaign, it is almost impossible that he will last at Barcelona until the expiration of his contract in 2022 except he wins the Champions League this season.
