BARCA STARS WON’T WANT TOPLAYFORKOEMAN... OR ATLEASTTHAT’STHEPLAN
John Laverty’s unmissable Tuesday column
OH dear. It has emerged that Ellen Degeneres (catchphrase: ‘Be Kind’) isn’t a Very Nice Person after all. Like, who knew? Quite a few, if truth be told. But not too many within the general public, who’d elevated the American chat show host to national treasure status.
Degeneres isn’t the first to be exposed as having feet of clay and won’t be the last. There is, however, a profound feeling of betrayal when a high-profile person who purports to be nice turns out to be anything but.
At least Ronald Koeman won’t disappoint anyone in that regard.
He isn’t very likeable at all and couldn’t care a jot about who knows it, as a lot of people at FC Barcelona are about to discover.
But the suits who appointed the Dutchman already know this — which is precisely why Koeman is now ensconced in the manager’s office at the Nou Camp with a two-year contract.
Did you know that Koeman was once labelled by one national newspaper as ‘the most hated man in England’ — quite a feat when you consider that, at the time, he’d barely frequented its green and pleasant land.
He scored a famous winning goal at Wembley in 1992, but that was for Barca against Sampdoria (captained by future Man City boss Roberto Mancini) in the European Cup final and hardly broke any English hearts.
No, that came in Rotterdam the following year, and an incident beaten only by Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ in the annals of Ingur-land injustices.
Then managed by Graham Taylor, The Three Lions went to the Netherlands seeking just to draw to keep them on track for the 1994 World Cup.
Then this happened: David Platt, who’d beaten the Dutch offside trap, bore down on goal.
Koeman tugged his shirt, bringing him crashing to the ground. Classic professional foul, clear penalty, stonewall red card.
Yet the referee waved away all appeals on a night the famous phrase “do I not like that?” was coined.
The reprieved Koeman later lashed one of his trademark free kicks into the onion bag and England — and Taylor, who’d famously and fatalistically agreed to a documentary crew filming everything — were finished.
Technically it was the German ref, Karl-josef Assenmacher, who precipitated England’s demise yet Koeman was an easier — and more easily pronounced — name to scapegoat.
But, having caught up with him a few months later prior to a World Cup game in Orlando, it was clear to me that the ‘most hated man’ tag hadn’t cost him a moment’s thought.
And now 57-year-old Koeman, brilliant ‘libero’ and lynchpin of Johan Cruyff’s legendary Barca ‘dream team’ from the 1990s, has been handed the unenviable task of showing the club’s modern-day legends the exit door.
He’ll do it too. With gusto. He knows he’s not there to make friends and, with only a handful of current players told they’d be surviving the imminent cull, that’s just as well.
Despite his arrogance, Koeman’s record as a club manager is unexceptional and, in normal circumstances, Mauricio Pochettino would have been a better bet to revive Blaugrana fortunes.
But those ‘fortunes’ have plummeted by more than €300m this Covid-affected season and a massive clear-out of the big earners has been ordered.
The Euro ‘88 winner and four-time La Liga champion has form wielding the big axe; 13 years ago at another large Spanish outfit, Valencia, he told several of the club’s senior players that they were toast, won the Copa del Rey, narrowly avoided relegation and was sacked — all within six months.
Frankly, he won’t last much longer at the Nou Camp either with Victor Font, hot favourite to be elected as club president early next year, already promising that Xavi Hernandez would be parachuted into the hot-seat, no matter how well Koeman was doing.
It’s hoped that, by that stage, the current head coach will have got shot of Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets, Luis Suarez, Ivan Rakitic, Arturo Vidal and Philippe Coutinho — no easy task, with all of them on fat contracts — and brought in promising youngsters, something he was particularly good at with both the Netherlands national side and during that brief spell at Valencia, as Juan Mata, a spotty teenager back then, could attest to.
In an interview 18 months ago, Koeman said this of FCB: “Suarez, Messi, Pique, Busquets... all over 30. You have to change. You’ll have a goalkeeper but no centre-back, pivot, centre-forward or Messi. So... good luck”.
Now, as hastily appointed replacement for the wretched Quique Setien, immediately sacked after the 8-2 Champions League humiliation by Bayern Munich yielded Barca’s first trophy-less season since 2007-8, it’s Koeman himself who’s being handed the “good luck” messages.
Aloof and detached, the multi-lingual Koeman has already shocked observers with his apparent ‘comme ci, comme ca’ attitude towards the mooted departure of irreplaceable club icon Lionel Messi.
Everton fans will remember similar indifference when terrace favourite Ross Barkley threatened to leave the club.
They’ll also recall Koeman being handed the biggest transfer budget in the club’s history, yet failing to sign a replacement for Romelu Lukaku and being fired 16 months after waltzing into Goodison and immediately hinting that Everton was merely a stepping stone en route to his ‘dream’ of following in the Barca footsteps of compatriots Rinus Michels, Cruyff, Louis van Gaal and Frank Rijkaard.
That personal dream has now been realised, but it’s going to be a waking nightmare for almost everyone else.