Why is Garcia on the radar of Swans and the Bluebirds?

CARDIFF City’s managerial search appears to be coming to a head, while Swansea City are left actively hunting despite Russell Martin still not having completed his move to Southampton.

It appears compensation is the key factor behind the delay in Martin’s move to the south coast, nevertheless the Swans are still plotting to find his successor.

Three names have appeared on both clubs’ shortlists. Former Luton Town, Stoke City and Southampton manager Nathan Jones, ex-USA boss Gregg Berhalter and also Oscar Garcia, who will likely be known on these shores for his spells with Brighton and Watford.

Garcia appears prominently on both sets of odds lists, now as short as 3/1 for the Bluebirds, but a little further down the pecking order at 12/1 when it comes to the Swans.

A little glance at the potted history of his managerial career suggests he doesn’t hang about in one place for too long. Indeed, over the course of his 10-year career in senior management, which has taken in nine clubs, he has stayed in one place for more than a year only twice, at Red Bull Salzburg and Reims - and he was only at those clubs for 18 months or less.

Suffice it to say that his record for not hanging about is something of a concern for Cardiff, but not enough to stop him being considered a major candidate for them.

Cardiff spoke to Garcia before Swansea registered their interest with him, we understand, and he was on the Bluebirds’ initial longlist when they first began the hunt for Sabri Lamouchi’s successor. Garcia has since been placed high up on the short list for the job in the Welsh capital.

However, it must be stressed, he is not the only name on that list at time of writing. You could argue though, that his style of play might suit Swansea more than Cardiff, at least in the Bluebirds’ current guise, anyway.

The 50-year-old began coaching in the age ranks at the Camp Nou, having learned from legend Johan Cruyff during their time together with the Catalonia national team first. He favours a possession-based game and that ties in well with the sort of footballing philosophy currently employed at Swansea.

His record is impressive in parts, less successful elsewhere. Something of a mixed bag, you might say.

To start at the beginning, with regards to his club management, Garcia won the league title with Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel in 2013, having been recruited by the team manager, Johan Cruyff’s son and ex-Manchester United player Jordi Cruyff, boasting a hugely impressive 65 percent win ratio in his maiden season in the dugout. It drew glances from England.

He joined Brighton the following season and guided them to the play-offs, winning 40 percent of his games in charge, but fell in the semi-finals at the hands of Derby County. Who was his assistant coach at Brighton? Well, a green-gilled Nathan Jones, no less. What a small world indeed. Garcia, though, left after that season.

He had a very brief stint then at Watford but had to resign just four games into his spell. He was admitted to hospital with chest pains and it led to him stepping down as manager.

Garcia found major success again at his next gig in Austria with Red Bull Salzburg. He won four trophies in just 18 months between December 2015 and June 2017, picking up the Austrian Bundesliga title in 2016 and 2017, as well as the Austrian Cup in both seasons, having built his team around now Wolves striker Hwan Hee-chan.

A fresh challenge awaited the manager in France, though, and he penned a deal with St Etienne in June 2017. It wasn’t to last. After only five months in charge, with St Etienne sixth in the table, he left the club and asked for no compensation, despite having 18 months left on his deal, after a humiliating 5-0 defeat by bitter rivals Lyon.

In truth, it’s not been plain sailing for him since then. He took over at Olympiacos in January 2018 and and his contract was terminated in the April, with a lack of dressing room, training and game discipline cited.

A year-long stint at Celta between November 2019 and November 2020 followed. They were threatened with relegation and he managed to keep the club up on the last day of the season. But the following season, having won just one of nine matches, he was let go.

And then to his last gig, in France with Reims, in which he won just 14 games out of his 51 in charge. They finished 12th in the 2021/22 campaign, but he was relieved of his duties in October last year with the side in 15th.

Clearly, the last four or five years have been less successful, but the promise of those stints in Tel Aviv, Brighton and Salzburg is likely still very alluring to the hierarchies at Cardiff and Swansea.

What would be bring?Well, having been brought up in a Barcelona team which included Pep Guardiola, Michael Laudrup and Ronald Koeman, all under the tutelage of Cruyff, his experience and background should speak for itself. Having those four individuals as teammates or mentors would be, in theory, fantastic for any budding manager in the making.

It’s clear who - and where - he gets his coaching inspiration from.

While at Reims there was a heavy emphasis on the club’s youth system and academy, something which would no doubt appeal to Swansea’s decisionmakers, given their success at bringing through their own products and the budgetary constraints, while Cardiff have also leaned more heavily on their own young Bluebirds in recent years and have ploughed millions into their academy.

Where is he more likely to go?Well, that’s the all-important question, of course.

He is high on Cardiff’s manager short list, which we understand to be down to just a few names now, while it all appears to have gone a little quiet on him with regards to the Swans.

His former protege at Brighton, Nathan Jones, a boyhood Cardiff fan, is placing high among the bookmakers’ odds lists to take over at Swansea, seeing his price slashed to 6/1 and putting him as third favourite.

There is no doubt that Garcia’s footballing philosophy, in terms of his ability to bring through youth and simply the way his teams play, marries well with Swansea’s own principles.

Cardiff have tried and failed with the possession-based game. Vincent Tan got twitchy when Steve Morison’s side kept hold of the ball and built slowly through the lines with little end product. That, plus Garcia’s penchant for not hanging around, is doubtless a lingering concern.

But nevertheless Garcia is certainly a manager with vast experience in big leagues and at decent-sized clubs with a stocked trophy cabinet to boot. He is a major candidate and it is no surprise that two clubs with ambitions of once again getting to the Premier League at some stage in the not-too-distant future have taken a real look at him.