FC Barcelona settles a historic debt with Quique Setién

The bitter soap opera between FC Barcelona and Quique Setién has finally come to an end. The board of the Blaugrana team has reached an agreement with the coach to pay him compensation for his dismissal in August 2020, when the Spaniard was dismissed from his position a few days after the historic 2-8 against Bayern Munich in Lisbon corresponding to the Champions League quarter-finals.

The Cantabrian led the club during the first 8 months of the year of the pandemic, but after such a blow to the morale and history of the club caused by the Germans in the most important competition at club level, the coach was fired when he still had two more years of contract left. At that time, Barça agreed to pay him the 4 million euros of compensation for breaking his contract in 6 payments.

Now, according to what was reported in 'MARCA', the Catalan club will deposit this week to Setién everything that it owes him, putting an end to a relationship that ended up in court. During these years, the coach has made it clear to the media that Barcelona had not paid him what it owed him, so, after four years, he will be able to close one of the most bitter chapters of his career.

The conclusion of a story to forget

Beyond the regrettable result in the knockout phase of that unprecedented Champions League, Setién will not be remembered as one of the best coaches of the culé team. One of his weak and most criticized points was the management of the dressing room, since the coach would have had several confrontations with key players of the team such as Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez.

After his dismissal, the dispute between the coach and the club, which at that time was led by Josep Maria Bartomeu, went to court. The former president considered that Setién did not comply with the agreed objectives and promises, but the coach claimed that this did not exempt the Blaugrana team from paying him what they owed him. The influence of this case in LaLiga was such that it was the main topic of the meeting of coaches held in Las Rozas last week.

In conversations with the directors of the employers' association, the technical directors of the First and Second Division raised the idea of ​​a new rule that establishes that a new coach will not be able to sit on the bench of a club until it has settled all its outstanding payments with the dismissed coach, so there could soon be news regarding this possible change of rule.