Ex-Barcelona fullback fires back at Koeman: He just lied to me, said I’m contaminating the team. He had no respect for the players

Ronald Koeman’s engagement at Barcelona was certainly not a success. The team around Messi took over after being beaten 2: 8 by Bayern, finished third in the league, dropped out in the Champions League eighth round, won at least the Copa del Rey. The next season the misery continued and he was sacked and, as it later emerges, he wasn’t very popular in the cabin.

The key to being a successful coach is getting on perfectly with the team. If you don’t have a good relationship with the players, they will never follow you and it may not be long before they all turn against you.

It’s just that Koeman didn’t look at that side of things too closely. After all, he’s not known to be much of a psychologist. If he dislikes a player, he can make his life hell.

Junior Firpo came to Barcelona as a young hope from Betis and was supposed to replace Jordi Alba at left-back in the future. But he didn’t get many opportunities to do that, he only played in 7 league games last season. And as he has now revealed in an interview with Cadena SER, Koeman will definitely not be remembered in a good way.

“I lost my taste for football and I realized the importance of my family. I didn‘t understand Koeman’s behaviour, he often had no respect for me or my teammates,” Firpo began sharply.

“I don’t understand that the day after the game, when we substitutes had training, he stayed in his office. If I’m a substitute and I have to show up… Then who?” can not understand the Spanish back.

Due to his non-existent playing time, with Koeman subsequently giving priority to the youngsters from the B team, Firpo went to ask Koeman for an explanation.

“I asked him for an explanation and he started lying to me. What’s the point of asking him about something then? He told me things that don’t make sense, like I’m training wrong, I’m contaminating the whole team… Ask anyone you want, see if someone else on the team tells you the same thing about me,” he continues.

“I don’t know what it means to contaminate the team, I suppose he meant that I have a bad attitude. I don’t know in what sense a young guy who just came in can contaminate a team that has won everything and they’ve been here all their lives. My opinion and attitude doesn’t affect them in any way whatsoever,” Firpo doesn’t understand.

so the 25-year-old left-back left Barcelona in the summer and moved to Leeds. There, he has 10 regular appearances in the Premier League and two appearances in the EFL Cup. And he still missed almost a month due to injury.

But Firpo is certainly not the only one who has had problems with Koeman. Next on the list of players who the Dutch coach can’t figure out is the icon of Spanish football and Real Betis, Joaquín.

The two met at Valencia in the 2007/08 season and have carried their conflict until now. Koeman used to taunt Joaquín, letting him warm up from the first minute of the whole game without sending him on the pitch, and as one of the team’s biggest stars, he often didn’t even nominate him for games. Joaquín refused to comment on what Koeman did to him, but he still carries his hatred for the Dutch coach.

When Betis met Barcelona last season, the 39-year-old winger was clear before the game. “If I ever ruled a club, I wouldn’t even have Koeman as a custodian!”

Barcelona, on the other hand, tried to keep one of the academy’s biggest talents Riqui Puiq out of the A-team at all costs, so the young midfielder sat on the bench all season.

Oumar Niasse, whose life at Everton was made a living hell by the Dutch coach, also has a bad memory of Koeman.

“It was difficult with him. He took my number and gave it to another player, I don’t know why. He wouldn’t let me eat with the first team, he told me to eat with the U21s. All the players had their locker where they put their stuff, but Koeman took it away from me. I just had to put my bag on the ground somewhere. He did even worse things to me, I bit it really bad,” Niasse said in an interview with Hull City, where he was on loan.

From the looks of it, Koeman will not be a popular coach among footballers. If he doesn’t like a player, he’s liable to sack him at any cost. But he won’t have any success with that kind of attitude.

Source: Marca, Cadena SER, Sport Bible