The 62-year-old left the Barcelona dugout following his then side’s humiliating 8-2 thrashing by Bayern Munich and hasn’t been seen since.
Setien doesn’t see himself coaching a team again
Quique Setien has had offers to return to football management – but he is a man happy to be away from the limelight. The 62-year-old left the Barcelona dugout following his then side’s humiliating 8-2 thrashing by Bayern Munich and hasn’t been seen since. And he seems to have fallen out of love with the game. “I don’t see myself coaching a team again,” he told Jot Down. “I have lost all interest in it. The football I was experiencing in the last few years was not the football I like. “What I liked was playing football. In fact, I never really saw myself becoming a coach.” A fact lost on some is that Setien – as well as earning three caps for the full Spain team – also represented his country in beach football. “I loved that time,” he said.
The former Barcelona coach spoke of being approached by teams outside Spain
“It was a totally unique type of football – and life. It was fantastic, being the top goalscorer for Spain in various tournaments and travelling worldwide. I even coached Russia against Spain in a World Cup.” Setien spoke of being approached by teams outside Spain back to his current situation, but none have lit his fire. Instead, he seems burnt by what happened at Barcelona. “I had never been in a dressing room like that before,” he said. “It was something else. It gave me a shock. There are some things you just cannot control. You find a dressing room that’s not happy. That’s what I found there, but it was something I had never seen in 40 years of football.” The fact his Barcelona team lost out on the LaLiga Santander title to Real Madrid clearly still rankles too.
“That 2-0 defeat to them in the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu. I don’t mind losing, but it was the way we had three one-on-ones and messed them all up. And we ended up losing the league because Real Madrid got given six penalties. And because we were going through an awful phase that was the result of the problems we had within the team.”