JAKARTA - Barcelona's defeat in the semifinals of the Supercopa de Espana from Atletico Madrid last Thursday has again threatened the position of coach Ernesto Valverde. Now, the name of former Tottenham Hotspur boss Mauricio Pochettino is linked as his replacement.
The Catalan giants are reportedly considering sacking Valverde in the near future. Apart from the defeat in Saudi Arabia, failure after failure in the Champions League also made Barca officials lose their temper.
The defending La Liga champions are rumored to be making a deal to bring former midfielder Xavi Hernandez back to Camp Nou. However, Xavi insisted he was committed to staying with Qatari club Al-Sadd.
Xavi's decision forced Barcelona to pursue other options if they were to oust Valverde. The Spanish radio station RAC 1, as reported by Mundo Deportivo, claims that Pochettino is at the top of the list of potential successors for Valverde.
According to the report, the Argentine man has the support of Barcelona club president Josep Bartomeu. The president invited Pochettino as his guest to attend the Catalan derby with Espanyol earlier this season.
But that certainly has to do with Espanyol, where he played between 1994 and 2001, and coached them between 2009 and 2012. That means, if Pochettino did coach Los Blaugarana, he would be Espanyol's main public enemy.
Pochettino previously joked that if he joined Barcelona it would be the same as signing Lionel Messi for Espanyol.
In January 2018, he also said; "I will never coach Barcelona and Arsenal because I am tied to Tottenham. I would rather be a breeder in Argentina than go and work at the two clubs."
But Bartomeu is reportedly willing to ignore the issue in order to get a deal with Pochettino. It's interesting to wait, will Pochettino follow in the footsteps of Antonio Conte - who is synonymous with Juventus but is now the coach of Inter Milan?
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