Barcelona end of the season.
A day after receiving Athletic Bilbao, the Dutch coach wanted to emphasize that “my job is to prepare for the matches” and his small desire to “spend energy on other issues”, but when asked directly about the report from the secretariat technically, he was surprised to show your support.
“It’s always important to have those in the club working to improve the team,” he said, adding that players can’t be upset because we talk to them every day and these things happen in any club. I don’t see any problem. “
“Here my job is to prepare the team for the games ahead of us, and Ramón Planes’ job is to try to improve the team. If things go well, he will have to explain them because I don’t read much press either and I’m not sure what it happened “, he solved the coach, emphasizing that his job” is to think about the game, the rest doesn’t interest me “.
“It’s not my job to talk about losses. It’s my job to prepare for the games and at the end of the season we’ll see what can happen,” he said when asked about the losses specified in the report, especially that of a network. with which the secretariat has no technique but to whom, in the first person, it closed the door of a possible exit in this winter market.
Regarding what was reported in the Umtiti and Mingueza report, Koeman was evasive, stating that “a Barça player must always be prepared for anything. Umtiti has been out of injury for some time, has recovered well and we rely on Mingueza he played a lot of games, we raised him to the first team and he played as a central and lateral defender, then we will see what can happen in the future because nobody knows.
“I don’t know what will happen to Eric García right now. I’m not interested at the moment because it’s none of my business, but it’s not up to a player to just say whether we’re fighting for a title or not,” he said of the center-back. Manchester City, warning that he did not speak to Guardiola on the subject: “I spoke to Pep to congratulate him on his 50th birthday, but not from Eric because it is none of my business. We know that next season will probably come and if so, if it doesn’t come now, we will continue with what we have. “
After confirming that Todibo will not return “because he is a Barça player, but I have already said that I do not have him” and leaving Sergi Roberto’s presence in the air in the match against Athletic, Koeman proclaimed that the team’s ambition “always we have to win titles … but we have to be realistic. “
“We know the situation in the league. There is a long distance of points and it is complicated, but as long as possible we will try to win our games. There are several teams in the Champions League and there are no clear favorites. Now there will be two games against PSG and we will try to pass “, he summed up, repeating that this season is particularly difficult.
“It’s a season where we change things, we opt for young people … Today Barça is not there to win many things and we have to be realistic about where we come from and what we change. Barça must always be ready to fight for everything, but we must be clear about things, “he warned.
Finally, regarding the match against Athletic, Koeman warned that neither he can surprise Marcelino nor Marcelino on him “because we have already been two games in a row and we know how we can play”. with a special emphasis on fixed parts.
“They get a lot of performance from mistakes, from corners … They go very well from the top and we have to defend well. They look for mistakes for those games and you have to see what the referee signals and try not to make unnecessary mistakes. “, he said, recalling that in previous clashes between the two teams, Barça had as many options to win the one they won as the one they lost in the Super Cup.
“In both games we had a lot of chances to win. We have already talked about what happened in the Super Cup. It is a strong team that gets a lot of performance from the sets and we have to be very careful. We have to continue with the path we have followed Lately, we have improved with the ball and we have to continue on the same lines “, he closed.