‘It Finished Me’: Setien Reflects On Barcelona’s Darkest European Night

Ex-FC Barcelona head coach Quique Setien took to the Senen Moran channel on YouTube to explain the club’s darkest European night.

Setien was famously brought in midway through the 2019/2020 campaign to replace Ernesto Valverde, as an overreaction to a Spanish Super Cup exit in January of the latter year.

The pandemic swept in not long after, and the Champions League that term switched to a one-game tournament knockout format in Lisbon which pitted Barca against Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals.

To say that Hansi Flick’s sextuple-winning outfit destroyed the Catalans would be putting it mildly. Exploiting their defensive and midfield frailties as Germany (with Flick as assistant manager) did in the 2014 World Cup semifinals, Barca suffered their darkest European night on the end of a 8-2 humbling.

Setien was unsurprisingly fired himself then replaced by Ronald Koeman. And six years on, he still doesn’t think he was given a fair shake.

Setien claims to have suffered from FC Barcelona’s success

One of the things that Setien pointed to was the likes of Lionel Messi and Co. perhaps no longer being hungry for silverware.

“The main problem I had was that they had been winning everything for 14 years, and when you win everything and know that you win 90% of the matches with relative ease, I think you relax mentally and don’t prepare properly,” Setien said.

“But of course, when the decisive matches arrive, you’re not at 100% and you suffer. And then, at my competitive age, I was no longer able to maintain the level they had had in recent years.”

Despite the defeat and ceding the La Liga title to Real Madrid, Setien believes that he did well “given the circumstances I was in”.

“It’s true we had an accident, which always happens in football, that ended my career and could have ended anyone’s. What was that result in Lisbon, against Bayern Munich? That was the final straw in the situation the club was going through, and I was the one who had to pay the price?,” Setien asked, in a nod to the financial crisis of the time that the Blaugrana was also going through.

Be that as it may, he’d have signed anyway even “if I had known everything that was going to happen”.

“Because for you, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to coach players like the ones I coached that year, and at a club that was surely, at that time, the best in the world,” he concluded.

After leaving FC Barcelona, Setien went on a two-year hiatus. He managed Villarreal in 2022/2023, and is currently unemployed after spending last season at Beijing Guoan.