Gerardo Martino named new coach of FC Barcelona

News coming from FC Barcelona indicate that the club has reached an agreement to sign Gerardo Martino as the new first team manager for at least for the next two seasons. A statement from www.FCBARCELONA.COM however indicates that he is yet to sign the contract. The schedule for his trip to FC Barcelona is to be announced in the next few hours. the statement said. 

The Rosario born argentine aka ‘Tata’, and now the new first team boss at Barça, has extensive experience of South American football, both as a player and after as a coach. Most recently at Newell's Old Boys, he won the 2013 Final Tournament.

This would make Gerardo Martino the fourth Argentine manager in FC Barcelona history after Roque Olsen, Helenio Herrera and César Luis Menotti.

Gerardo ‘Tata’ Martino has imposed a very specific style of football in Argentina and Paraguay, the only two countries where he has managed until now. a series of quotes from the Argentine in the South American press that give a good idea of his approach to the game master are presented below: 

“Winning is an imperious need to ensure conviction, but the message needs to be coherent: we cannot play one game one way and then another in another” Perfil, May 26, 2012.

“I go for possession, attacking, putting a lot of men in the opposing half, taking risks, making sure the defenders look back and for there to be forty metres between them and the keeper, for them not to stop playing the ball, when they have to move up, they move up, when they have to use the wings, they use the wings, and the ball shouldn’t be in the air unless there’s a reason...” Perfil, May 26, 2012.

"The football player is the most important thing of all. Coaches are better or worse depending on the players we are in charge of. The coach is never above the people executing his orders (the players). People have made far too much a thing of the role of coaches” Fox Sports, April 15, 2012.

"In youth football, we need to get back to working on skills” Fox Sports, April 15, 2012.

"I was a skills-based player, I played well but ran little. Under Bielsa I learned that you need to do other things in order to play. It was a matter of survival” Fox Sports, April 15, 2012.

"From a coach’s point of view, I’d say Argentinian football is among the most difficult and competitive in the world. From a spectator’s of view, I’d say I could only watch at most ten minutes of game of Argentinian football” La Nación, January 24, 2012.