MADRID: Former Newell’s Old Boys and Paraguay national team manager Gerardo Martino is set to become the new Barcelona coach, numerous sources in the Spanish media reported yesterday.
It is expected that the Argentine will arrive in Barcelona on Tuesday to sign a three-year deal with the Catalans, who have moved quickly to replace Tito Vilanova after he was forced to resign on Friday due to on-going ill health.
Martino, who hails from Rosario, the same city where Barca star Lionel Messi grew up, recently left Newell’s despite leading them to the Argentine Clausura title and to the Copa Libertadores semi-finals.
Previous to taking over at the Argentine club, the bulk of Martino’s managerial experience had been in Paraguay, where he won four domestic championships with Libertad and Cerro Porteno before going on to lead the national side to the quarter-finals of the World Cup in 2010 and the Copa America final a year later.
Indeed the 50-year-old had been strongly linked with a move to Real Sociedad earlier last month before deciding to stay on to manage Newell’s until the end of their Libertadores campaign.
Earlier yesterday, Puyol told a post-training news conference he was sure sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta and the club’s board would hire a coach able to adapt to Barca’s possession-based ethic.
“We know about his career, he is a very good coach,” the shaggy-haired centre back said of Martino.
“He likes Barcelona’s playing style,” he said, adding that he remembered Spain’s quarter-final against Martino’s Paraguay at the 2010 World Cup, which they edged 1-0, as “a very difficult, very hard game”. REUTERS
