Miralem Pjanic picks up in an interview with marca pruning hard to Ronald Koeman. The 31-year-old midfielder, who has been leased by Barcelona to Besiktas, does not have a good word for the working method of the Dutch trainer. Pjanic accuses Koeman of never having a decent conversation with him and of treating him disrespectfully.
Pjanic came over from Juventus last year through a remarkable exchange construction. “My situation was complicated from the start,” explains the Bosnian midfielder. “I arrived two weeks later than the rest. I slowly but surely started to increase the training intensity to prepare for the physical game the trainer wanted to play. Two, three, four, seven, ten days passed and the coach He never came to talk about what he expected from the season and from me, or just to chat and introduce me to the squad. Like the rest of the coaches do. Very strange, but okay.”
At that time, Pjanic could not have foreseen how the season would go. “It was just the beginning, okay, take it easy. I worked hard and wanted to fight to get playing time and get better. Time passed and every now and then I got to play. I was very good and played my matches, but I of course wanted more: to give more for the team. I’m someone who always gives the maximum and wants to keep giving more. Then there came a time when I started playing less and then the situation got more complicated.”
From the second half of the season, Koeman hardly called on Pjanic anymore. “Then once you play, it’s hard physically and mentally to be okay. Your confidence is also affected, because there is no communication with him anymore. It was very strange. In the end, a coach is just the one who says who is playing and who doesn’t, but there are other ways to solve situations I’m a player who can accept anything but I want to hear everything in my face And I don’t want to be treated like I’m fifteen and like nothing I fought to the end, I dealt with the guys professionally and always worked to get better I agreed to a cut in my salary and a transfer to Besiktas because I love playing football .”
Pjanic himself points to the match against Juventus on December 8, 2020 as a turning point in his season. “I played all the games in the Champions League, we won 0-2 in Turin. Then LaLiga started again and suddenly I almost never played anymore.. Then it is very difficult to understand what a coach wants from you. I asked him “Sir, am I doing something wrong? Is my attitude bad? What exactly do you want from me?” He may have wanted something different from my previous trainers. I was told, “No, no, it’s just rotation. I have no problem with you, your attitude is good.” “Well, fine, but then I never played again. I didn’t understand why. He’s a very strange coach, it was the first time I saw this kind of management. I’ve never had any problems with my previous coaches or teams.”
Pjanic had fellow sufferers at Barcelona. “I wasn’t the only one who never played,” he may be referring to Samuel Umtiti, Junior Firpo and Riqui Puig. “How do you think it was for me? From the end of February to May I played almost nothing. I was very disappointed, sad. It is a very difficult situation to accept, but I started to fight in training. If I can train, I will. The players who don’t play during the matches train harder, while the basic players recover for the next match. The worst thing for me was that the coach was never there to judge the reserves during training. How can a player motivate or show himself, if the coach doesn’t even come and see how we train or what attitude we have? that’s one of the worst things for me, for me that’s a very big lack of respect. I have now found a solution to play, I am happy with that.”