‘Doubt’ and ‘mistrust’ take hold of Ronald Koeman, writes Sport Thursday. According to the sports newspaper, the new Barcelona coach complains to his loved ones about the ‘unnecessarily difficult situation’ in which he ended up at the hands of the club management. Koeman thinks his relationship with the players group is complicated by administrative decisions that he must support publicly.

Barcelona will start the new season in LaLiga on Sunday with a home game against Villarreal. In the run-up to the match, Koeman is positive and hopeful towards the press, but in conversations with his ‘best friends’ his doubts would emerge. The reporting of Sport is supported by an article in Marca: the sports newspaper from Madrid cites the departure of Ivan Rakitic, Arturo Vidal, Nélson Semedo and Luis Suárez as examples.

While Koeman publicly supports those decisions, not all of them came from his sleeve. However, he is ‘the face’ of the decisions and Koeman fears that this will put pressure on his relationship with the other players. Chairman Josep Maria Bartomeu and part of the club board have left Koeman ‘defenseless’, it sounds. Initially he was delighted to start working at Barcelona, ​​now he sees more and more things that he ‘totally disliked’.

Further points Marca on the ‘complicated role’ that Koeman has in the Camp Nou. On the one hand, he must provide stability after the humiliating Champions League elimination and subsequent administrative crisis; on the other hand, partly due to the corona crisis, he has no financial means to shape his team as he sees fit with new purchases. He no longer sees the situation as rosy as during his honeymoon in Barcelona, ​​is the conclusion.