Ronald Koeman looks back with a good feeling on the year he worked with Lionel Messi in Barcelona. The national coach of the Dutch national team reveals With Andy in the car! that the Argentinian superstar had a good click with Pedri from the first moment, who arrived at Barcelona together with Koeman in the summer of 2020.
Barcelona took over Pedri from Las Palmas for a relatively small sum of 7.5 million euros. Initially, the intention was to bring the then seventeen-year-old midfielder slowly, but Koeman had other plans shortly after his arrival. “In a few weeks I thought: he is going to play. He is so good, and he will be so good,” Koeman tells Andy van der Meijde.
“Messi saw that right away, he also just gave Pedri the ball,” Koeman continues, who adds that that was not a matter of course. “Messi also had with others: If I give you the ball now, we won’t keep it. Then he just skipped that player. No one dared to tackle Messi in training. Of course you don’t want to be on your conscience that you injured Messi.”
Koeman is grateful for the one year he had Messi under his wing. “I worked great with him. He respected me, I respected him. We won the cup final 4-0 (against Athletic Club, ed.), with good football, and after a bad start went on a at one point even competing for the championship. That eventually became Atlético Madrid, but Messi was happy.”
In August 2021, Koeman got the fright of his life. “Then suddenly I was told by the president that Messi was leaving because they couldn’t work it out financially. That was dramatic, really dramatic. Then you suddenly lose thirty goals and twenty assists a year. He was so good, really so good. ” Instead, Koeman only got Luuk de Jong and Memphis Depay. “And Antoine Griezmann also left. We had almost no attackers.”
In October of 2021, Koeman was fired by President Joan Laporta. “I now have something like: I don’t have to go to the stadium with this president. But I don’t have to, because I see everything on TV. Of course they were able to invest a lot afterwards and they are also doing well. I saw the Supercopa final against Real Madrid (1-3 win, ed.) in Saudi Arabia, they played great football. But yes, if you get ten, twelve new players, it becomes a bit easier. It also depends on the players. “