'Nobody knows him, how can he give orders to Messi?'

Eder Sarabia has been described as the new Jose Mourinho due to his temperament on the sidelines and his behaviour in the Clasico is causing fuss
One of the doubts about Quique Setien’s Barcelona appointment was whether he could manage a dressing room crammed with big names and bigger egos, having spent most of his career coaching at lower levels. Some players are sceptical about the Cantabrian and his staff, and it reared its head this week in the furore surrounding his assistant Eder Sarabia.

Setien’s No.2 was caught raging on camera by TV stations Movistar and Gol, as Barcelona lost 2-0 in the Clasico last weekend at the Santiago Bernabeu, with Sarabia blasting several players in foul-mouthed outbursts in the dugout, angering the squad. However there is a split in opinion over Sarabia, with some figures higher up at Barcelona and a big chunk of supporters backing Setien’s assistant.
 

Eder is the son of legendary Athletic Club player Manu Sarabia, who grew up supporting his father’s club but also was hugely influenced by Barcelona’s ‘Dream Team’, which won the club the European Cup for the first time in 1992, as well as La Liga four times running between 1990 and 1994.

His father Manu played with Setien at Logrones while Eder was eight years old and it is thanks to that connection that Sarabia found his way onto Barcelona’s bench. Setien invited him to join as his assistant at Las Palmas and they have been linked ever since, operating together at Real Betis afterwards, and now in Catalonia.

As the Spanish media have pointed out this week, Setien and Sarabia is a good cop, bad cop partnership. While the veteran coach, 61, is reserved, Sarabia, 39, gets caught in the heat of the moment, as involved on the sidelines as if he were part of the starting XI. While the cerebral Setien loves chess, Sarabia is a cycling nut, a sport befitting his intensity.

Managers at Barcelona have often had influential and punishing assistants, with Sarabia potentially the Jose Mourinho to Sir Bobby Robson, or the Henk ten Cate to Frank Rijkaard. Sarabia has been sent off six times in his career, although not yet at Barcelona, and even opposition players have complained about him.

Jose Luis Gaya, the Valencia defender, complained that Sarabia was trying to put him off last season when Los Che faced Real Betis in the Copa del Rey semi-final. “He spent the whole game shouting at me, telling me to stop diving and trying to get me out of my place,” Gaya told Cadena SER radio. “It’s not the first time he’s done it. I asked Setien, ‘how can you let your assistant do these things?’”

This time around, though, the controversy rose up after he was spotted insulting his team’s own players.





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