Rarely is there a dull moment in Can Barca, more or less ever since Ernesto Valverde left. With his sacking, it seemed as if the volcano of issues exploded at Barcelona.
One of those in the middle of that heat was Eder Sarabia. Now coaching Gerard Pique’s Andorra, Sarabia was a controversial figure as Assistant Manager to Quique Setien.
His aggressive style of intervention in matches was picked up on and many believed that he became an irritation for the veteran players.
Amongst those was Lionel Messi, but Sarabia only had kind words for the Argentine.
“He is the best player in history. Not just the best player performing, also understanding it.”
He was speaking to Catalan station RAC1 in an interview carried by Marca, within which he tried to explain Messi’s decision to send the infamous burofax. Messi formally asked to leave the club following the 8-2 humiliation against Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
“If he, with everything that he gave that club, could see that the entity maybe wasn’t up the task, it might have generated an imbalance.”
Messi was rarely a big talker, at least publicly, but according to Sarabia he bore the club’s problems internally.
“He had that worry, the disappointment… with things that seemed as if they were going to be one way and then were not. Surely for that reason he took the decision to leave the club [during the burofax incident]. It impacted on his happiness and that could have produced the break. It definitely wasn’t what Barca nor he wished for.”
One of football’s cruel ironies was that Messi was forced to stay that summer, then unceremoniously made to leave the following August. Neither Messi nor Barcelona have enjoyed a particularly good time of it since.
