Junior Firpo charges against Koeman "One day Koeman starts to lie to me"
Junior Firpo's time at FC Barcelona was very short and quite unnoticed, because at no time was the player able to compete for Jordi Alba's position. Firpo signed with the Barça team in 2019, coming from Betis.
That was how he spent two seasons with the Spanish club until he ended up leaving last summer for Leeds United for a value of 15 million euros. But the truth is that the player was never relevant in the team and even unknown to many.
The ex-Barcelona side always suffered from the situation in the team where he considered that he had no opportunities to show his talent in the Blaugrana club, with which he only managed to play 42 games in two seasons and was under the command of Ernesto Valverde, Quique Satien and Ronald Koeman.
Firpo has spoken of Koeman
This is how the full back Junior Firpo wanted to remember the Dutch coach during an interview for "Que Thi Jugues" on the SER network. In this interview, he assured that he asked him for an explanation of why he did not have the necessary minutes at the club.
From that moment the player assures that Ronald Koeman "has started to lie to him." So clearly both player and coach did not maintain a good relationship within the club.
"It is at that point, when Coach Koeman begins to lie to me, and you realize that they are deceiving you and looking at your face. Why are you going to insist on asking for explanations if in the end he knows that they are going to be cheating on you and Again. He lied to me because he told me things that simply did not make any sense, that he trained poorly, that he contaminated the group, many things like that. "
"You can ask the players who were with me at that time and who are still in the squad," explained the Dominican footballer.
"The truth is, I don't know what he meant when he told me that he contaminated the group, I suppose he was referring to my attitude. I still don't know in what sense a young person who comes to a group can contaminate him, especially a group that has won. Everything and they have been there all their lives. My opinion is not going to change their way of training at all or absolutely nothing in their way of being "; Firpo added.
Firpo was critical of the Dutchman's management at Barcelona
The Dominican full-back was also very critical of Koeman's group management : "At that time there was a lot of lack of respect and not only against me, but with all my teammates. I will never understand how after a game, when the substitutes train the next day, Koeman stayed in his living room while all of us trained".
"If I have to show you that I have to play, and you are not placing me, then the only way I have to show you is through training. When the whole group trains it is much more complicated, we are many, the exercises are done much faster, and they are tired of playing the game".
"The day that I have to show you that I really want to play and that I deserve to start or watch minutes is the day after the game where we train the substitutes heavily, and you are not here," Junior Firpo reproached Ronald in this way Koeman his way of training.
Likewise, Firpo also had time to compare the training methods of the coaches he had at Barcelona and his current coach, the Argentine Marcelo Bielsa, where he clearly stated the following:
"With no Barcelona coach we saw the videos of the rivals, not with Valverde, not with Quique and much less with Koeman. If there was a lot of talk about the rival, but an exhaustive video never or if we ever saw any video it would be very sporadically that I hardly remember".
"With Bielsa we see rather many videos of the rivals, it is quite antagonistic. I think that there must be a middle point". Explained the former Betis and Barcelona.