Frank Rijkaard stays with Barcelona

Frank Rijkaard will stay at the Nou Camp, says Laporta.

There have been voices that anticipated a premature Frank Rijkaard departure from F.C. Barcelona after losing the Spanish Primera Division last weekend. But the Catalan president, Juan Laporta, sustains that Rijkaard won’t leave the BlauGrana side this summer.

Barcelona started as favourites
Barcelona has just ended a not so successful season. The 2006/2007 stage hasn’t brought them a trophy while the expectations where running high and Barca was considered favourite both for the La Liga title and to defend their 2006 Uefa Champions League trophy.
Starting the season with world finest football superstars like Ronaldinho, Messi, Deco, Eto’o, Xavi and all the others the Catalan’s seemed to control the Primera Division right from the start. And they did control it right until five match-days from the end of the season, when they lost the top spot to arch rivals Real Madrid.

And ended with nothing
As they did in their domestic championship, Barcelona’s international performance was even worse as they lost in the Champions League mid-stages against Liverpool and ended their European season, without managing to defend their title.
The Spanish Copa del Rey was exited by Barcelona in the semi-finals as they managed to lose a first round 4-2 advantage against Getafe, completing a disappointing 2006 season.

Frank Rijkaard and his mistakes
In my opinion Frank Rijkaard is a very good coach for Barcelona. But his major mistake was that he went along with his superstars and couldn’t find the motivation to equalize Barcelona’s last years performance. It was obvious that Ronaldinho lacked in shape the whole season, although surprisingly he ended as Barca’s 2007 top goalscorer. The Brazilian star couldn’t handle all the received glory and the superstar status affected his performance as it did with some other Catalan players. Rijkaard has failed to motivate his squad in the crucial moments of the season and he and his players let the impression of superficiality during certain stages of the year.
There have also been reports off a dispute between Rijkaard, Ronaldinho and Eto’o and this contributed also perhaps to bad weather in Barcelona’s dressing room.
One more thing that I would have against the dutch coach is that he did not concentrate Barcelona’s game more on Lionel Messi a player in great shape, as he observed that Ronaldinho was lacking in pace.
But all the arguments above are normal to a human been who can always make mistakes, but the important thing is to learn from them. And Frank Rijkaard has to stay at Nou Camp, learn from this season and coach the team towards some other great successes.

Juan Laporta’s opinion

‘We are all responsible to differing degrees of blame and responsibility. We share the profound disappointment of members and fans, especially because of the way we missed out on the league and the cup.’

‘Rijkaard will be the coach next season and he is fully motivated to do so. He will be quite aware of the measures to be taken and knows what errors have been committed.’