Kiki Sittin did not fulfill his dream of representing Barcelona as a player in the eighties, but was rewarded by fate by sitting on the coach's seat at the Camp Nou court after he was officially announced as coach of the Catalan team to succeed Ernesto Valverde who was sacked.
Kiki Seiten, 61, told Dutch legend Johan Cruyff, who had a concept of universal ball, one day in Santander when he was a player that he was going to give up his little finger to play in Barcelona.
Sittin, who loves chess, loves the "dream team", which Cruyff coached with Barcelona and which broke all football plans, and his style still exists today as an indelible legacy and part of the DNA of Barcelona.
“All I am as a coach owes to what I ran behind the ball when I played against Barcelona,” Kiki Sittin emphasized in a previous statement, as his style fits with his idol Cruyff, which is to start playing the ball from the goalkeeper and possession and take the back passes to attract competitors, which is one One of his distinguishing features in all the teams he trained.
Short balls, exchanging centers, building attacks from behind, convergence between the three lines, strangling the opponent with advanced defense, raising the value of spaces and retrieving the ball, not only that but he has flexibility in quoting ideas, on paper he appears to play in the usual way of Barca, but his plans vary between 3-4-3, 4-1-1-1 and 4-2-1-1.
That is the closest approach to Barcelona’s famous Tiki Taka philosophy. Kiki Sittin led his former team Real Betis during the last season (19-19-2018) to achieve a unique achievement that was not achieved in 16 years, as he became the first team in the Spanish league to win away from Real on Real Madrid. Madrid in "Santiago Bernabeu" and Barcelona in "Camp Nou" in one season, since the season (2002-2003).
Who is Kiki Sittin?
Kiki was born on September 27, 1957 in Santander, capital of the Cantabria region, which lies between the Basque Country and the Principality of Asturias in northern Spain.
He started his football career as a player with Racing Santander in 1977 and continued with them until 1985, who witnessed a qualitative shift in his football career by moving to Atletico Madrid and played with him until 1988, then he moved to Logronis and defended his colors until 1992 to return to his hometown of Racing until 1996 and then finished His football career with Levante in the same year.
Citin was a distinguished midfielder with Santander for 12 seasons in two separate periods, and was crowned with Atletico Madrid with the Spanish Super Cup season (1984-85).
Kiki played internationally for Spain first and appeared for the first time on November 20, 1985 in a friendly match with Austria held in the city of Zaragoza to be invited in the preliminary list of the Spanish national team participating in the 1986 World Championship, but he left it.
Extensive experience without titles
Kiki waited four years from the time of his retirement to appear in the training world, which began in 2001 with his hometown of Racing Santander in the second division and continued with him only one season, and he escalated the team to the Spanish first division in 2002.
He spent short periods with Poly Ejido, Equatorial Guinea and Logronis, before taking over the technical leadership of the Galician Logo Club, and succeeded in escalating the team to the second division in 2012 after a total of six seasons from 2009 to 2015.
The most important shift in Kiki's coaching career was in 2015 when he first trained a team in the first division "La Liga" and succeeded in lifting the club from the relegation zone to 11th place at the end of the season to leave the team after two seasons following a dispute with the management.
After the name he made for himself in Las Palmas, Kiki took over Real Betis in May 2017, and achieved with the Andalusian club an advanced position in La Liga to qualify for the European League in its first seasons.
In his last seasons with the Seville-based club, Kiki bid farewell to "Europa League" from the 32nd round at the hands of the French Rennes, finished tenth in La Liga and led the team to the King's Cup semi-finals before he left in the summer of 2019.
Messi lover
Kiki has never hidden his love for Barcelona in more than one situation, when he said when he resigned from Betis: "When a player like Xavi retires, it is like grabbing a liver. As for Messi, history has never known him, and when the day of his retirement comes, I will cry forever."
Barcelona's new coach always praises Argentine Lionel Messi, the star and captain of the team, and considers him the best player in football history.
It seems that fate rewarded him again to join Messi at Camp Nou, but his crying may be more rampant when he watches Messi's retirement as he coaches him.
No comments:
Post a Comment