Barcelona go into the biggest game of their season so far against Dynamo Kiev on Tuesday without the previous coach and still waiting for the next one to arrive.

Barca president Joan Laporta said on Friday he should have sacked Ronald Koeman sooner, that the club had been “dangerously drifting” and the situation was “unsustainable”.

Xavi Hernandez is expected to be Koeman’s successor and the return of one of the club’s greatest ever players, from the iconic team of Pep Guardiola, will be hugely popular with both the players and Barcelona supporters.

Yet removing Koeman days before the trip to Kiev looks like a gamble, not least because it assumes the team had a worse chance of winning under him than they do now under interim coach Sergi Barjuan.

 

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