Quique Setien is on the verge of being sacked by Barcelona after the club’s Champions League campaign ended in disastrous defeat to Bayern Munich.
The 61-year-old Spaniard was only appointed in January but is expected to be relieved of his duties after Barcelona finished trophyless first time in 12 years, according to Sky Sport Italia.
Barcelona lost the La Liga title to Real Madrid and Copa del Rey to Valencia.
The decision to sack Setien comes after Barcelona’s humiliating 8-2 defeat to Bayern Munich in Lisbon on Friday night, which ended their Champions League campaign.
A brace from Thomas Muller and Philippe Coutinho and a goal each from Robert Lewandowski, Serge Gnabry, Ivan Perisic, and Joshua Kimmich, secured the win to take the dominant Bayern side to the Semi-Finals.
Barcelona’s first goal came from an own goal by David Alaba before Luiz Suarez got his side’s second goal.
At full-time Setien told reporters: ‘Right now we feel enormous frustration and all we can do is make conclusions and think about the future.
‘Barca is a club that is so great that this will cause us a lot of damage and obviously some things will have to change.
‘The truth is this is a tremendously painful defeat.
‘Barcelona want to recover their identity. Right now, it’s too soon to think about whether I will stay or not. It doesn’t depend on me.
‘We have to reflect, taking the situation into account and the importance that such a humiliating and painful defeat means.
‘I’m hurt, evidently, by such a hefty defeat.’The way it came about has been tremendously painful.
‘I’m not worried about my future right now, but a defeat that is very painful for the club and the fans.’I know what a defeat of this calibre means.
‘We have to analyse what happened today from a bigger perspective. I know that the credibility of a coach diminishes when something like this happens. This isn’t what worries me at the moment.
‘We have to accept the defeat how it is. We were beaten by a very good team.’Apart from the first few minutes, they were clearly better than us for the rest of the game.’
Barca president Josep Maria Bartomeu also had this to say after the humiliating defeat.
He told Spanish press: “It’s a really heavy defeat.
“I want to congratulate Bayern, who played a great game. They deserve to go through to the semi-finals.
“We want to apologise to the fans, members and Barcelonistas.”
“We were not the club that we represent, I am so sorry.”
“We weren’t at our best, nor near it. Today was a disaster and now we have to make decisions.
“There are some decisions that we had already made, and others that we will make over the next few days. Announcements will be made from next week, we need to make decisions after things have calmed down.
When pressed on who may be involved in those decisions, he refused to give a clearer answer.
“I’m not going to say what [decisions] they are because some of them have already been made and others will be made,” he added.
“Today is a day to reflect. From tomorrow, we’ll try to lift the spirits of all the Barcelona fans and we’ll make decisions from next week.”
