Barcelona have fired Garcia Pimienta, their highly-rated B team coach, according to well-placed sources. The news comes a shock to Barcelona supporters given Garcia Pimienta was a legitimate option to succeed Ronald Koeman when the Dutchman’s future was up in the air a few weeks ago.
🔥🔥🔥Noticia @espn @espnfc @ESPNDeportes 🔥🔥🔥
El @FCBarcelona_es acaba de echar a Garcia Pimienta…
— moisESPN (@moillorens) June 11, 2021
Garcia Pimienta has gotten the B team playing excellent football during his time in charge. 46 and born in Barcelona, he came through La Masia himself and played for Barcelona C and Barcelona B before, briefly, representing the first team in 1997. Loans to Extremadura and Figueres followed, before he settled at Hospitalet and Sant Andreu.
Garcia Pimienta hung up his playing boots in 2004 and became a youth coach at Barcelona in 2006, becoming the assistant at Barcelona B in 2015. He took charge of Barcelona B in 2018, a position he’s retained until just this morning.
The news comes to a shock to many, who had labelled Garcia Pimienta as being a man who’d be involved in the first team picture sooner rather than later; his dismissal comes as part of an expected shake-up of La Masia by the extraordinarily busy Joan Laporta.
