The Barca boss was ready for his second coaching stint in Africa before surprisingly landing the job at Camp Nou
Barcelona coach Quique Setien has revealed that he was preparing to go and coach in Egypt when the Catalan giants approached him with a job offer.
The 61-year-old joined Barca in January, replacing Ernesto Valverde in what was even a surprising move for him.
Now in the Camp Nou hot seat, Setien arrived at Barcelona after seven months without a job, then having last coached Real Betis.
During the period of unemployment, he was getting ready to start work with an unnamed Egyptian club when Barca contacted him.
“Days before Barcelona called me, I was about to leave to coach in Egypt,” Setien told El Larguero as per Marca.
“I would've coached Barcelona for free. Well, maybe not for free, but in almost any circumstance.”
Former Pyramids FC owner Turki Al-Sheikh says Setien had already signed a contract with an unnamed Egyptian club which he was about to own and the Spaniarddwas just three days away from starting work before abandoning a move to Africa.
“Setien was not about to work at Pyramids FC. The story, in a nutshell, was that I was about to own an Egyptian club and he would have been the coach and we had signed the contract,” Al-Sheikh posted on social media.
“That was before my relationship with Al-Ahly, but after that, I changed my mind. Quique Setien was about to come to Egypt and start working within three days, but he received Barcelona’s offer and I told him not to refuse. This is the story and I am not going to tell you the name of the Egyptian club.”
Had Setien joined the Egyptian club, it would have been his second stint working in Africa, having previously coached Equatorial Guinea in 2006.
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