(Reuters) – Barcelona have fired coach Ronald Koeman after a 1-0 loss to Rayo Vallecano on Wednesday in the Spanish Championship, the Catalan club said.
“FC Barcelona fired Ronald Koeman tonight as head coach,” the club said on Twitter.
Barcelona are ninth in the LaLiga with 15 points from 10 games, six points behind leaders Real Madrid, who beat them 2-1 at Camp Nou on Sunday.
The team are third in the Champions League group, with three points from three games, after suffering 3-0 defeats in their first two games against Bayern Munich and Benfica.
Barcelona are five-time European champions and the results represent the first time in history that the club has failed to score in the first two games of the European competition.
Koeman, who spent six years at Barça as a player, was brought back to the club in August 2020 by former president Josep Maria Bartomeu.
New boss Joan Laporta, however, often made it clear that Dutch was not his nomination.
The pair had a difficult relationship, with Koeman last month releasing a statement asking for time to rebuild the team after losing Lionel Messi and Antoine Griezmann in the transfer window.
However, the wish was not granted and the club will now look for a replacement for the 58-year-old coach.
(Reporting by Joseph Walker, Rohith Nair, Manasi Pathak and Fernando Kallas)
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