Three years after he walked off the Camp Nou pitch for the last time as a player, Sergio Busquets is back on the payroll. Barcelona confirmed on Monday that the midfielder has joined Barca Atletic as an assistant coach, and the Sergio Busquets Barcelona return is exactly the kind of homecoming Culers have been quietly hoping for since he hung up his boots.
The 38-year-old will work under head coach Juliano Belletti in the club’s reserve side while he completes his coaching qualifications. Here is the club’s statement, via Barca Blaugranes:
Sergio Busquets joins Barça Atlètic as assistant coach from this Monday. The Barça legend is joining Juliano Belletti’s team to bring his experience and football knowledge to the Barça team while he completes his coaching course. In this way, Busquets returns to the Club three years after putting an end to his time as a first team player.
What the Sergio Busquets Barcelona role actually involves
This is a deliberately unglamorous first step, and that is the point. Busquets is mid-badges, so an assistant’s job at Barca Atletic gives him a season of real coaching life — training plans, matchday management, the daily grind of developing teenagers — without the exposure of a head-coach role somewhere he would be judged on results from week one. Plenty of great players have gone the other way and regretted it.
For the club, the arithmetic is even simpler. Busquets spent 15 seasons redefining what a holding midfielder could be, then two and a half more at Inter Miami before retiring at the end of the MLS season last December. Barca Atletic is full of players trying to learn the thing he was better at than anyone: reading a game half a second before it happens, and finding the pass that kills the press. You cannot teach that in a slideshow, but you can put it in the building.
A reserve side worth watching
He joins a squad that is already ticking over nicely. Barca Atletic beat L’Hospitalet 2-0 in their opening friendly at the weekend, Shane Kluivert and new arrival Ignasi Quer getting the goals, Mundo Deportivo report. The next run-out comes on Wednesday against CE Europa, behind closed doors at the Estadi Johan Cruyff.
The second team has rarely mattered more. Barcelona are banking on the academy production line for both first-team depth and balance-sheet relief — the club expect a €26m windfall from La Masia sales this summer alone — while the brightest of the current crop, including 16-year-old Ebrima Tunkara, are already being fought over across Europe. Having a Barca lifer in the coaching staff, teaching the way this club has always wanted to play, is not a small detail.
There is a sentimental read on all this too, and there is no shame in it. Busquets was a La Masia boy from Badia del Valles who won everything there was to win, captained the side, and left quietly. Now he is back where he started, on the training pitch at the Ciutat Esportiva, learning a new trade. Welcome home, Busi.
