Oscar Garcia has been installed as the new Head Coach of Brighton and Hove Albion, less than a week after Gus Poyet found out he had been dismissed whilst working for the BBC on their Confederations Cup coverage. Garcia arrives with a burgeoning reputation after a successful stint in Israel but remains a gamble for Brighton, who were unquestionably on an upward curve under Poyet. Can Garcia take them a step further and lead them to the promised land of the Premier League?
The 40-year-old Spaniard will take up his newly-created post on Thursday when he will immediately begin the club’s pre-season training programme. Last month, the former Barcelona player quit as coach of Israeli side Maccabi Tel-Aviv, where he won the club’s first title in 10 years. He was in the post for exactly one year. Prior to his stint in Israel, Garcia had worked on Johan Cruyff’s coaching staff of the Catalonia national team and was involved in the nurturing of talent in Barcelona’s famed youth academy.
Maccabi have also announced that assistant manager Ruben Martinez and fitness coach Juan Torrijo Navarro have followed Garcia to Brighton.
As a player he was known simply as Oscar and represented Barcelona, Espanyol and Valencia among others, making 169 La Liga appearances over the course of 12 seasons, scoring 31 goals. The attacking midfielder also scored twice when representing Spain at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
Without doubt, Garcia possesses a strong playing and coaching CV and Brighton fans can expect some attractive football to go with their beautiful new stadium, the Amex at Falmer. They can expect Garcia and his team to concentrate heavily on his players’ technical skills and, being from the Barcelona school, a good deal of tika-taka too. Slick passing and ball retention will be the order of the day when the new team take charge of pre-season on Thursday, with just 6 weeks to indoctrinate their players before the new season begins at Elland Road against Leeds United on August 3rd.
Garcia joins Brighton after a difficult end to the season in which the club lost in the playoff semi-finals to Crystal Palace in acrimonious circumstances after excrement was found in the away dressing room at the Amex stadium shortly before the Palace team were due to arrive. The visitors subsequently won the second leg 2-0, before defeating Watford in extra time at Wembley to seal their return to the Premier League. Ian Holloway, the Crystal Palace manager, was quoted as saying that the prank “helped” to motivate his team.
Since then, a series of events have compounded to make the situation at Brighton extremely delicate.
Gus poyet———–It is a well known fact that he already knew that his dismissal was pending and his representatives were informed at around 7-15.He said he would appeal the decision,not to get his job back but for the compensation I suspect .