Visionary Luis Enrique seeks long-term redemption with Celta Vigo

AS Roma Spanish coach Luis Enrique looks at AS Roma’s forward Francesco Totti during the Italian Serie A football match between AS Roma v Lazio at the Olympic Stadium in Rome

Pressure grew from the media as the immediate results were poor. The likes of Danielle De Rossi were fined heavily for missing training and it seemed team ethic was disappearing. Enrique had little option but to throw in the towel on his Italian venture.

At Celta Vigo, Luis Enrique is likely to enjoy significantly less media scrutiny than he did at the Giallorossi and he is back in a league which he is extremely familiar with. Not only that, but he is not tasked with changing the identity of a whole club whilst also having to ensure results. The new manager has said he “fully identifies with the club’s philosophy” and that he wants Celta to “maintain the same values that have characterised it in recent years, and that is about playing good football”.

With the Celestes having finished 17th , there is little doubt that in a position of lower expectation, Enrique will be afforded more patience as he tries to build a legacy of the adventurous, cohesive attacking football he preached in the youth set-up at Barcelona. It was in his unveiling that Luis Enrique took the opportunity to say his objective was to “play good football in keeping with the reputation of the club”.

It was a clear Barcelona-influenced system that was in effect- a 4-3-2-1 system that shifted into a 4-3-3 with Fernando Gago and Miralem Pjanic (De Rossi behind them playing the Busquets role) as two measured passers in midfield, who sought to control the game. That they managed, with an average of 58% possession over the course of the campaign, but they failed to convert that dominance into enough goals. Sometimes, some conviction shone through all the discontent and turbulence, a 5-1 thrashing of Cesena in which the team enjoyed 72% of the ball, as well as comfortable victories over Chievo or Fiorentina in the Coppa Italia being cases in point, but such performances were sporadic.

It is the flexible 4-2-3-1 that was in effect at Celta this season so Luis Enrique will not have to alter too much in the way of system; in Borja Oubina and Alex Lopez he has two comfortable centre-midfielders, intense pressers off the ball. While speed and creativity on the wings is provided by Augusto Fernandez and Michael Krohn-Dehli. Goals were a huge problem for them last term with just 35 being scored, though with Enrique’s focus on ball retention and incisive build-up, that may change in the forthcoming year.

Last season’s top-scorer, the 12-goal Iago Aspas, seems to be departing to Liverpool and former captain Roberto Lago has left for Getafe, but Enrique has already been linked with Barcelona B’s play-maker Rafinha Alcantara, Roma’s left-back Jose Angel and Brondby’s Jens Stryger Larsen as potential targets.

Though the 43-year-old has identified that he will make full use of the club’s youth set-up, picking out 17-year-old goalkeeper Ruben Blanco and Levy Midanda, the 21-year-old midfielder, as two players who would be afforded more first-team opportunities next season.

“Developing players is exciting” said Enrique. “Celta has been working on this aspect for years. You can see the infrastructure and things they have been doing well”. In the less-pressurised setting of the Balaidos, Luis Enrique is expected to be given time to fully utilise such facilities.

“I am going to fit perfectly into Celta’s philosophy” added Enrique, a bold premonition and an indication of how much trust he has in the club supplying a platform for his ambitions.

At Roma, Enrique was faced with changing the philosophy of a club along with overseeing a transition from the years of Luciano Spaletti. Patience and time were commodities that were not given to him although the club believed he was worth the trouble. In this less volatile setting on the bay of the Atlantic Ocean in north-west Spain, Enrique’s Barcelona-bred vision will be translated into professional management. Lessons will be learned from his experiment out in Serie A, but Vigo are a much different club than Roma.