He had been a short-lived coach of the Spanish national team. He will have been a no less ephemeral coach of the Monaco team. The Spaniard Robert Moreno, 42, was sacked on Saturday July 18 by the principality’s club. He will be replaced by Croatian Niko Kovac, ex-Bayern Munich coach, sources close to the club told Agence France-Presse (AFP), confirming information from The team.
Robert Moreno arrived in Monaco in December 2019. He replaced the Portuguese Leonardo Jardim, who, after being sacked in October 2018, had been dismissed a second time: returned to the Monegasque bench, he had not succeeded in replace the team where its Russian owner, Dmitri Rybolovlev, and its representative in the club, Oleg Petrov, dreamed that it was, that is to say in the very first of Ligue 1, cutting otherwise of its players.
Robert Moreno’s arrival in the Principality was a little surprise. At 42, this Catalan came out of a first and only successful experience as a main coach. From June 19 to November 19, 2019, he had acted as head of the Spanish national team, of which he was previously the assistant coach. Under his leadership, La Roja had totaled four wins and two draws in six games, qualifying for Euro 2020
Ten contested matches
On the Rock, Robert Moreno’s mission was to qualify the club again for the Champions League – and thus benefit from the income provided by this competition, a significant windfall for a club’s finances.
Covid-19 crisis requires, he will ultimately only have led about ten Ligue 1 matches. And if, on his arrival, Monaco was seventh in Ligue 1 (7 points from third qualifying place for the flagship competition European), the club finished ninth (10 points from third place) in a championship shortened by ten days, totaling under its baton, five wins, three draws, five losses.
The Monegasque leaders, who recruited in the meantime, in June, a new sports director in the person of the Englishman Paul Mitchell (he had previously supervised the various clubs of the Red Bull brand, including Salzburg and Leipzig), were waiting more regarding the game developed and the results. They felt that Robert Moreno was not in a position to take the team through this course.
At 48, his successor, Niko Kovac, comes out of a listening experience at Bayern Munich: he had been sacked by the German club in November 2019 due to the poor results of the start of the season and repeated tensions with some of the players.
Previously, he was best known for putting the Frankfurt team back on its feet, where, arriving in 2016, he won his first trophy as a coach, (the German Cup against Bayern Munich) and clinched a qualification for the Europa League.
