Villarreal announced the identity of its new coach, two days before its meeting with Hapoel Be’er Sheva in the group stage of the Conference League (Thursday at 7:45 p.m., Sport4): Kika Stein was appointed as the replacement for Unai Emery, who, as we know, released his contract in favor of signing with Aston Villa yesterday.
Stein will conduct his debut training session with the Yellow Submarine players tomorrow and will then be officially presented at a press conference, so the game against the Israeli cup holder will be his first as the Yellow Submarine coach.
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— Villarreal CF (VillarrealCF) October 25, 2022
The 64-year-old Stein has not coached a team since his colossal failure at Barcelona, where he signed in place of Ernesto Valverde during the 2019/20 season and finished without titles when in the Champions League he suffered a historic 8-2 defeat at the hands of Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals and immediately afterwards Fired in August 2020.
Stein will try to reproduce his relative success as Betis coach, a position he held between 2017 and 2019, when in his first season the green-whites finished sixth in the Spanish league table and stopped only in the semifinals of the King’s Cup.
Villarreal is ranked seventh in “La Liga” at the end of 11 rounds, five points away from third placed Atletico Madrid. In the Conference League, Steyn’s new team has a perfect record after four games.