Barcelona has appointed former defender Juliano Belletti as the new manager of their B -side, Barca Atletic, for the coming season. The Brazilian has been given the difficult task of being promoted the affiliated side after a disappointing season.
Belletti is best known for scoring the winner for Barcelona in the 2006 Champions League final against Arsenal during his three-year enchantment in the club. He left in 2007 and joined Chelsea and then Fluminense and Ceera before his retirement, in 2011. Now 48 years old, Belletti is making progress as a manager.
In 2023 he returned to the club as an assistant for the staff under 19. Belletti, would then spend six months next to Rafael Marquez as an assistant in 2024 and took over the Under-19 side as head coach last summer. Now he returns to Barca Atletic as the most important man, who has previously been rolling in the youth arrangement in Sao Paulo and Cruzeiro.
The first one had reportedly pronounced a head coach role, but nothing came of it, and now Belletti has a one -year contract with Barca Atletic. This season with the Under-19-side, Belletti has lifted the Treble, including the UEFA Youth League.
It was much less rosy for Barca Atletic, who were in the play-offs last season. After Marquez's exit, Albert Sanchez took over, but struggled for most of the season. With two months to go, things improved under Sergi Mila, but he could not save them from relegation on the last day of the season. It marks a descent to the fourth level of Spanish football for the first time since 2008, when Pep Guardiola won them promotion back to Segunda B.
That was their only Dabble so low in the pyramid in Football, Spanish since 1974, four years after the team was founded. Mila proceeds to a directing rol at La Masia.