Successful?
Thanks by the way….
He won UEFA Youth league with Barca in 2017-18 after beating Chelsea in the final (3-0). That Chelsea team had players like Reece James, Hudson-Odoi and Guehi starting and Lamptey also came off the bench in 2nd half.
Better known players from that Barca team are Inaki Pena (now our 2nd GK), Juan Miranda (LB from Betis, think he was linked to Brighton few months ago as his contract is expiring) and Riqui Puig who was quite highly rated at that time but is now playing for LA Galaxy.
Pimi then took over Barca B team (Barca Atletic/BA) and in three years he qualified for the promotion playoffs in Segunda B (Spanish 3rd tier) twice but failed to be promoted. Have to take into account though that our B team feature a lot of young players (most are U20/21 and 2-3 are a bit older, like 22-23) and they are competing against full grown up men aged 30 and more. While our youngsters are more talented than players from other teams experience and physicality plays a big role at that level too.
Another thing is at that time we already started to aggressively promote youngsters to the first team so likes of Fati, Pedri and Gavi never played for BA. OTOH Ronald Araujo played under Pimienta for a full season before making breakthrough to the first team and he improved quite a lot.
All things considered I think Pimi did well, most fans and La Masia enthusiasts were happy with him and wanted him to stay but he had disagreements with Laporta (who was elected few months earlier) and got sacked in June 2021. Some reports suggested he wanted a first team job at time Koeman was under big pressure but we'll probably never know what really happened.
Then he took over Las Palmas in January 2022, started poor but finished season strong. They qualified for promotion playoffs in Segunda (2nd Division) but lost against rivals Tenerife. He did get Las Palmas promoted next season though.
Had a solid first half of this season mostly down to stable defense and good form of their GK Alvaro Valles but their form in second part was terrible. They've last won in February. Struggled to score most of the season but lack of a good striker was especially evident in their form from mid-March until May when they've lost 8 consecutive games while only scoring one single goal. They finished the season with three draws which was enough to stay up but it was pretty much known for weeks that Pimienta will leave. He was linked to Sevilla and I'm still expecting him to end up there although not sure if that's the best club for him given the state they're in (in need of a big rebuild). But obviously going from Las Palmas to Sevilla would be a step up in his managerial career.
Personally I think Pimi is a solid manager and would like to see him in a team with better attacking talent. He sets up the team pretty well and plays nice football and he's also good at developing youngsters. So I could see why he would be interesting to your board but at the same time you probably have better options. Would be happy if he would get the job and would follow him though.
