Pere Gratacós

Pere Gratacós Boix (born 14 February 1958) is a Spanish retired football central defender and coach.

This article uses Spanish naming customs: the first or paternal family name is Gratacós and the second or maternal family name is Boix.

Pere Gratacós
Personal information
Full name Pere Gratacós Boix
Date of birth (1958-02-14) 14 February 1958
Place of birth Besalú, Spain
Height 1.81 m (5 ft 11 1⁄2 in)
Playing position(s) Centre back
Youth career
Besalú
1974–1976 Barcelona
Senior career*
Years Team Apps (Gls)
1976–1978 Barcelona C
1978–1983 Barcelona B 138 (3)
1979–1980 → Valladolid (loan) 14 (0)
1983–1985 Osasuna 2 (0)
1985–1993 Figueres 244 (5)
Total 398 (8)
Teams managed
1995 Figueres (interim)
1995–1997 AE Roses
1997–1999 Girona
2001–2003 Figueres
2003–2005 Barcelona B
2005–2009 Catalonia
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only

Playing career

Born in Besalú, Girona, Catalonia, Gratacós arrived at FC Barcelona's youth system in 1974 at the age of 16, going to play for several of its youth teams. He made his professional debuts with Real Valladolid in the 1979–80 season, on loan, helping to a Segunda División promotion and returning to play a further three years with Barça's reserves, where he was awarded team captaincy.[1]

Gratacós appeared in five official games with Barcelona's first team, but never in La Liga, leaving in 1983 and joining fellow league club CA Osasuna, playing in only two games in his first year in the top flight and none whatsoever in the second. In the 1985 off-season, he returned to his native region and signed for UE Figueres in Segunda División B,[2] helping to an immediate promotion to the second level.

Gratacós was an automatic first-choice for Figueres during his eight-year spell, when healthy – he started in all but seven of the league matches he appeared in. After suffering relegation in 1993, he retired from football at the age of 35.

Coaching career

Gratacós started coaching one year after retiring, although he had already worked with Figueres in directorial capacities.[3] After a brief spell as an interim manager, he was in charge of two amateur teams – also in Catalonia – during four-and-a-half seasons, returning to his main club in 2001 and making history as it became the first in division three to reach the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey, eventually losing 1–2 on aggregate against Deportivo de La Coruña after previously ousting, amongst others, Barcelona and Osasuna.[4]

Gratacós returned to Barcelona's reserves in 2003, leading them to two midtable finishes in the third tier.[5] Subsequently, he coached the Catalonia national side in six friendly games.[6][7][8]

In January 2010, Gratacós returned to Barcelona, being appointed director of Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper, the club's training ground and academy.[9] On 13 January 2017, he was sacked after he said of Lionel Messi: "Without Iniesta, Neymar and the others, he wouldn't be such a good player".[10]

gollark: Well, can you check via your networking device or something if it exists?
gollark: I see.
gollark: Old enterprisey servers boot slowly.
gollark: Maybe give it a bit of time to initialize or something.
gollark: Anyway, I run PostgreSQL for "big data" applications, by which I mean "applications which support postgres and nothing else, or which need lots of concurrent queries or something" - SQLite is not good when there are many concurrent writes, but fine in most other situations.

References
  1. Gratacós: !A Pamplona hemos de ir! (Gratacós: To Pamplona we must go!); Mundo Deportivo, 22 June 1983 (in Spanish)
  2. Figueres: 35 kilos en fichajes (Figueres: 35 kilos in signings); Mundo Deportivo, 22 July 1985 (in Spanish)
  3. Pichi Alonso concluye su etapa en el Alt Empordá (Pichi Alonso ends Alt Empordá spell); Mundo Deportivo, 23 June 1993 (in Spanish)
  4. El Figueres disfruta y sueña con entrar en la historia (Figueres enjoy and dream of making history); Mundo Deportivo, 11 January 2002 (in Spanish)
  5. Txiki no renueva a Gratacós en el B (Txiki does not renew Gratacós in B's); Mundo Deportivo, 22 June 2005 (in Spanish)
  6. Xavi es baja en el adiós de Gratacós como seleccionador de Cataluña (Xavi out in goodbye of Gratacós as Catalonia national team coach); Diario AS, 23 December 2008 (in Spanish)
  7. Cataluña quiere despedir la etapa Gratacós con un triunfo ante Colombia (Catalonia want to end Gratacós era with win against Colombia); Soitu, 27 December 2008 (in Spanish)
  8. Nombran a Cruyff técnico de la selección de Cataluña (Cruyff named Catalonia national team coach); Televisa Deportes, 2 November 2009 (in Spanish)
  9. Pere Gratacós dirige "el tesoro que quiere todo el mundo" (Pere Gratacós in charge of "everybody's most wanted treasure"); FC Barcelona, 29 January 2011 (in Spanish)
  10. Barcelona dismiss club official Pere Gratacós for remarks about Lionel Messi; The Guardian, 13 January 2017
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