There are 3,537 people in Liencres, 9km west of Santander, or there were. Today there is one fewer. There are also a lot of cows. “Yesterday I was walking past cows in my home town; today I was at Barcelona’s training ground coaching the best players in the world, an enormous club,” Quique Setién said at his unveiling as the new manager at the Camp Nou in place of Ernesto Valverde. “I’m an emotional manand this is a special day,” he added, and it showed. There was humility, gratitude and at times even the sense that he was overwhelmed, still trying to digest the fact that this had actually happened.

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It is some leap: not just from Liencres but from Lugo, Logroñés and Las Palmas, Poli Ejido, Racing Santander and Real Betis, the clubs where he has been before. Setién once joked that his one-match trial in charge of Equatorial Guinea, after which they did not call him back, was at least “something to go on the CV”; now that CV includes the biggest club of all. “This is the absolute pinnacle; you will never go higher than this and I have to make the players feel the same way,” he said. “Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined being here.”

Setién knew there were members of the club’s board who liked him, and few men have so publicly embraced Barcelona’s identity, as expressed by Johan Cruyff, quite like him – certainly not from the outside. Yet when the call came, he was shocked, not least because of the team he inherits. He was swift to thank Valverde, a man of “principles” whose work he was “grateful” for. “He leaves me a team that is top. When you’re there, out of work, waiting for an opportunity, you imagine a team that’s down the bottom, in trouble. It’s not normal to take over a team that’s first,” Setién said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Quique Setién (left) sits in the Barcelona dugout with assistant coac Éder Sarabia, goalkeeper coach Jon Pascua and physical trainer Fran Soto. Photograph: Álex Caparrós/Getty Images

“I didn’t even have to think about it for five minutes; it was inevitable,” he continued. “They called yesterday. You read things in the papers but I never really expected Barcelona to choose me. It all happened in a hurry. I don’t have a CV, winners’ medals. All I have are many, many years [embracing] that philosophy, I love it. I don’t know if that was enough to get this sort of opportunity but I am absolutely grateful for it.”

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The call that had come the previous day was a little embarrassing for the president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, who had tried to suggest that this was not an improvised solution sought when Xavi and Ronald Koeman turned Barcelona down. Bartomeu also admitted that he would have liked to have “done things differently” when it came to the manner in which they sacked Valverde.

Otherwise Setién said all the right things, including the message that youth team players could expect opportunities if they earn them, the declaration that he comes with “enormous energy”, the enthusiasm in every word, and his desire to add the “intensity” and “work” to ensure that games such as the 3-2 defeat in the Spanish Super Cup which precipitated Valverde’s departure “do not escape us”. Above all, the recurring theme was his commitment to a philosophy that is supposed to define Barcelona, one which he said would be “clear”.

These were not platitudes; these were the truth – Setién has said them before, when he did not have to, not just now when he did. He once said he would have cut off his little finger to have played for Cruyff, Barcelona’s great ideologue, and he once claimed he would “not stop crying” the day Messi retired. At least he can now say that he has worked with him. “I’m still not fully conscious of the fact that I’m coaching the best player in the world and his teammates,” Setién said.

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“He’s a unique, special player. [But] it’s not just [Messi]. I have spent many years, many hours, watching them on television; they have made me enjoy football and not just every so often; it’s been every game,” Setién said. “I have no problem saying I’ve admired them for 12 years, but admiration is one thing and Messi is Messi, Busquets is Busquets, Piqué [too], but everyone has to be in their place. I’m sure the relationship will be extraordinary. I am direct, honest. I don’t beat about the bush. If there is something I don’t like, I will say so.

“What I always say in these situations is that I will only guarantee one thing: that my team will play well. Las Palmas, Lugo, Betis … if you followed them, you know we had an identity. You saw it, we played good football. The thing is, this is Barcelona and they always play well anyway. We’re clear on that. I have convictions: once an idea’s in my head, it’s very hard to get it out. I defend my ideas. If I have to die with them, I’ll die.”