FC Goa have signed 40-year-old Spanish manager Sergio Lobera Rodriguez as their head coach for the 2017-18 season, Goal can confirm.
After three seasons under Zico where they made it into the knockouts on two occasions, FC Goa and the Brazilian parted ways at the end of last campaign where they finished at the bottom of the pile.
Lobera last coached in Morocco for Moghreb Tetouan from where he was dismissed last month due to a string of poor results.
He has famously worked for Barcelona's youth academy for eight years between 1999 and 2007. Lobera guided Barcelona’s Alevin A side in the Futbol 7 Preferente league on an unbeaten run for two consecutive seasons.
He has also worked as an assistant coach at Barcelona for a month alongside late Tito Vilanova with whom he had crossed paths earlier when the latter was the technical director at Terrassa at the beginning of his coaching career.
He was appointed as the head coach of Las Palmas when they plied their trade in the second division before being dismissed.
At Barcelona’s academy, he has worked with the likes of Sergio Busquets, Bojan Krkic, Jonathan Dos Santos, Jordi Alba, Oriol Romeu and more.
FC Goa remained unavailable to comment on the above mentioned development.