Carles Cuadrat Xiqués (born 28 October 1968) is a Spanish professional football manager and former player who is the current head coach of Indian Super League club East Bengal.
Cuadrat was a defender, who played as a left-back and spent most of his career with Spanish club CF Gavà. He also played for FC Barcelona reserves as well as the Spanish national youth teams.
After retiring as a player, Cuadrat started working as a conditioning coach with various Barcelona teams from 1998 to 2005. He also played the same role in Galatasaray and Saudi Arabia national team from 2008 to 2013. In 2014, he joined El Salvador national team as an assistant coach. In 2016, Cuadrat joined Indian club Bengaluru as an assistant coach to Albert Roca and later appointed as the head coach in 2018. He won the Indian Super League with the club.
After assistant coaching spells at Aris Limassol and Midtjylland, Cuadrat joined East Bengal in 2023.
Playing career
Born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Cuadrat played for various clubs in the Spanish second division. He joined La Masia at age of ten in 1978. He played for all the FC Barcelona youth teams between 1978 and 1988. Cuadrat was also part of the FC Barcelona side that won the U19 Spanish Cup in 1986 and 1987. In 1988, Cuadrat played for FC Barcelona's first team in couple of friendlies under then head coach Luis Aragones alongside the likes of Gary Lineker and Bernd Schuster at the Camp Nou. He played fourteen times for Spanish national youth teams (U15 & U18) during his youth years most notably finishing third in the 1985 UEFA European Under-16 Championship.
Cuadrat played for Catalonian clubs FC Barcelona B, CF Gavà and CE Sabadell in Segunda División B between 1988 and 1998. With his playing career cut short by injury in 1998 at the age of 30, Cuadrat began working as a Physical Coach for the FC Barcelona Youth Academy.
Coaching career
During his second stint as a player at CF Gavà he also worked as director at CF Gava Youth Academy between 1995 and 1998. In 1998 he joined the FC Barcelona under–15 team as assistant and physical coach under Albert Benaiges. He worked as coach and physical trainer for various FC Barcelona youth teams in years followed.
In 2009 Cuadrat joined former FC Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard's technical staff as Physical trainer at the Turkish giants Galatasaray. He was also in the technical staff Rijkaard at Saudi Arabia between 2011 and 2013. In 2014, when Albert Roca, who was assistant coach to Frank Rijkaard at Galatasaray and Saudi Arabia, became manager of El Salvador, he enlisted service of Cuadrat as assistant coach. Cuadrat, 54, began his coaching career in India in 2016 as the Assistant Coach of Bengaluru FC (BFC). He moved to then I-League side Bengaluru FC, who moved to the Indian Super League in 2017, with Roca in 2016 as an assistant coach. During his two-year stint, the club won the Federation Cup in 2017, Super Cup in 2018 apart from being the first Indian side to reach the AFC Cup final in 2016. On 29 December 2017 Carles Cuadrat parted ways with the club by mutual consent owing to health concerns.
After Albert Roca's departure as head coach at the end of 2017–18 season, Bengaluru FC appointed Cuadrat as head coach for 2018–19 season. He led them to their maiden Indian Super League title in his first season as head coach. Having won the 2018–19 Indian Super League final 1–0 against FC Goa, Cuadrat's Bengaluru FC side became the only team in the history of the League to have finished in first place in the regular league and win the title in the same year.
In 2019–20, Cuadrat took the team back to the playoffs in the Indian Super League for a third consecutive season, being the only club in the Indian Super League to reach the playoff in every appearance. The feat also made Bengaluru FC the first team to reach the playoff as defending champions, since ATK in the 2015–16 edition of the tournament. Defending champions had failed to make it to the top four the following season, with ATK (in 2015) and Bengaluru FC (in 2020) the only teams to do so. However, it was ATK that stopped Bengaluru's charge to the final with an aggregate win of 3–2 in the playoffs. The Kolkata side would go on to claim the title, winning 3–1 against Chennaiyin FC in the final.
Under Cuadrat, Bengaluru has set many Indian Super League and club records: