I cannot remember when I last watched FC Barcelona play and enjoyed it.
But I’ve taken to looking for old DVD’s of Ronaldinho, of Messi, of Iniesta and Xavi and Pujol, of Valdes, and Guardiola, and Johan Cruyff, in an exercise of nostalgia for those halcyon days when a team came together under a manager and a president, struck a harmonious note, and gave us pure magic-the kind of football you would remember for the rest of your life.
Nostalgia is a risky business for it draws us into the potential realm of fantasy, the belief that no-one gets older, that the context stays the same, that time stops still-that the world waits for our resurrection.
So let me return my reality check to the present. Barca is a team without a thread or a body. It plays without passion, solidarity, or strategy. It is rudderless. It is not just the team but a club that has lost its reputation, and in so doing its sense of self.
The ‘Mas que un Club’ motto has become bad joke after a year in which two of its star players have been accused of questionable payments (Neymar) and alleged tax evasion (Messi), its sporting director has been sacked after a disastrous transfer policy that has not produced duds but breached international rules, and its longest serving president Jose Luis Nunez is in jail.
By contrast Joan Laporta, the man who led the opposition to the autocratic Nunez and launched the club into the most magical period in its history under his own presidency, was cleared of charges made against him of financial mismanagement, and now wants to come back to rescue Barca from its mess.
Laporta has said he would like to bring Gaurdiola back with him, along with Johan Cruyff in some capacity or other. All three men have got older (in Cruyuff’s case-much older)and the dream teams they once presided over have evaporated. FC Barcelona doesn’t need a magic wand. It needs a serious and credible plan of reconstruction. Laporta is I believe the man Barca needs to come back,but lets hear less demagoguery from him and more realism, more football and less partisan politics,and a manager that doesn’t want to emulate Mourinho, but rather loses or wins, with grace.
Yes, the over-quoted moto “More than a club” is now turning into a sick joke for true Barça supporters.
I do however truly applaud your most critical blog to date. It seems the penny has dropped, even though the writing on the wall was there for all to see after Guardiola´s cowardly abandonment of Barça after that painful semi final defeat to Chelsea.
To the long and admirable list you have given, I would add the Qatar connection. Shouldn’t there be an investigation into how that deal was landed? That Blatter secured the ludicrous world cup venue there after Barcelona had signed with Qatar and is now being investigated, jars a bit, no? How did Qatar convince the Barça junta, Guardiola etc. that a dictatorship should follow the footsteps of the previous sponsor, UNESCO?
Nor do you mention another myth: the Masia. The Barça spin is that they fabricate players. The reality is that they spend around 100 million euros every year on new players!!!
Recently, this annual shopping spree, to patch over the failings of the Masia, has been such a calamity, that poor old Zubi was kicked out.
And as the saying goes, where there is smoke, there is a fire. Do you really believe Laporta is a squeaky clean person and that the charges of embezzlement are totally without foundation?
Maybe Barça is just a reflection of present Catalan society, where its father, post-Franco, was Puyol. It now has become apparent that he and his clan, milked the Catalans clean, with their famous 2% commission. Well, you can’t expect much these days from the Iberian culture, where many politicians, bankers, football presidents etc., are being inspected for their past corrupt misdeeds. From Andalucía to Cataluña, passing via Madrid, it´s all the same story.
What you do actually need is Mourinho – the most successful manager in football´s history. That may help Barcelona put its house in order, at least on the pitch….. solving the endemic corruption off the pitch is quite a different matter!
Dear Jimmy,
It is perennial the rotten thoughts of John Terry alias, it is like to try to be save of being drowned and be push down again and again.
It is something nice in Spanish culture it’s the feeling of guiltiness something than Anglo Saxon culture is far ago of recognise its wrongdoings, always lining up the barbarics are outside its line.
Today is a Barça day, it is a day of positiveness, it is a day of construction, it is a day of victory, it is a day of mingleness. The days of dictatorships supported by empires are over.
It is something very Spanish it is to criticise and shame people… John welcome to our culture.