Clemente at the Camp Nou

In the Spring of 1984,  one of the ugliest encounters in Spanish football history,  the King’s Cup final between FC Barcelona and Athletic  Bilbao was held at the Bernabeu. The clubs had, respectively, Cesar Menotti and Javier Clemente as managers. Barca still had Maradona as a star player.

The season had been characterised by a growing debate between Menotti and Clemente about how football should be played. Menotti claimed to be an admirer of free creative football which he contrasted with the defensive ‘brutal’ play favoured by Clemente. Brutality had certainly been very much in evidence in the previous autumn when one of Clemente’s favourite players,Goikoetxea, had hacked Maradona from behind, badly injuring  his left ankle.

The King’s Cup final of 1984 ended in a pitched battle, with Maradona and Goikoetxea in the midst of it. King Juan Carlos was appalled, while Barca directors felt the reputation of their club had been tarnished by the thuggery of an uneducated Argentinian.

On Saturday, just under twenty-eight years  later, Clemente came to the Camp Nou, this time  in charge of Sporting Gijon, a team facing relegation. From the opening whistle Clemente’s boys hustled and bustled, their defence ( ten players most of the time) as seemingly solid as a Maginot line, focusing their maximum suppression around the mid-field trio of Cesc, Iniesta, and Xavi .

Had Messi being playing, he  would no doubt have been hacked from the outset or he might have broken through and scored a goal. Suspended after getting his fifth yellow card of the season against Atletico Madrid, this Argentinian  could only  watch from the sidelines.

Without Messi, Barca struggled  to prove  that it is still a great team . For much of the first half, it played as if it was missing  its defining act of genius, as time and again Barca’s intricate play was closed down, without any decent shot at goal being attempted- that is until, close to the half-time whistle, Adriano used his speed to get to the end line before pulling back for Iniesta to tap in.

Then Clemente showed the tactician in him is not all bull and bluster. He took advantage  of Pique’s sending off, to mount a counter-offensive and level.

Barca fought back, with two  beautiful goals, one a curling shot by Keita into the top corner of the next, the second a sublime lob by Xavi over Sporting’s goalkeeper Juan Pablo Colinas, that seemed to be ‘Made in Messi’, and had  cules , in tribute, chorusing Guardiola’s name as if wanting to say, ‘We might seem a damn ungrateful crowd at times, but it’s your style football that we like so please, please don’t go.’