Vilanova: "We might only be here for two years"

Barcelona assistant coach Vilanova gave an interview to Spanish football weekly paper Don Balón.






Are you surprised by how good things are going?
We're not surprised. We're just happy because we are now aware that we're capable of doing our job.

So when you took over, you were convinced that things would go well?
The truth is that we believed that we would be able to do the same with a more professional team and with different players as we did the year before with the second team, by just acting the same as before.

You have brought something new to Barcelona's way of playing?
I don't think we're doing something that hasn't been done before. Maybe we're combining some things from different coaches in our own way, but I don't think we've invented something new.

What is your main source of inspiration: Cruijff, Rijkaard or the Italian school Guardiola knew?
A bit of everything. It's already for some years now that the club's philosophy is based on ball possession. It's a way of seeing the game that was already used by Cruijff, by Van Gaal and by Rijkaard. Both Pep and myself knew that from our years at the youth teams and we're following that line. Starting from that, we might have introduced new tactical concepts, for example related to set pieces, although I don't really know how things were in the past.

What is the key to success of this team?
The key are the players, who are very good.

That's the only thing?
It's difficult to say what's exactly the key. The players are very important because they are extremely talented. They always try to execute what we ask them because they believe in what we tell them. They believe what Pep is saying and that's important.

When was the tandem Guardiola-Vilanova created?
We arrived together at Barcelona's youth academy, where I played one team higher than Pep. We spent many years at the Masía together and although we played in different cities, we kept seeing eachother every now and then over the years. Two years ago, when we both were living in Barcelona, we sometimes went our for dinner together and when they offered Pep to become the head coach of Barcelona B, he asked me if I wanted to be his assistant.

You both had that same mission to be a coach?
I had been a coach at Barcelona's youth academy and then both Figueres and Terrassa offered me to become sports director. I was attracted by the idea but what I really wanted was to coach. If I wouldn't have become the assistant of Pep that year, I would have found a deal with Terrassa to become their coach.

As a coach, Guardiola believes in long cycles or rather in short ones and he doesn't plan to be Barcelona's manager for a long time?
It's difficult to be for a long time at a big club. In England you can have a symbol like Ferguson but things are different there. It's not usual that a coach stays with Barça for many years, Rijkaard was even an exception in that perspective.

So the normal thing would be that you're in charge of Barça for three or four years?
Or two.

What are your objevtives for that period?
The objective is to win every game. I'm not capable of looking further than next week's game, I don't have something else in my head than that game. I know the match calendar, but as long as we haven't played the next game I cannot think about the following one. And it's the same with Pep.

But you give the impression to have everything well-planned at medium-term, looking at how you are rotating.
Yes, but you can always have an injury that messes up your whole plan. In some cases one player has to play one more game than planned because he needs to get some more confidence. Or the other way around, it's possible that we let a player who's performing well play more games so he can keep the confidence. We're dealing with that since the beginning of the season and we try to have everyone at the start of a game in good conditions because we have a very high playing rhythm. If the same players would alwyas play, we couldn't keep this rhythm.


This was the first part of this interview. You will be able to read the second part on this blog in the coming days.

Read more:
Vilanova talks: "They should run or play tennis"
The first impressions of assistant coach Vilanova
Vilanova: "It's important to talk straight"