Xavi, Barcelona's pass master

author: Simon Kuper
source: The Financial Times
date: 17 April 2009
editing: fcbtransfers.blogspot.com





Every December in Paris, some glamour boy is awarded the “Golden Ball” for European footballer of the year. There should be a parallel ceremony in a backroom, where Europe’s most under-appreciated footballer is given a scuffed plastic sippy cup.

The award would long have been hogged by Claude Makelele, a ballwinner so unobtrusive that Real Madrid flogged him to Chelsea in 2003 rather than give him a pay rise. Real have not reached the semi-finals of the Champions League since. Paul Scholes of Manchester United succeeded Makelele as Europe’s most under-appreciated footballer. However, he lost the sippy cup when every pundit on earth began pointing out how good he was.

Now, the sippy cup goes to Xavi Hernández Creus, who as central midfielder of Barcelona and Spain drives on both the world’s best football teams.

Xavi incarnates Barcelona's football

This is only partly because he is a local boy, who still used to ride the metro to the stadium when he made his debut for Barcelona a decade ago. More significantly, Xavi was raised practically from birth to be Barcelona’s version of a quarterback – or, as they call it in the Nou Camp stadium, a “number four”.

It is a role created by Johan Cruyff, the Dutchman who updated 1970s “total football” for Barcelona. Soon after Cruyff began managing Barça in 1988, he spotted a reedy kid named “Pep” Guardiola toiling unnoticed in the youth teams, and anointed him a “four”. Guardiola became legendary in that role and today he manages Barcelona.

One day in the late 1990s a tiny “four” named Xavi, too timid to speak, showed up at training and began passing like Guardiola. Boudewijn Zenden, then playing for Barça, told me: “We said, ‘It’s the same kind of player!’ It’s hard to say, but Xavi’s a more complete player than Guardiola.” Guardiola himself agreed, telling Xavi: “You’re going to push me out the door.” Though Xavi is undeniably more mobile than Guardiola, and has eyes in the back of his head, these are not judgments he easily accepts.

Xavi did not do the things that get footballers headlines, like squabbling or being transferred or scoring lots of goals. He never spoke much. At 5ft 7in tall, he was no superhero. All he did was hit passes, left to right, up and down, like someone filling in a crossword puzzle at top speed.

Xavi incarnates the pass

Cruyff had taught Barça a style straight out of a Graham Greene novel: everything hinged on finding the third man. Everyone had to be in motion so the man on the ball could always choose between two players to pass to. No wonder Barcelona kept producing “fours”. After Xavi came the even littler Andres Iniesta, and then Cesc Fabregas, currently in exile at Arsenal, who says with Xavian modesty, “Xavi is several classes better than me.”

At Euro 2008, Xavi, Iniesta and Cesc were all on the field weaving triangles together. In the final, they made the Germans chase the ball as if in a training exercise. Spain are now unbeaten in 31 games. They have been the best national team on earth for five years now.

Moreover, Barcelona is the most glorious club on earth. If Xavi is not careful, people will soon notice him. Luckily for him, Barça’s forwards get most of the credit, and as he always tells everyone, he is not half as good as Iniesta anyway.

read the full and original article here


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Leadership lessons from a Catalan hero

Leadership lessons from a Catalan hero

author: Simon Kuper
source: Financial Times
date: 21 March 2009
editing: fcbtransfers.blogspot.com





A year ago, one of Barcelona's vice-presidents mused over lunch at the Nou Camp stadium that perhaps Josep "Pep" Guardiola should be the club's next coach. Guardiola then 37, had never managed a professional football club, let alone the biggest on earth. True, replied the veep, but Guardiola was a Catalan, and "Barça" longed to have a home-grown coach.

Months later Guardiola got the job. He then transformed last season's jaded Barça team into what the great Italian coach Arrigo Sacchi calls "the most beautiful footballing cause of recent years". Guardiola's inspired appointment offers two lessons to any company: how to choose a boss, and how the boss should choose his team.

The key point about Guardiola is that he has been identified with Barcelona almost from birth. As Jimmy Burns writes in Barça: A People's Passion , locals still remember Guardiola as a skinny 15-year-old ballboy illegally running on to the pitch and hugging a player during a European semi-final in 1986. They remember him as a skinny playmaker, standing on the balcony of the Generalitat building in 1992, holding aloft the European Cup, and saying in Catalan, " Ja la teniu aquí " ("Here you have it"). The phrase, deliberately echoed the legendary " Ja soc aquí " ("Here I am") of Josep Tarradellas, the Catalan president, when he returned from French exile after General Franco died.

But most Barça fans always hoped that one day, the man known as The Myth would return, as their skinny coach. In other words, Guardiola, a reader of Catalan poetry, is the perfect Catalan hero. This background matters because it helps Guardiola govern with the essence of the club culture. Guardiola understands how the fans want Barcelona to play: the attacking, quick-passing football down the wings that the Dutchman Johan Cruijff introduced, that is to say, Cruijff painted the chapel, and subsequent coaches must merely restore and improve it.

The fans agree. By governing with the grain, Guardiola wins instant acceptance. It's like the unknown from the ranks who is chosen as CEO because everyone likes him and he understands the company. He contrasts with the "star" CEO or coach from outside, who often tries to overturn the existing corporate culture: José Mourinho, for instance.

Star players obey Guardiola because they know they have no chance of forcing him out. They stick to the three-page "code of good conduct" he wrote before the season, stick to their zones on the field, and when the great striker Samuel Eto'o dares talk back at training, he is banished to the showers. Barcelona's players are so good that as long as they serve the collective, they will win prizes.

And that is the main lesson from Guardiola's work: he kept his best players. A year ago everyone expected Barcelona to sell the difficult, underperforming Eto'o and Thierry Henry. But Guardiola knew that football's scarcest resource is talent. Instead of buying lesser, more dutiful players, he dared to persevere with class.

Only one step remains in Guardiola's career path: displace Sant Jordi as the skinny patron saint of Catalonia.

read the full and original article here


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