A new era at Can Barca

FC Barcelona can in many respects call itself the greatest club in the world. Only two years ago they earned the respect and admiration of the footballing world, winning titles and playing attractively at the same time. I pose 6 questions attempting to bring some answers and look to the (immediate) future.

1. Why does FC Barcelona (and are most Spanish clubs for that matter) always seem to be in conflict and can a stable situation never be achieved for a sustained period? Is it the club's democratic structure, its cultural background as part sports, part political organization? Is it the media, the fans, the players themselves? Their focus on jogo bonito instead of a more business-like approach?
Can something be done to solve this situation?

2. How do you rate the current president? He did win the CL and two leagues, does he still have credit? Do his political ambitions stand in his way? Is he well-advised?

3. What about the trainer, who achieved so much but has seemingly lost his way for some time now. Is Rijkaard still the man for the job? Is Guardiola, an unexperienced but homegrown hero, the answer? Or do we need an experienced coach and have to do whatever is required to bring back trophies... next season.

4. What players should stay and who should go? Are some stars still able to be brought back from the undead?

5. Who should be brought in?

6. What about the system? Does Barca have the players to play 4-3-3 or should a 4-4-2 be used. Or something else? Can Xavi and Iniesta really play together successfully in a 4-3-3?

Another question: In what respect can barcelona call itself the greatest club in the world?

1. Yes, that is probably the reason...there are 2 daily newspapers, and 160,000 odd owners of the club. It is indeed not just a club, because it represents so much for an entire region (some would say country). Thus everything is under the microscope, every success hyped too far, every failure analysed too deeply. As a result, people start looking for problems when there sometimes are none.
The focus on good football may also play a part, particularly in the modern day when so many teams have resorted to negative tactics and are achieving success. When trying to play attacking football, when it's good, it's very very good. But when it's bad, it's very very bad.

2. Very highly. He has overseen a fantastic renovation of the club from some very bad management in the late 90s. Everything has changed both on and off the pitch. Some departments (like basketball) are struggling, and some changes have not worked out, but overall I don't think anyone can deny that what he has done is positive. The only flaw would be that this season he has not been involved enough (by that I mean not communicating with the fans) when things are going wrong, instead going on too many trips to spread the club's brand in Djibouti and what-not.

3. In footballing terms Rijkaard is still a superb manager for this club. But things have gone stale, and it's time to move on. I like the option of Guardiola for the bravery in sticking to the club's philosophies, rather than succumbing to the dark side (pardon the cliche) and choosing the apparently safe option of Mourinho. We do really need an experienced assistant for Guardiola though.

4. I don't think any of the stars can be revived, Henry apart. Deco, Ronaldinho, Marquez all need to go, along with the ones out of contract, and Zambrotta while we cacn still get a good fee from Italian clubs. What's needed is young players, hungry to prove themselves at a big club, similar to the strategy we adopted in 2003 and 2004. Txiki has a real job on his hands now, because at that time Rosell was in charge of everything, and since then only minor tweaks have been needed.

5. Tough to say, but it's obvious that with 6-8 players going out, they each need replacing. The squad is relatively small right now, just 21 or 22 players, compared to the huge squads of Madrid, Chelsea, Man. Utd., etc. Key positions are CB, RB, DM, ACM, and 2 attackers, one of which could be a winger.

6. I think the system is fine, and even a change of 4-4-2 is not necessarily a bad thing as long as the football remains good to watch and positive. Xavi and Iniesta together? I'm not convinced tbh, because Iniesta is class, but he's not as creative as Deco, and doesn't maintain as high a line of pressure as Deco does. Maybe a 4-4-2 (with Xavi on the bench and Toure-Iniesta in the centre) or a diamond midfield is indeed the answer.

@110%:
As one of the only clubs to qualify for Europe every season since European competitions have existed.
As a club that has values that we still try to maintain.
As a club owned by fans, not some rich Americans.
As one of the richest clubs in the world.
As one of the top 10 trophy-winning clubs in the world.

kas wrote:
In footballing terms Rijkaard is still a superb manager for this club.

@kas

you just don't give up, do you ?

and you certainly don't seem to learn either

Kas when will you learn that Rijkaard needed Ten Cate as much as Ten Cate needed him, the modern day Clough/Taylor combo

Oh definitely, I think Ten Cate was important to this project. But this season's events have told me that it's not because of tactics, but training. Ten Cate has gone to Chelsea, and totally changed the way they trained, which was outdated and a joke when only Grant was running it. The lack of fitness (and sudden poor form of players like Abidal) of the current Barça squad is, IMO, mostly because of Ten Cate's departure.

26-Otto-19 wrote:

kas wrote:
In footballing terms Rijkaard is still a superb manager for this club.

@kas

you just don't give up, do you ?

and you certainly don't seem to learn either

Sorry Otto, but I stand by that. Rijkaard plays the right football for this club, can manage a dressing room full of big stars, and is fantastic at just killing any possible press spin.

well, kas

and Gordon Brown is a vote winner

I stand by that

kas wrote:

@110%:
As one of the only clubs to qualify for Europe every season since European competitions have existed.
As a club that has values that we still try to maintain.
As a club owned by fans, not some rich Americans.
As one of the richest clubs in the world.
As one of the top 10 trophy-winning clubs in the world.

I agree that it is one of the greatest clubs in the world, but not THE greatest club in the world. None of your reasons above say that.Many clubs have values and being one of two giants in a rich league makes it likely to qualify for european competition and one of the richest clubs. Being one of the top 10 trophy-winning clubs in world football would be a reason to put it in the top 10 but how much have they actually won outside of their domestic league?

A club owned by fans is very commendable in a way, but then you elect a guy who makes the promises to put most money in and buy the best players. Then blame him when it goes wrong, have another election and do it again. The main difference being that you can get rid of a president that's bad for the club, but I don't think it is better than having a supporting owner willing to stick by a manager and thinking long-term. A good owner doesn't need to make promises to fans, and wouldn't risk the future of the club for immediate popularity.

Why does FC Barcelona (and are most Spanish clubs for that matter) always seem to be in conflict and can a stable situation never be achieved for a sustained period? Is it the club's democratic structure, its cultural background as part sports, part political organization? Is it the media, the fans, the players themselves? Their focus on jogo bonito instead of a more business-like approach?
Can something be done to solve this situation?

This is mainly down to the president BS in Spain, at the end of every presidential term there is a chance of revolution at the helm.

To be honest Barca only managed achieve for 2 years, which is no where near a sustainable period.

Era's are the thing of the past Toon, mainly down to money esp in the CL.

110% wrote:

kas wrote:

@110%:
As one of the only clubs to qualify for Europe every season since European competitions have existed.
As a club that has values that we still try to maintain.
As a club owned by fans, not some rich Americans.
As one of the richest clubs in the world.
As one of the top 10 trophy-winning clubs in the world.

I agree that it is one of the greatest clubs in the world, but not THE greatest club in the world. None of your reasons above say that.Many clubs have values and being one of two giants in a rich league makes it likely to qualify for european competition and one of the richest clubs. Being one of the top 10 trophy-winning clubs in world football would be a reason to put it in the top 10 but how much have they actually won outside of their domestic league?

A club owned by fans is very commendable in a way, but then you elect a guy who makes the promises to put most money in and buy the best players. Then blame him when it goes wrong, have another election and do it again. The main difference being that you can get rid of a president that's bad for the club, but I don't think it is better than having a supporting owner willing to stick by a manager and thinking long-term. A good owner doesn't need to make promises to fans, and wouldn't risk the future of the club for immediate popularity.

Agreed with all that...I was basically answering "what makes Barça among the best clubs in the world", not "it is the greatest club in the world, someone tell me why"

One (slightly pedantic) correction though - presidential candidates do usually have to put up a minimum deposit before being able to run for elections (for Madrid it's 45 million euros), but at Barça it's not the president's money that is used for transfers. Everything comes from the club's budget...it is essentially run as a non-profit organisation. In principle the board members all get no compensation for working for Barça, and they all continue with their normal jobs as well (Laporta is a lawyer, for example), but of course I'm not 100% certain if that's still in practice.

kas wrote:

26-Otto-19 wrote:

kas wrote:
In footballing terms Rijkaard is still a superb manager for this club.

@kas

you just don't give up, do you ?

and you certainly don't seem to learn either

Sorry Otto, but I stand by that. Rijkaard plays the right football for this club, can manage a dressing room full of big stars, and is fantastic at just killing any possible press spin.

Kas - don't apologise: even if Rijkaard won the quadruple, Otto wouldn't rate him because of his nationality.

Unfortunately, Otto is the board's friendly neighbourhood racist:

he is proclaiming Schuster to be the most sought after manager in Europe, despite failing spectacularly in Europe (at an earlier stage than Rijkaard's Barca), and winning La Liga in one of the most unconvincing, dour Spanish seasons to date (where was the competition from previous seasons such as Valencia, Sevilla, Deportivo, etc etc?)

Rijkaard, on the otherhand, has won 2 league titles and a CL in 4 years.

But he is - of course - rubbish, because he is Dutch and not German. Shame on him

kas wrote:

110% wrote:

kas wrote:

@110%:
As one of the only clubs to qualify for Europe every season since European competitions have existed.
As a club that has values that we still try to maintain.
As a club owned by fans, not some rich Americans.
As one of the richest clubs in the world.
As one of the top 10 trophy-winning clubs in the world.

I agree that it is one of the greatest clubs in the world, but not THE greatest club in the world. None of your reasons above say that.Many clubs have values and being one of two giants in a rich league makes it likely to qualify for european competition and one of the richest clubs. Being one of the top 10 trophy-winning clubs in world football would be a reason to put it in the top 10 but how much have they actually won outside of their domestic league?

A club owned by fans is very commendable in a way, but then you elect a guy who makes the promises to put most money in and buy the best players. Then blame him when it goes wrong, have another election and do it again. The main difference being that you can get rid of a president that's bad for the club, but I don't think it is better than having a supporting owner willing to stick by a manager and thinking long-term. A good owner doesn't need to make promises to fans, and wouldn't risk the future of the club for immediate popularity.

Agreed with all that...I was basically answering "what makes Barça among the best clubs in the world", not "it is the greatest club in the world, someone tell me why"

fair enough I was just asking becasue of this:

toon h wrote:FC Barcelona can in many respects call itself the greatest club in the world.

Barca have to improve their out-going transfer policy's. They rarely seem to make any sort of money on out-bound players regardless of their talent.

I said last year that they should have sold Deco before the beginning of this season. And likewise, I would suggest the same for Henry, Gudjohnsen, Dinho & Zambrotta this season. The others are unlikely to command any sort of fee (Edmilson, Esquerro)

I'd keep Marquez. But not many people are keen on that, so I guess they should sell him too.

Barca should get VDV or Diego and one or two solid defenders that can play Barca's football (that part is most difficult, I think). A goalscorer like Huntelaar would also be very good although I don't think they have enough cash for a midfielder and a striker. The attack isn't that big of a deal though, they are good enough but just need to find form and a fresh start (new coach).

Well I'm not really sure if this helps in the "greatest club in the world" argument, but I don't know of any other top(and I don't mean top 50, I mean TOP)club in Europe that represents a region, it's people, and an identity as much as Barça does. I read once that during the proscription years, when the use of Castillian spanish was mandatory, and other regional language was proscribed, it was the concrete of the Camp Nou that spoke in Catalán. It may certainly be true. That during an era when regional identity was so undermined ppl were in need for a symbol to represent what they thought was being under threat, and the symbol they chose was their biggest football club.

I'm actually against involving politics in football, but there's no denying that as we've seen in football matches, televised around the globe, with the "catalunya is not Spain" banners, FC Barcelona has been in the past a window into the regional autonomy desires of certain ppl in Catalunya. I can't really think of any other big club in Europe that is similar to Barça in this aspect. The "més que un club" phrase certainly comes to mind when you think about all this...

Has guardiola trained the canteranos like Messi, Bojan, dos Santos, etc in the past???

manu represents the cockney region of london and it is like another language

Barrilete_Cosmico wrote:Has guardiola trained the canteranos like Messi, Bojan, dos Santos, etc in the past???

No, he only took over at Barça B this season...he has played with Puyol and Xavi though, when these 2 first broke into the team under Van Gaal.

110% wrote:manu represents the cockney region of london and it is like another language

The worst has to be scouse...it's unbelievable that they speak in english, you can barely notice

Barcelona very much resemble their biggest rival.it does seem like sustaining succes over a longer period is quite hard.i remember Hierro when talking about Real during the blano years saying that with madrid everything is exagerated. Its either great or terrible. presidents seem to get too big for themselves and dont seem as grounded as when they entered.
i actually think that getting Guardiola isnt the worst that can happen. i prefer going for these "from the house" coaches. allthough it could of course backfire.

Barrilete_Cosmico wrote:

110% wrote:manu represents the cockney region of london and it is like another language

The worst has to be scouse...it's unbelievable that they speak in english, you can barely notice

not sure they have a strong accent, but so do newcastle people for example

cockneys speak in rhyming slang so even if you can work out what the words are you still don't know what they mean, so it's a different language

110% wrote:Another question: In what respect can barcelona call itself the greatest club in the world?

Yeahh, I kind of I agree with 110%, how can Barcelona be called the greatest? They arent no even the greatest in Spain.

If I am not wrong REAL MADRID is the greatest team in the world, don’t they have 9 CL, 2 UEFA cups, 3 Clubs World Cup and now they have the record of 21 LA Liga titles, seriously, you measure teams from what they achieve.

Take way the hype and you are just like United, Bayer, Juventus and others european teams

EDIT, LOL 31 La Ligas

Real Madrid have 31 league titles now, Milan can match Real Madrids international record so can Boca Juniors.

Juligen wrote:

110% wrote:Another question: In what respect can barcelona call itself the greatest club in the world?

Yeahh, I kind of I agree with 110%, how can Barcelona be called the greatest? They arent no even the greatest in Spain.

If I am not wrong REAL MADRID is the greatest team in the world, don’t they have 9 CL, 2 UEFA cups, 3 Clubs World Cup and now they have the record of 31 LA Liga titles, seriously, you measure teams from what they achieve.

Take way the hype and you are just like United, Bayer, Juventus and others european teams

Thank you very much.
Anyway i would defo call barca one of the biggest clubs in the world. the biggest clubs imo is Real,Milan,Barca,Man utd in that order.

Juligen wrote:

110% wrote:Another question: In what respect can barcelona call itself the greatest club in the world?

Yeahh, I kind of I agree with 110%, how can Barcelona be called the greatest? They arent no even the greatest in Spain.

If I am not wrong REAL MADRID is the greatest team in the world, don’t they have 9 CL, 2 UEFA cups, 3 Clubs World Cup and now they have the record of 21 LA Liga titles, seriously, you measure teams from what they achieve.

Take way the hype and you are just like United, Bayer, Juventus and others european teams

well it all depends what you're judging by...all this fuzz about RM's 9 CL when they actually won 6 of them during an era when, let's face it, there wasn't a any general agreement about european football being the best as there is now. if you're counting euro lvl succes, then AC milan edges it IMO.

But as for greatest club in the world ppl may say that, maybe because of what i stated before, that it isn't just a football club to many but more a nationalistic symbol??

Barrilete_Cosmico wrote:well it all depends what you're judging by...all this fuzz about RM's 9 CL when they actually won 6 of them during an era when, let's face it, there wasn't a any general agreement about european football being the best as there is now. if you're counting euro lvl succes, then AC milan edges it IMO.

But as for greatest club in the world ppl may say that, maybe because of what i stated before, that it isn't just a football club to many but more a nationalistic symbol??

Even if you take way the 6 CL from the old times, still they have more titles than Barcelona and more than several great teams in Europe.


I do get it, that the Catalan culture has an appeal, I like very much so and it mames them a special team, but the hype is also something that I cant understand. Maybe is the Latin connection, most of Barcelona starts were Brazilians and Argentines and God knows how much media they can get.

Call me crazy, but if you start to count from the 90’s, Milan International run makes everybody looks average. They were awesome.

Barrilete_Cosmico wrote:

Juligen wrote:

110% wrote:Another question: In what respect can barcelona call itself the greatest club in the world?

Yeahh, I kind of I agree with 110%, how can Barcelona be called the greatest? They arent no even the greatest in Spain.

If I am not wrong REAL MADRID is the greatest team in the world, don’t they have 9 CL, 2 UEFA cups, 3 Clubs World Cup and now they have the record of 21 LA Liga titles, seriously, you measure teams from what they achieve.

Take way the hype and you are just like United, Bayer, Juventus and others european teams

well it all depends what you're judging by...all this fuzz about RM's 9 CL when they actually won 6 of them during an era when, let's face it, there wasn't a any general agreement about european football being the best as there is now. if you're counting euro lvl succes, then AC milan edges it IMO.

But as for greatest club in the world ppl may say that, maybe because of what i stated before, that it isn't just a football club to many but more a nationalistic symbol??

So do we have to erase all of Brasil's World Cups before there was colour tv as well? The fact is, when the European Cup started some of today's big clubs were there (Milan, PSV, Dortmund, Man Utd., Ajax, Juventus, Sporting, Barcelona, Benfica, Inter) and teams that aren't important clubs anymore (for example Reims, Honved, Partizan) they had really good players. I don't buy all of this, football wasn't as good so it doesn't count arguement.

But all of this is off topic. People are over thinking Barcelona's problems. They have played 4-3-3 forever; it's just the players that were important during the run from 2005-2007 have gotten complacent. Exchanging Ronaldinho, Deco, and Marquez for some fresh blood is really all that needs to happen. The same happened with us, Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos - they got old, some were bored, some were lazy...it was time for a new generation.

Mourinho+a renovation in the squad and the fascists won't win the league next season