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.
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