Football ‘victims’ Barcelona are far from an attractive proposition

Posted by Cody Chalmers on Tuesday, July 5, 2011 · Leave a Comment 

I know they play exceptional football, and their tactics and possession retaining abilities have been revolutionary. I believe Xavi was robbed of the World Player of the Year award and his team are quite rightly held as an example of effective attacking football. Just don’t ask me to like them as a club.

While you cannot fail to be impressed by the way in which Barcelona utilise their system, it is puzzling why they cast others as lesser beings for adopting different principles. Barcelona’s style is built from the Johan Cruyff model, and the rabid fervency with which they believe in their system could not be more fitting with the Dutchman’s personality.

After losing 3-2 on aggregate to Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan last season, Xavi stated that “we are proud of what we did; I don’t know if in Milan they can say the same”. After eliminating Arsenal in this season’s campaign he said “Arsenal didn’t want to play football, all they cared about was defending”. The same attitude was shown after the Copa del Rey loss to Real Madrid.

Why should there be such a complex about the way in which others set up to play, particularly when they are entitled to defend their leads? More pertinently, why would anyone take on Barca at their own game at the moment?

The case of Inter Milan is particularly bizarre. Catanaccio predates total football by around a decade, has been synonymous with Inter Milan since its inception, and in terms of “football purity”, it is as close to a national identity as any single tactic in world football.

Standing up for all that is beautiful in the game is all very well, but while Barcelona are now quite rightly seen as the zenith of cavalier football, this was certainly not always the case; just watch what happened when Spurs hosted them in 1982. This is a team that employed both Ronald Koeman and Miguel Angel Nadal.

So much from the Inter game has been stricken from the record: the Italians imperious deployment of a counter attacking system in the first leg that penned in the Barca full backs, Mourinho’s defensive wall in the Nou Camp, the way Sergio Busquets contrived to get Thiago Motta sent off with the kind of cloak and dagger tactics that are hardly synonymous with the beautiful game.

The latter is a prime example of the subtly cynical side to their game – surrounding the referee, giving away numerous fouls in the centre of the pitch – which Jose Mourinho seems more aware of than most. He is deadly serious in his belief that at some point, Real Madrid will be reduced to 10 men in the Champions League semi final.

One of the many joys of the game is that it is celebrated and revered for different reasons in different parts of the world. When Juventus and AC Milan played out 120 minutes of goalless football in the 2002/03 European Cup final, pundits were quick to criticise the “negative” tactics that both sides employed. Except in Italy, where the chalkboard battle between the two managers was heralded as a great example of the thinking man’s game.

One of the many reasons the European Cup retains so much interest is because it pits these kinds of ideologies against one and other. A disciplined and compact Scandinavian side like Rosenborg or IFK Gotenberg can progress because they play to their strengths, while the recent successes of Porto and Liverpool show that there is far more to winning than simply having the better players.

There is a particularly apt scene in Jason Reitman’s film, Thank You for Smoking, when Nick Naylor, played by Aaron Eckhart, argues with his son over whether chocolate or vanilla is the better ice cream. While his son argues the merits of the best chocolate ice cream in the world, Naylor states that it is the freedom to choose between flavours that matters. The same holds true for any ideology.

And then there are the statistics. There are few figures in football more deceptive than passing stats, and the fact that Barcelona’s dominance in this area is used as a barometer for their success is less than illuminating. One does not need to delve too deep into the numbers around the club to see how good they currently are.

Pass completion and possession stats do not show how attacking a team is, how defensive a team or, or even necessarily how good their passing is.

A defensive player will make numerous low-risk short passes to team-mates during a match and as such will have a very high completion rate. A highly creative player will attempt fewer of the proverbial “killer” balls, but each of these will be more likely to be intercepted. Michael Essien and John Terry have completion rates of over 87 per cent this season. Spain had 72 per cent of possession in their friendly with Portugal in November, and lost 4-0.

Barca have very good passing players, and in Xavi and Iniesta have arguably the finest proponents of the eye-of-a-needle through-ball in the world. The fact that they so often play three times more passes than their opponents only summarises their own style, rather than showing its undoubted effectiveness. Possession, as we all know, is only nine tenths of the law.

My final rankle regards the idea that the Catalans are “mes que un club”. It is true that the club are theoretically owned by their fans, but this is not an enterprise in the Stirling Albion mould. The fans own the club in the same way that the British people own David Cameron.

For a team that are “more than a club”, there are certainly a number of distinctly “club-like” aspects at the Nou Camp. Barcelona have a debt of around 440 million Euros; the fifth highest rate in Europe and just 25 million Euros less than Real Madrid.

They are currently the highest paid sports team in the world, with average earnings of £4.9m per player per year, and while their now-legendary youth system is quite correctly praised, their transfer policy is hardly minimalist.

In the past two years Barcelona’s directors have spent £120 million on transfer fees, while Manchester United have spent around £50 million, the capitalist pig-dogs at Chelsea around £100 million and Inter only £90 million. Only Manchester City and Real Madrid have spent more in the same period than the Catalans.

They may well be “more than a club”, but only in the same way as Manchester United, Liverpool, AC Milan or Real Madrid are “more than clubs”; they are super-brands designed to sell a certain image. Manchester United’s image revolves around the “Theatre of Dreams”, while Real Madrid trade on their All-Star cast. All of these clubs have character and a certain soul, but none are more or less than the others.

The great American comedian Bill Hicks once quipped that marketing men see his anti-corporation stance as “going for that anti-marketing dollar”. This is Barcelona’s “mes que un club” philosophy in a nutshell.

This is undeniably a great football team, but it seems that no matter how successful the club is, they cannot dispense with their victim persona. Their victories are “for football” and their few defeats are due to heinous acts against the spirit of the game. For the Catalans, Mourinho personifies this kind of treachery. If that is the case, then I hope the bad guys win.

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