Barcelona’s magical spell has been broken by Rosell
Vandalism of ex-president Rosell has put marriage of magician Messi and sublime football on brink of break-up
YOUR perspective on the immediate situation at Barcelona probably revolves around how you view sleight of hand and misdirection in magic tricks like find the lady, three-card-monte or the shell-game.
It takes great confidence and skill from those who shuffle cards around to hide where the Queen of Hearts is, or to whizz the cups about so that the one with the shell under it is undetectable. ‘Magic’ couldn’t exist without it.
However, it’s usually just a con — aimed at robbing you of, at least, your attention, probably your common sense and, at worst, all your cash.
Thus it is that all attention is centred on the farcical did he/didn’t he? mini-drama concocted by a Catalan television station when they announced that Barcelona’s greatest-ever footballer Lionel Messi demanded the removal of current coach Luis Enrique.
By late on Friday night, Catalan journalists were running around in a frenzy. The rumours ranged from Enrique quitting, Messi staging some sort of putsch for power — to a decision for him to move to Chelsea already being taken.
All of which has served to neatly divert eyes away from the fact that this is very nearly the situation which the football vandalism of the Sandro Rosell era has been on target to create from the outset.
In case his name has slipped your mind, Rosell is the man who has always wanted to reinvent the wheel.
A vice-president when Joan Laporta came to power in a footballing renaissance fuelled by Johan Cruyff-ist philosophy back i n 2003, Rosell always detested the Dutchman’s manner, legacy and influence at the Nou Camp.
Smack bang in the middle of Barcelona’s Field-of-Dreams vision and painstaking construction, Rosell walked away from the club in 2005, contending that everyone was out of step except for him.
He wanted big, athletic, preferably Brazilian footballers — he wanted physical power and powerful spending. He wanted power.
Barcelona were producing intelligent, balletic, technical geniuses like Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Messi while scouting, training and developing to a Cruyff/Ajax/ Rinus Michels template.
It yielded football which has taken its place in the all-time pantheon of excellence in this sport.
Laporta’s personal hedonism left a vacuum at the end of his final mandate into which Rosell stepped — winning a landslide presidential victory.
But, from 2010 onwards, there has been a steady drive towards this point when, having been nearly unstoppable as recently as the middle of 2012, Barcelona are now unravelling dramatically.
Under Rosell’s direction, a director of football Andoni Zubizarreta was appointed who has singularly failed to guide the club to an appropriate coaching appointment following the illness and death of Tito Vilanova, who repeatedly failed to re-stock Barca’s back four or midfield and who was a party to the rule breaking which has caused FIFA to ban the club from two transfer markets.
From the beginning of his regime, I predicted Rosell would dedicate himself to finding ‘his’ Messi — an iconic footballer who would, in theory, give Rosell his place in the history books and allow Barcelona to edge the Argentinian towards a vastly lucrative transfer to fund the vanity project of a new stadium.
Neymar is probably the guy who is now closest to Messi in the squad. However the at-any-cost pursuit of the Brazilian did two key things.
Firstly, Barcelona’s board became blind to the obvious need to reinvigorate the first-team squad with the kind of power, height and pace lost via the departures of Yaya Touré, Thierry Henry, Seydou Keita and Eric Abidal.
SECONDLY, given the club’s vomit of half-truths, the process via which Rosell dashed Real Madrid’s equally determined pursuit of Neymar cost him all credibility and also his position at the club.
Throughout Messi’s emergence as a true genius of football, Barcelona had repeatedly chosen to cosset and reassure him. It worked.
Ferran Soriano, now in charge at Manchester City, was part of a strategy, formed with fellow vice-president Marc Ingla and director of football Txiki Begiristain nearly 10 years ago now, to ensure that the player’s contract would be spruced up every 12-14 months.
The idea was firstly to ensure the Messi entourage would keep Barca abreast of which club was sniffing about this or that year.
Secondly, it emerged that improving his terms and his ‘sense of wellbeing’ regularly began to be wholly in step with the improvement in his performances, worth, and importance to the club’s trophy winning. Rosell’s era became so different that his finance director felt free to moan publicly about having to increase Messi’s salary so regularly. Why on earth break a successful formula? Why make sentiments like that public?
But here is the key thing which the recent media misdirection has helped keep in the background.
Barcelona were a repeat-Superbowl winning franchise with an almost perfect playbook — and Rosell burned the formula.
He launched an offensive against Cruyff so malignant that the club icon handed back his entitlement to be honorary president and hasn’t been to the Nou Camp since.
The Cruyff ideology becoming verboten inevitably coincided with Pep Guardiola beginning to feel a cold and distant relationship with president Rosell.
It all caused Barcelona to prematurely lose a tired, burned-out coach in whose hands lay the right way to progress and renew this era.
The abandonment of the ideals which had guided and created almost unparalleled footballing excellence gradually led to an erosion of the kind of daily intensity, hardnosed competitiveness and crystalclear philosophy of positional play upon which this squad depended.
So, admittedly, it is a legitimate news line to pursue whether Messi did or didn’t demand the removal of Enrique. But it isn’t the real issue.
The central problems include the fact that Rosell, who quit i n disgrace, isn’t around to take the criticism for the horrendous botch he made of what he inherited.
The next key issue is that, while no player can be allowed to hold a club hostage and dictate their decisionmaking, Messi is wholly within his rights if he a) chooses to express his unhappiness and b) finally opts that he wants to leave.
Aged 27, it is feasible that the best is yet to come for him. Some will tell you that his best is in the past but such opinions are based on the performances of a genius in a declining team and at a club which has been turning wine into water.
If Enrique, who faces Spanish champions Atlético at the Nou Camp tonight, is going to get things right then it will be a dramatic turnaround. He’s given few signs thus far.
Irrespective of how many years of his contract he has left, Messi could justifiably demand a summit with the incumbent president and assess the direction in which the club is headed.
To assess whether presidential elections in the summer might put Barcelona back on course.
Right now, I’m guided, his intention is to catalyse positive changes and stay. But leaving has never been so high on his agenda.
The financial behemoth of obtaining Messi’s registration via a forced buy-out, using the €250million recision clause and paying the €100m+ VAT, is unimaginable under current football regulations.
Thus, should Messi feel that he needs to leave then he’ll have to demand a transfer.
If he were to do that what would it tell you about his club? The club to which he owes a lifelong debt, the club via which he has become an alltime great, the club where he has been immensely happy and settled?
Precisely what the player did or didn’t say to a president whose days are numbered about a coach who is not up to the task is of less overall significance than how and why the perfect marriage of Barcelona, scintillating football and Messi is on course to end in the divorce courts.