The Dream

Barcelona, Friday April 27.

I went to bed on Thursday night with the rumors of Pep Guardiola's imminent departure from the club very fresh in my mind. On Friday he was to give a lunch time press conference and share his plans. I laid down my head and had a dream.

**

I was in Spain, at the Camp Nou which was smaller, carved of stone blocks and placed next to the sea. People were assembled there to attend the press conference for Pep to discuss his future as coach. 

Pep walked through the stands, smiling and clapping hands as he approached the podium to deliver his thoughts. The feeling was that there was no way he would leave--the reception was so warm.

The team players were in the intimate stadium, whose stone exterior was still somehow visible through the people, and they beamed back at their coach.

Pep said he would stay at the club.

Immediately after, the locker room was full of players and press, as if they had just finished a game. They were celebrating. I stood by Eric Abidal, who saw worry on my face, and King Eric joked around with me and gave a playful hug around my shoulders.  

A small group of people were walking outside away from the stadium, Abidal among them. As we passed by the sea, walking on grey cobblestones under the overcast sky, we saw a strip of brick English council estates.

"This is where John Lennon grew up."

And we walked into the courtyard of John Lennon's boyhood home.

**

The Slide

Mascherano pulls ahead at Levante

This season is in a desperate last push for the final month of play.

All of the pressure that accompanies vying for such high stakes is shown on the face of Pep. With it already nearly the end of the season, he still has not re-signed for next year. The speculation is rife about him being wooed to Chelsea.

There is a kitchen-sink mentality to the play. The formations are stacked offensively in order to create movement and--when possible--get the ball to Messi. Play 1-2s that let them pass the ball to the back of the net.

But the 1-2s haven't been as precise, some games.

The final key touch, when it's fallen to Thiago or Cesc or Pedro, has been slightly off. Though Cesc has had his highest goal scoring season to date, he has had a lot more opportunities than before by being moved to the front.

It was thought that he was coming back to Barça to replace Xavi in the mid-field, but he has instead been played with Messi and either Iniesta, Pedro, Alexis, Cuenca... up front. The mid has been occupied by Busquets, Xavi, Thiago, Adriano (labeled a "back"), Keita...

In the back there has been less Pique than before, as he has been reported to have had some static with Pep over his boisterous social life. Mascherano, who was loved in Liverpool's midfield, has been a strong and key player with Puyol in determining the defense. Like Puyol is partially orchestrating Masche to dart to the places he is not quite able to break for. The captain just turned 34.

No Abidal, as he is recovering from having a liver transplant. Many thoughts are with him.

Ibrahim Afelay has finally been declared fit to play, though he has not been in a match in six months. Which brings us to this upcoming week's contests: A trip to London to play Chelsea on Wednesday, and then returning to the Camp Nou to play Madrid.

First things first--Chelsea.

This is a tough time to play Chelsea because they are getting visibly fired up at their successes since Andre Villas Boas was given the sack. They played today and scored 5 on Tottenham. It was a fairly sordid scene, too. The Chelsea mob wouldn't shut up during the moment of silence for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster where 96 Liverpool fans died at a FA cup game against Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest. That about sums up Chelsea fans: Vocal.

This lot...

In fact, its safe to say that the London fans will be as hostile to the Spanish champs as anyone they could meet. It was three years ago that Barcelona put their champions league run to sleep with Iniesta's wonder goal.

Of course, the psychology of the game is going to be destabilized with the trade whispers currently going between the two sides. Romeu has gone to Chelsea from Barça B, and we might want to get David Luiz soon coming back the other direction...But if Pep is potentially on his way there anyway, how can we plan ahead for trades as comparatively insignificant as that of defensive backs? After all, Chelsea don't have any svengalis freeing up in the transfer window, do they?

Pep looks completely stressed. When his team is ahead, he is freaking out that they will give up opportunities. When they are behind he is confirmed in his fearful judgement that winning the league is nearly "impossible." He screams and shoves his guys around for being the fat cats he'd warned them about. The satisfied winners that don't deserve to wear the crown anymore.

Though he pushes them like a rabid mule cart operator, part of the reason that nets any results at all is the fact that he himself was a club legend, and the idol of more than one of his current star players. With a team so largely home-grown, and he himself a product of the youth cantera system, the players perform in front of Pep like he was the guy up the block that dated their older sister, drove a bitchin' Camaro and gave them their first beer.

But if he was at another club, though his legend would still loom large, it would not be the same as the ingrained awe that he received from his team at Barcelona.

Right now, the team should be racing forward at full bore with all of the momentum they have accumulated through the year behind them. To win the league they must win every single contest and hope that Madrid also drops points along the way.

They will have to beat a resurgent Chelsea over two legs, and then save enough mojo to stomp the tall men in white.

They have to satisfy the desires of an unsettled shaman.

Is this the end?

What to do?

Adversity Revisited

Eric Abidal: More trials.

This is the point of the season that tests teams.

Barcelona are currently involved in three competitions, the Copa del Rey (who's final--to be played against Bilbao--is all that remains), the Champions League of Europe, and finally, the quest to win la Liga.

That the schedule of "top" teams becomes multiplied to double that of lower ranked teams, means that the most competitive had better have a bench of back-up players that are ready to step in when things inevitably go pear-shaped.

Case in point, right now Eric Abidal has been marked out from play until lord knows when, seeing as he is due to have a liver transplant. Apparently, the issues that took him out for several months last year have resurfaced more gravely and now King Eric needs to undergo a full removal of the cancerous organ.

And who is there to pick up the slack? Fontas, or Adriano or Dani Alves--all three of whom were out through injury and suspension from this weekend's game in Mallorca. Pep was forced to field only three defenders on Saturday, but this is actually an exciting thing.

The 3-4-3 formation that Pep has resurrected this year from the old-school total football playbook has been something of a revelation. The keys to its success lies in the fact that Barça, even when they field the conventional 4-3-3, are basically playing a 3-4-3 since Alves or Adriano usually spend as much time darting upfield on the wing as they do "defending." The only difference is mostly one of declared intent.

In Saturday's game the team was laid out more in a 3-3-4 with so many central attacking midfielders on the pitch making themselves available in the final third. The old joke about Barcelona being a goalie + 10 midfielders is largely true.

And hopefully there will be another one returning to the field in a short while.

Afellay and Pep

Ibi Afellay has been out almost the entirety of the season, but may make it back on the field (unlike David Villa) before its end. Messi has picked up the slack for a somewhat under-performing Alexis Sanchez and a non-scoring Pedro, though there has also been an increased scoring presence from Xavi--plus a banner year for Cesc--you get the feeling that the attack could especially use the Dutch-born Moroccan's skill at sending crosses in from the wing.

Since he has been gone, there have been other resources to explore, namely the B team and Isaac Cuenca and Cristian Tello.

The Boys from Company B

The two have been plucked from the B team by Pep, who has given over 20 members of the B team their debut in the A team since his arrival at the helm. Both players are explosive attacking in the box (with Cuenca possessing a particularly accurate cross and knack for blowing by defenders with his gnarly trick-footwork), and they have certainly raised the profile for B side upstarts already boosted by the advance of Thiago early this season.

So while it seems that as long as Barça have la Masia educating young players in football and molecular gastronomy (or whatever else they get into...), they will not run out of talent to pull from at a bargain price, but they still angle for bigger signings to keep them in all three races they run through the course of a year.

The rumored trades for the summer look to be Gareth Bale from Spurs, and David Luiz--the Brazilian back for Chelsea that looks and plays like Animal from the muppets.

David Luiz

Personally, I think either one would be a great acquisition, Luiz in particular, as he has the kind of die-hard engagement in the game that suits the team, but the issue is also tempered by the need of the team to balance their books. Either way, the cold-war-arms-race-style spending it would take to procure Neymar would be a dumb-ass waste of money that would do more to characterize the team as another Galactico, rather than the largely home-grown club that it really is.

Barça are currently 6 points behind Madrid in la Liga, after Madrid drew two out of their last three games during the week. At this rate, the possibility of winning the league perseveres. It would only take Madrid losing one more game out of the remaining nine, as well as getting beaten by the Blaugrana at the Camp Nou.

On Wednesday, Barça will travel to Italy to face AC Milan again in the Champions league, this time not just in an irrelevant meeting at the group level, but in the Quarter Finals. The return of Ibra... the cracken stirs up from its grumbling deep.

Sweet and Sour

The Other Pep

After about two months of struggling to get into gear and falling behind further and further to Real Madrid in la Liga, Barcelona delivered one of the unstoppable performances that they were, until recently, turning on with the apparent ease of flipping a switch.

Having just played Valencia in the Copa del Rey, it was time to play them in la Liga at the Nou Camp, and after falling behind 0-1 in the ninth minute thanks to a fluke breakaway, they responded by scoring 5 unanswered goals before the final whistle blew.

Messi in particular was unstoppable, scoring four and serving up deft passes to Pedro, Alexis and Tello--though none of them converted on their opportunities. Alexis, for not scoring, was on fire. He cut back and forth with the ball and made Valencia's defense sweat bullets. I was skeptical about the little(r) man, but he is showing a work ethic that is beyond reproach right now.

You've got another thing coming...

Cesc and Alexis seemed to be the two players that had the most opportunities denied by Diego Alves. The Brazilian keeper for Valencia played a great game--which shows how on-fire Barça's offense was--in spite of allowing five to pass him to the net, the score could have been double that.

Cesc had a brilliant near goal bounce off the inside of the bar. The greatest goal that never was for him. As he was subbed out around the 75th minute for Thiago, Pep hugged him professionally and they exchanged a few words. Apparently Pep did not like what he heard from Cesc and he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and threw him towards the bench.

It was the moment of the game for me.

Because Pep is the star at the center of their galaxy (not Messi or Xavi, as some might believe) to see him display moments of candor and honesty are some of the most exciting and worth-while events in a game. Though his philosophy is articulated as something that is nearly mystical in it's belief in "Barça" as a concept beyond a club, the physical manifestations of the game's pressure--the frustration, ecstacies and rage--those are the times when we get to see the actual stakes involved in the adherence to an ethos.

As the team and circumstances do not align with the just logic of a theory, the failure of the game in practice is as bitter as ashes.

Pep, when he is enraged, is scary. They are winning 3-1, 5-0, or whatever, but if the underlying logic is not executed correctly, then he is violently frustrated. This is because it's not all about winning. People always say "If you play beautifully and don't win, it's worthless." This is the motivation behind a large majority of football teams. They don't want to play pretty at the expense of winning. Totally understandable.

However, if you win and don't elevate the game to art then you might as well be playing rugby.

Athletes just want to win; poets want something more.


Josep Guardiola articulates his vision

Curse of the Monkey Paw

It has been a mixed bag for the club in the last few weeks, though most of it has been good.

Barça played Santos in the FIFA World Club Cup final in Yokohama to win the curious title of best club team on Earth. FIFA sets this up by pitting the continental champions from all over the world against each other. It was pitted as a match-up between Leo and the mercurial young upstart, Neymar.

...a couple of Silver Spoons

Before the game, as the two sides were lined up in preparation to take the field, it was something to see how the two stars reacted to each other: Neymar nervously looking towards Messi, trying to not look too hard and retain some semblance of cool, while Leo kept his head largely down in an inscrutable passivity.

But then they started playing and there was no trace of passivity. Barça shut down Santos 4-0. The first goal was a deft piece of play set in motion by Messi, as he doubled back away from the goal, only to turn around and dart up field setting up a triangle give-and-go with Cesc and Xavi back for his charge to the goal.

So the cup went back to Catalunya, but David Villa caught a bad one and sustained a nasty injury that will keep him out of play for some six months. Broken bone in the lower leg. Afelay is still mending from his early autumn surgery. The revolving door of injured players keeps spinning...

After the holiday break the team went on to play for the Copa del Rey against Osasuna, and handedly beat them, but then came the Catalan derby with Espanyol.

Espanyol, the Barcelona city neighbors, have a reputation for a fan base that is decidedly less diplomatic than their celebrated big brothers. Racism looms large in their stadium, as their own black keeper was subject to monkey chants for years. Their own goalie...It shouldn't be unexpected, then, that they gave monkey chants to Dani Alves every time he touched the ball.

The game was very tight and hard-wrought. Most teams tend to bring their most competitive spirit to the pitch against Barça, after all, the teams are then being seem by a global audience that quadruples (on average) from their usual broadcast draw. It was in the last few minutes of the game that Espanyol tied up at 1 and that was how the scoreline stood when the last whistle blew.

Are you fuckin' kidding me?

The result put Barcelona five points behind Madrid for first. This is a tough spot for the team, forcing them to not drop any more points for the entirety of the season, and beat Madrid, and hope that Madrid drops points as well.

It can happen, but it is not going to be easy and what's worse, it won't entirely be in their own hands.

On a better note for the team, Monday night saw them receive yet more accolades, as Messi was named FIFA world player of the year, and Pep named as the coach of the year. During his acceptance speech Pep thanked the thousands of people to have been involved in the club's history and dedicated it to his right hand, Tito Vilanova.

Tito underwent surgery to remove cancer from the salivary gland this year only a short while after getting his eye gouged by Mourinho in the Supercopa. He is clearly the supreme confidant of Pep at the club. That he was acknowledged as such was pure class. Though the league may not be in our own hands entirely anymore, either way that dignity will sustain us.

Tito and Pep

Liquid Swords

The Squad salute their 500 supporters in the cheap seats

Barça went to Madrid on Saturday and beat their rivals 3-1. Though el Clasico appeared to be an uphill battle in light of Madrid's current run of dominance, Barça still managed to create the opportunities needed to come up on the (then) league-leaders.

How?

The game was thrown into a tailspin upon first getting possession of the ball in the first half, after sending it back to Victor Valdes, the goalie gifted it directly to Di Maria, who dished to Mesut Øzil, whose shot was deflected right to Karim Benzema, tapping it into the roof of the net past Valdes. 22 seconds into the game and Madrid was up 1 nil.

Jesus...

The problem was that as Barca had gotten possession their defensive backs started splitting wide and heading to play deep out of their end. They were so wide and far back, in fact, that they were way out of distance to effectively defend in front of their goal, which is where the Madrid front line were pressuring to attack and pounce on just such an opportunity.

Barcelona was playing the kind of daring football that no one else on Earth attempts. By splitting their defensive backs so wide apart and so deep up the pitch to play out from the back, they were daring their adversaries to challenge them up high in order to make holes in the midfield. 22 seconds in, they got caught.

But as they regrouped and got the ball into their own rhythm, steadily they managed to create those holes in the Madrid midfield and fatigue their forwards who were busy chasing the ghosts of opportunity created by Pique, Puyol and Abidal in the back field, still holding on to their now-you-see-me-now-you-don't style.

By the second half, the merengues were having to dash back upfield to defend their goal after being drawn out time and again, and their breath was no longer able to sustain the effort of keeping up with the claret and blue zig-zags.

The line-up that Pep fielded was different from the one that faced Madrid a year ago in the 5-0 rout at the Nou Camp. Instead of David Villa and Pedro on the wings, he put in Alexis Sanchez and Cesc Fabregas--both of the summer signings. Indeed, both of them would score in the game.

It wasn't the starlets presence on the pitch that won the game, though. It was Pep.


El Genio

Though he started the game with the team lined up in a 4-3-3, keeping four defenders in the back to deal with the aggressive Madrid offense, by the tenth minute, down a point, he switched it up to a 3-4-3, sending one of the backs up into the mid-field and beyond. Dani Alves was exemplary in shooting up the field in the role we saw him in last year as a make-shift winger that sent his pitch-perfect crosses towards the forwards swooping in at the goal. Sergio Busquets acted as a sweeper to make sure the defense always could get some kind of entry to Xavi and, most effectively, Iniesta.

Iniesta seemed to exhaust his counterparts as he whirled all over the pitch with his beguiling gait. They could not get a handle on him. And though he did not always connect with his teammates in the way we are used to seeing--in fact, the team in general seemed to give the ball away much more than would have been comfortable for their fans--Iniesta was always a problem for the men in white to contain. He was such a dazzler that as he was subbed off the game in it's final minutes, even the Madrid fans applauded his master-class.

Pep made the adjustments necessary to counter Mourinho's press-crazy tactics, while Mourinho let his boys keep playing the same way.

The resulting win for the Blaugrana was a win for flexibility.

The team is in Japan today, set to play in the final for the FIFA Club World Cup. Another fairly arbitrary cup, but a cup nonetheless.

On Friday is the Champions league draw for the final 16.

The pendulum is swinging back our way.

The Unlikely Underdog

Kill em' with kindness

Here it is:

The Clasico.

Though Barcelona are the reigning champions of Europe and Spain, this week finds the team in second place behind their brawny rivals from the capital. Real Madrid are currently widely regarded as the strongest team in Europe; dominating the power listings of sports journalists and sitting on top of the domestic table by three points with a game in hand--the widest margin since Pep Guardiola took over the Blaugrana three-and-a-half seasons ago.

Pep has only lost a single game in all of his squad's 11 meetings with the men in white, but as Madrid have just won every game in the Champions league qualifying round (the only team to do it since Barça in 2002), the challenge facing the Catalans is greater than ever. Though the season is not yet half-over, with the way things shake up in la Liga it seems that this game could be a deciding factor in the outcome of the 2011-2012 season.

Speaking of shake-ups, FC Basel beat Manchester United today in Switzerland to knock out the giants from the Champions league and into the second tier Europa league. It was a milestone achievement for the Swiss outfit, and a humbling shock for the English champions who got outclassed by Barcelona in the Champions League final in London this past May. It seems that the Sir Alex Ferguson has no antidote for claret and blue.


Brothers from another mother, FC Basel send Man U out of the Champions league

If Basel's uniform seems familiar, it should. The red and blue kit echoes Barcelona, as both teams were founded by Joan Gamper back in the 19th century. Though Gamper would move away from his Swiss homeland for the sunnier pastures of Catalunya and create what would become one of the world's most celebrated teams, he first hailed from Basel.

One has to wonder if he had some magic in place that would be the downfall of English teams.

Let's hope Pep has a similar juju to make meringue collapse.


Joan Gamper wearing claret and blue

Willy Wonka

Ferran Adriá

Barça have announced that they have retained the services of Ferran Adriá to design the menu at la Masia, their youth academy, in an effort to "foster healthy eating and exercise."

This move, which brings together the team with the world's most famous genius of cuisine, is a daring and lovely flourish on the body of their Catalan love's labour. The brilliant Adriá has been the most followed and beguiling chef in the world from the out of the way mecca he created at his restaurant in Catalunya, El Bulli.

Now Adriá has closed his mecca and moved on to different projects; one of them being the feeding of the young athletes at the school of the world champions. On the current first team the youth academy alumni are Messi, Cesc, Xavi, Iniesta, Thiago, Piqué, Puyol, Pedro, Busquets, Valdés, and the mister, Pep.

As that line-up could probably count it's estimated worth at or near a billion dollars, the interest the club has in giving their little brothers the best food in the world is clear.

As I started gravitating toward football a while ago, one of the reasons that I became particularly interested in FC Barcelona was the fact that they represent a place that also had the world's "best" restaurant. In addition, the architectural tradition of Gaudi's mind-bending and outside status within the bounds of their own country seemed to mark the team as something larger than what they ostensibly were.

Football teams are a dime a dozen. Cheaper, even.

But when something you are looking at becomes transformative to more, somehow.

When the game is no longer simply something that is played, but elevated to a medium for the most wild of possibilities to be made real.

That is the key to enlightenment through any endeavor.

A cherry on a plate or ball on a field.


Great minds...