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

Stutter Authority

Ibra shakes it off

Barcelona flew to Milan to play AC at the San Siro yesterday.

Both teams were guaranteed a place in the next league of Champions play, but though the results were irrelevant to the competition's outcome they charged head first at each other with the gnarly focus of intimate enemies.

The refs were very bad, nearly never carding the fouls and only then misguidedly. Hand balls? Not a problem. What game do they play in Italy?

Messi took a penalty to bring the team ahead 2-1 in the first half. As he approached the ball, he stuttered his stride, sent the keeper one way then dished the ball into the other corner. It reminded me of a penalty taken by Balotelli in Man City's win over Newcastle last week (although Balotelli managed to shoot without stopping step, and then glare at the keeper like a dickhead).

Leo gets a yellow card, and the shot is done over. This time he sends it clean past the keeper on the same side he just sent him.

Ibra played a very good game in his first outing against the team of his former employment. He picked up a goal in the first half and generally managed to get in good crosses and position himself in the final 1/3rd. Prince Boateng, however was an outstanding talent against Barcelona. The second half goal he marked to equalize was stunning, but it would be drowned out by a key strike from Xavi off of yet another brilliant piece of teamwork that would be the winning goal for Barça.

The Catalans played in their third kit--mint green: same as last year's away jersey.

Whatever the uniform, the talent is the fabric of the outfit.

Ball Boy

This morning FIFA announced the 23 candidates for the Balon d'Or award for the world's best individual player. Barcelona's squad featured 8 of the 23 names, including Abidal, Dani Alves, Cesc, Piqué, Villa, Xavi, Iniesta and the back to back winner of the last two years, Lionel Messi.


Last year's Golden Boys

The idea of individual achievement seems to be something of a double-edged sword for the beautiful game. As players excel, they become of vital importance to making their team perform more cohesively. Once they get a sense of their worth they are afforded certain indulgences and rapidly that excellence starts yielding diminishing returns (take a look at Carlos Tevez' ongoing soap-opera at Manchester City).

For Barcelona it seems that no matter how superb the results that their players net, if they do not subscribe to a selfless style of performance (both on and off the pitch), they will not last in Guardiola's squad.

Samuel Eto'o was Spain's highest scorer in 2008-2009, and it seems he was not sufficiently Barça in Pep's eyes, so he was despatched to Italy. The next year, Ibrahimovic scored a great goal tally for the Blaugrana (wearing the same no. 9 that Eto'o had just vacated), but he did not jive with the team's humble and light-footed philosophy and he was gone before the 2010 season started.

Messi has been the highest scorer for the squad since Eto'o left, but he has also come up with brilliant assists and shown how instrumental he is in raising the level of play of those around him. Of all the goals he scored last season, the most remarkable play he made may have been a pass to Villa for the fourth goal in the 5-0 routing of Real Madrid.


Mo and Pep react to teamwork from opposite sides of the scoreline

Above all other achievers and champions, this blog is really about Pep Guardiola. Pep has been at the helm of the ship after spending a lifetime building the character necessary to define and apply it's ethos. Now, for the third year running, Pep is nominated for FIFA's Coach of the year award and is a clear favorite to win the prize.

Originally a ballboy, Pep has come through the ranks from the bottom and learned how to embody the elusive esthetic of a squad that is "more than a club." Some successes are deliberate and willed; some are mystical.

The best are both.


Pep's early celebration at the Nou Camp

Why Italians Celebrate...

It seems like any time I see some clip from Serie A, if there is a goal the entire team explodes in the kind of celebration we are used to seeing in footage of VJ-day, or something. Dudes are pulling off their jerseys to show the messages emblazoned on their undershirts--referees are pulling out yellow-cards. The water boy runs off the bench in a back-flip.


Osvaldo gets excited for Roma, but Lazio still wins in the roman derby

I wonder why they make such a big stink from it? Even a penalty goal--which in the old days was always considered poor-form to celebrate--will get the same orgiastic response.

Well, this weekend of the 10 games played in the Italian league, a full half of them ended in 0-0 draws. By contrast in Spain only 2/10 ended goal-less. In England, Germany and the Netherlands, none ended scoreless. As for France, well, nobody watched the games so who knows how they ended?

The kind of defensive stranglehold that has become emblematic of the Italian style of play can be tough to watch. It's like a bad juju contest. For ninety+ minutes, let's get nasty. In the Italian philosophy of the game that came to dominance in the 50's and 60's, the ideal result for a game was a 1-0 win off a single goal scored as late as possible.

No, wonder they party like it's 1999 when it goes to the back of the net.

Yesterday Barça played Racing Santander and soundly outplayed them, winning 3-0.

Leo Messi was genius on the pitch, inspiring loud 'bravo"'s with each magnetic possession. The rest of the crew is still tenuously in and out with this dang'd epidemic of muscle tears.

God bless the child that's got his own...


Messi; Four sweet touches before the ball meets the ground


*** (added on October, 18)

Miroslav Klose, the German star that has signed with Roman team Lazio, has disassociated himself publicly with banners that were drawn in Nazi-esque old-German fonts.

The banners read "Klose mit uns," a play on the military mantra used in nazi Germany, "Gott mit uns [God with us]."

Lazio has perhaps the most outspokenly pro-fascist fanbase in Italy, and their ethical alignment with the WWII idea of Germany is not so surprising. Neither is Klose's willingness to run away from the pairing.

This is the thanks he gets for scoring in Lazio's 2-1 win over Roma?

How long will Germany be seen through the prism of the second world war, which ended 66 years ago?

Well, it was a doozy...

But the war is still something that Germans get their faces pushed into, like a dog into his filth by a cruel master. The wrong-doings we've done; and the goals that we meet, they get weighed and tainted through the resonance of our achievement.

As a stain and glory you wont let go.

The Turmoil of First

The club has been slogging through a wilderness of corporate compromise and astronomical injury.

This is one of the keys to the paradox of the world's greatest club. In order to remain resolutely competitive at the highest level of professional sports, the cash coffers have to be loaded. To do this requires, among other measures, the corporate sponsorship of their jersey for the first time ever in the team's history.

Not only that, but the label Qatar Foundation seems to muddy the message of a squad that has represented the nation of Catalunya so vocally. It is part of the standard sign-off for the team in public: Visca Barça, Visca Catalunya!

They accepted the deal as a counter-measure against their €550 million debt last year. They also accepted as it complied with seven conditions for consideration (chief of which being that it be the most lucrative such deal on Earth).

In fact, the €150 million brought from the deal has been spent on, among other things, new talent for the team. Alexis Sanchez, Cesc Fabregas, and Ibrahim Afelay have all been significant signings since January. The money spent on them alone is over €60 million.

And currently all three players are out injured.

Cesc is gone for three weeks after a practice scrape, Alexis is looking at another month out for a leg mishap and Ibi Affelay, the golden boy from PSV Eindhoven--the new great Dutch hope--is gone for another six months following his surgery today to fix a ligament.


Ibrahim Affelay, get well soon

The injury jinx hasn't just gone to the new boys; Pique-out. Iniesta-out. Abidal-out as of Saturday in their 1-0 win over Gijon.

The game against Gijon, in their black away kits (just as black as R. Madrid's away jerseys), was a drag for the lack of finish that anyone showed. A 1-0 win for Barça feels like a draw or worse. They keep it and move it so much that watchers expect them to take it to the hole all the time.

Nonetheless, the win put Barcelona in first place in the league for the first time this season. The top six places are separated by two points. It's still a tight race.

Carles Puyol returned to the pitch recently after being out with leg problems since around the same time as the new Qatar Foundation deal was inked. The captain has come back just as Xavi was looking really comfortable wearing the band. Puyol is still not quite match-fit though, and with the current streak of injuries depleting their notoriously make-shift defense, each game is getting to be nervous to watch.

On Saturday, the key moment of the game for me was at the end of the first half when Mascherano took a tough leg to the head from Dani Alves. As the players headed to the locker rooms for their 15 minutes, Masche was laying on the field bewildered. He is already bearing the mean brunt of central defensive duties with so many lynchpins gone. If he was taken out of the frame as well there'd be almost no one left in the back.

Have the ghosts of Catalunya been haunting the team and taking the players off the field?

Have the psychic injuries inflicted by the sponsorship just dug the hole deeper?

Are we still the good guys?


Carles Puyol; Back in Black

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...