“F**k el estilo… Una mariposa, yo me transformo,” Rosalia sings in Saoko, the opening track of her album Motomami. “F**k style… I transform myself like a butterfly.”
The logo of that album featured on limited edition shirts Barcelona wore in their most recent meeting with Real Madrid, on March 19. There was something apt about it. After all, under Xavi’s leadership, there has been a departure from what you might call the traditional Barca style.
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It has been a successful departure too, with Barca leading La Liga by 12 points from Madrid, who they meet again tonight (Wednesday) at the Camp Nou in the second leg of a Copa del Rey semi-final, holding a 1-0 aggregate lead.
But it has nonetheless caused debate — one that truly sparked into life after Barca’s victory in the first leg at the Bernabeu in early March. Instead of celebrating the win, Xavi was forced to defend his side’s more pragmatic approach in his post-match press conference.
Is it really that important how Barcelona win matches? For many, the answer is yes. And the reasons behind that feeling go back a long way.
Two men are well-placed to explain why.
Josep Maria Minguella was Rinus Michels’ second in command during the Dutchman’s first of two spells in charge of Barcelona, for four seasons in the 1970s, but the 81-year-old has also been an agent — he helped the Catalans sign Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona among other stars — a manager, and an unsuccessful candidate in their presidential elections. He was working at the club as Michels’ assistant when Johan Cruyff arrived as a player in 1973 and the ‘Barca style’ was created.
Carles Rexach played for Barca from 1965 to 1981 and saw Cruyff flourish firsthand. He would later become Cruyff’s assistant after the legendary attacking midfielder moved to the dugout, helping the side known as the ‘Dream Team’ deliver the club’s first European Cup win in 1992. Now 76, he stepped in as an interim coach on several occasions, and was manager from 2001-02.
Both have seen the birth and evolution of the Barca style. Both have also previously talked in depth with The Athletic about the Barca of today, with particular reference to the Negreira scandal.
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But here, we will focus on football. What do they think of the debate around Barca’s tactics? We met with them at the Cal Blay restaurant, one of the Camp Nou’s new gourmet establishments, located at Gate 15 of the stadium. (Their conversation has been edited for clarity.)
Barca have long been recognisable by their 4-3-3 formation, a system first introduced by Michels that few managers since have dared to veer from. The first sign Xavi would not rigidly stick to those ideals as manager came after the World Cup break, when the legendary former Barcelona midfielder changed his tactics to include four midfielders in his side.
Sergio Busquets and Frenkie de Jong would occupy deeper positions, while Pedri and Gavi would play forward of them on the pitch. Xavi was adamant this was not a 4-4-2 formation, but it was hard to escape the feeling he had done something bold with his team selection.
That style earned Xavi his first piece of silverware as Barca boss when his side won the Supercopa de Espana in January, and it has also helped them build an impressive lead at the top of La Liga — despite losing Pedri to injury in February.
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Carles Rexach: Although in our era we played with three strikers, three midfielders and four defenders, there was also a time when it was fashionable to play with four defenders, four midfielders and two strikers. These things always vary, but one thing is the system, and another is the DNA, the footballing concept.
The ‘Barca DNA’ is to play good football, to play beautiful football. But that also depends a lot on the players you have. Barca in recent years had become accustomed to a winning team and beautiful football.
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Xavi started the season wanting to do the same thing and he couldn’t, because the players were completely different. His success has been that, in the end, he has found a team to be able to win.
The footballing concept he had when he played with Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets is quite different from now. They want to play with the ball, but if before every time they had the ball they made 20 passes, now they make four.
This team has put on work overalls. Everyone works hard. They all go up, they all go down. This is a success because Barca hasn’t had such a fighting and competitive team for years.
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Josep Maria Minguella: Football had been played for a long time in a certain way, with three defenders, two midfielders and five strikers. Before the 1970s, everyone did their job, it was all very positional. Then came Michels, who had coached Ajax, and he imposed total football.
He changed the world of football — from his system and his concept of football, all players had to play everything. Except the goalkeeper. I was at Barca at that time and I saw how the players did not understand him at the beginning — among others you, Charly (Rexach’s nickname).
For the players to learn, he ordered different goals for training that were one metre high and two and a half metres wide, as if they were field-hockey goals. The sessions were divided into four or five fields. They played three against three. When Team A had the ball, they had to score a goal in Team B’s goal, and Team B had to try not to concede a goal. This meant that the player was no longer a winger, defender or forward, but an attacker when he had the ball at his feet and a defender when he did not.
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Rexach: The famous Barca style was brought by Michels, yes. And then came Cruyff and the famous 5-0 at the Santiago Bernabeu (when Cruyff helped Barcelona thrash their arch-rivals in a league game in 1974). We were a machine. Total Football, they called it.
We played a beautiful game and we all scored a lot of goals. Then we all left and the team underwent a restructuring in the 1980s. Then Terry Venables arrived (the Englishman was appointed in 1984) and practically changed the whole team. They won the league (in 1984-85) but people complained that there were too few goals.
Then Cruyff and I arrived as coaches, with a football similar to the one played when he and I were players. We started the ‘Dream Team’. But that football, Michels brought it 20 years before.
Pep Guardiola took Barcelona to new heights after their former midfielder was appointed as manager in 2008, playing a possession-based game inspired by his predecessors. He won three La Liga titles, two Champions Leagues and two Copas del Rey among other honours during four years in charge, before stepping down in 2012.
Minguella: With Frank Rijkaard (Guardiola’s immediate predecessor), we had already reached the summit of footballers playing everything and with Pep Guardiola, it reached its peak because he had great players.
Rexach: In our ‘Dream Team’, there were variations. It’s not the same playing Jon Andoni Goikoetxea, Michael Laudrup and Hristo Stoichkov up front as playing Romario, Laudrup and Stoichkov, with Goikoetxea playing in defence. But within the variations we made, the footballing concept was the same: have the ball and play offensively.
The difference between Barca then and now is that we were always obsessed with finishing the play. In Guardiola’s or Luis Enrique’s Barca (from 2014 to 2017), sometimes the right-winger was almost at the byline and he would pass it back to midfield, the midfielder would pass it to the centre-back and the centre-back to the goalkeeper. When we were there, if the right-winger was that high up we would tell him to cross or shoot, because with how hard it is to get that high up we didn’t want to start again.
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In the last four years, teams have gone back to playing more courageous football. The proof is that in the last three years, Chelsea, Liverpool and Bayern Munich were the teams that won in Europe. But look at where they are now. It’s because it’s very difficult to stay at the top for a long time based on physicality, there’s a lot of wear and tear. There are more injuries. Look at how much Andres Iniesta and Ronaldinho were injured — nothing.
Minguella: The ‘Barca style’, as it gave titles and great games, has made the press obsessed with it as a special way of playing. It’s not a special way of playing, it’s only that some do it better than others. And to do that, you have to have better players than the others.
Criticism of Xavi’s tactics came to a head after this Copa del Rey semi-final’s first leg, when Barca won 1-0 but recorded just 35 per cent possession — their lowest tally in any game since the 2013-14 season. But Barca confirmed their dominance over Madrid this campaign with a 2-1 win over their closest challengers at the Camp Nou two weeks later that virtually sealed the league title.
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Minguella: It (that first leg) was an exaggeratedly defensive game. Madrid played on the attack from minute one. That made Barca play in midfield, they didn’t come out of it.
This goes against the mentality of a big team. A big team has to defend, but when they have the ball they have to go out and attack. Barca came out twice and scored a goal and a ‘half’ (Ansu Fati inadvertently blocked a goal-bound shot from team-mate Franck Kessie in that game). This is not Barca’s style.
You have to win by attacking. In Italy, ‘catenaccio’ became famous, and the big clubs also used it. Here, with the mentality of the social masses, it’s not the best.
Rexach: That’s why it’s so difficult to coach Barca. The coach has to make the team play well, make it look good, and win. In football, sometimes you win by a lucky bounce. The game at the Bernabeu was a bad game. But from both teams. The Supercopa final (in January) was a beautiful game.
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In the league match (last month), the most logical outcome was a draw. Barca could have lost the game but Marco Asensio’s goal was disallowed. But then, also by luck, they win it thanks to Franck Kessie’s goal.
Football has a charm and a condemnation, which is that generally when you play well you win, but sometimes you can play very well and lose. And that happens in very few sports.
Is the obsession with style a double-edged sword?
Rexach: Generally, Xavi the coach wants his team to play the way he did. But when you have to win no matter what and you can’t play a good game, as is happening this year at Barca, you win by fighting.
The style will come. Now it’s time to finish the season, win what we have to win and next year we’ll make some more adjustments. And Xavi already knows this, he has played in the best team in the world.
Minguella: What people want is to win. The only thing that counts for the fans, who are the ones you play for, is winning. Winning is more important than how. In the future, Barca, with the security they have this year, will play in the same way but more loosely, a little more open.
Do you think Xavi follows the ‘Barca style’ in his coaching?
Minguella: Xavi has a concept of attacking football. When he arrived, he said he would play with two wide wingers to open up the pitch — something that would make it easier for the players coming in behind to get into the spaces.
The level of the squad is good enough for La Liga but not for Europe. The Champions League started and we were slapped all over the place. Xavi is intelligent and understood that this system with wingers did not allow him to open up the midfield. That’s why, after the World Cup, he decided to do without a striker and play with one more midfielder.
They are going to break records for conceding the fewest goals in a season because they have a very strong defence. You only need one goal to win the three points. You have to adapt to the circumstances.
(Top photos: Getty Images; designed by Eamonn Dalton)
