How can we beat this team? How is it possible to break up the play of a team who pass the ball so efficiently, and then be ruthless enough to score?
The way in which a very good Manchester United team were made to look ordinary is a testament to the quality of Barcelona; this is a team who have defined an era.
But for the answer, it is necessary to go back to the start of the 1990s and the era of Johan Cruyff and the ‘Dream Team.’ It was then that Cruyff, who himself was the star man in the great Ajax side of the 1970s, implemented his philosophy at both senior and youth level at the Catalan club.
Since then they have trained their youngsters at La Masia to pass, move and offer themselves for a pass. It is this repetitive drill which has made the club what it is. Its youngsters have been drilled from the age of 9. It is simply that they have found players of technical quality at the age of 7,8 or 9, and then trained them for a decade before they made it into the first team. Not only are they taught how to play the Barcelona way and know it backwards, they know their team-mates almost telepathically.
Roman Abramovich wants to emulate their success, but he must be careful. This is a system that can’t be imposed through a great manager alone or even great players. Real Madrid prove that. Even they, with possibly the best manager of the last decade and most of its best players too, can’t overhaul this Barcelona team.
Such a style and team is based on patience; on a long term project, which takes more than a decade. To beat Barcelona you must develop a team from their formative years and grow them together. Stars can be added, like a David Villa or Dani Alves, but the spine, the centre of the team, will remain the same. It is notable that Barcelona have replaced Rafa Marquez with Gerard Pique, who they brought back from Manchester United but who was a youngster at Barcelona, and will probably replace Xavi with Cesc Fabregas. They replace their core players with others who came through their youth structures.
It is also important to remember that Barcelona went years without much success. They had only won one European Cup until 2006, and spent the first part of the decade playing second fiddle to Real Madrid. The likes of Xavi and Iniesta spent years without winning before they became the centre of the world’s best team. It is why Arsene Wenger has spent so long on his youth project at Arsenal, and is now bringing through players of the quality of Jack Wilshere. Whether Wenger is successful or not is one thing, but the basic concept; building a team from the age of 9 or 10 and training them together for a decade, is the only way to beat a team of Barcelona’s quality.
