Despite overtures to delicacy, Barcelona FC has become an unwieldy force, a football leviathan. Coinciding with the city’s international debut in the ’92 Olympics, the club began two decades of furious attack on Real Madrid’s hegemony over Spanish football with championships in La Liga and the Champions League, with Super Copas and thrashings at the Bernabéu. Their popularity among passing fans and football writers has swelled and their influence seems ubiquitous: it’s a small step from the club’s success to the success of the Spanish side in the 2008 Euro Cup and 2010 World Cup; their mind-boggling sextuplet of championships in 2009 persuaded Real to spend record amounts assembling a team dubbed “galactic.” In even greater evidence of their ubiquity they now attract football tourism: at a bar for the second leg of the Barça-Arsenal Champions League match I was asked by a neighbor in a Messi blaugrana what “aggregate” meant.
They’re becoming a football equivalent of War and Peace: massive; overwhelming; 
intermittently gorgeous and brooding; the sort of thing that you’re aware of unintentionally. Like Tolstoy’s book, which displays some epically meandering storytelling and sweeping dialogue, and which culminates in a hundred-page treatise on the calculus of history, Barça seeks to extend far beyond their medium. They are already, by their own account, més que un club. I take this not as a claim about nationalism, or really any other -ism: if anyone makes that sort of claim it’s Real Sociedad who, following thousands of years blending culture and capitalism, hire only Basques, Basque raised players and foreign nationals for their side. Rather, Barça seems to embody the uniquely Catalan ability to excel while constantly in transition, and in turn to do one thing that seems like something else entirely.
Take, for example, their style of play. It’s a possession game defined more by goal scoring than by keeping the ball: a possession game permanently leaning forward. They seem, even in their overabundance of passes, constantly on the attack. 
One of the most famous passages in War and Peace presents Natasha, the daughter of a count, dancing to a peasant song. It’s the yearning and promise of a whole country to define itself, elegantly wrapped in a single image. 
Take an equally ambitious image from the year of Barça’s sweep through Europe: Messi’s header over Edwin van der Sar in the second half of the 2009 Champions League final. Manchester’s posture, and their bullish defense, immediately began to wither after an improbably early goal. Barça pressed hard, disrupting every plan United had relied on throughout the tournament. Early in the second half, on a long, bending cross from Xavi, Messi leaned back and skipped a header over van der Sar, a man who stands a full foot above him, and into the corner of the net. Watch the Manchester defense stiffen after the goal, like marble at the hands of Michelangelo: chiseled, chipped, trapped.
Barcelona would likely have won without the second goal. The rhythm of the game held unwaveringly in their favor. But without it, without Messi’s unmatched flourish, they might have, for a moment, ceased to be themselves. In Barcelona (1992), Robert Hughes gives a description of the city’s urban planning history that incidentally speaks to that sense of self:
The first thing to be reinvented was the city itself, and no European capital in recent years has made such a point of reinventing itself as has Barcelona. However the bill is eventually paid, the scale of the work is pharaonic . . . Each time Barcelona made a convulsive leap of growth after a long period of urban neglect and repression. Each time, it had to start from the ground up.
Hughes’ words draw an eerily close parallel with the club: the transience, the relentless search for meaning, the effortless overreaching.
As I was writing this the current Barça side ripped through Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League, stretching their leaning possession game forward, nearly falling over the edge of the pitch. Iniesta scored as he ran out of bounds past the goal and then sent Dani Alves a long ball so aggressive that Alves, after a short touch, found himself behind the keeper to tap the ball in the back of the net. While Barecelona is famous for playing tiki-taka football, the tika-taka-mania seems a distraction from the their otherworldly and arresting goal scoring. Richard Williams’ concise description outlines tiki-taka as “a game of patient accumulation in which the ball is coaxed towards the opposition’s goal while barely touching the feet of players who are constantly in fluid motion. At all times aware of each other’s changing positions, they take opponents out of the game through deftness and movement rather than muscularity.”
Frankly, Barça never looks patient to me, and their long passes, of which they are many, are anything but “coaxing.” Any possession game is frustrating to opponents, but the real, deep wrenching comes from conceding goals. Barça, instead of patiently settling like other possession-based clubs, scores in spades. It would be more accurate to call it “tiki-taka-goal”. There is something utterly unique about Barcelona—their craftsman-like work ethic, their belligerent, almost litigious style of play—but it’s not what’s commonly discussed because it’s both all about football and all about something else.
Maxwell Kuhl posts poetry, photography and reviews at http://loomings.wordpress.com.
Real pulled in perhaps the three best play makers and goal scorers at the time in their respective English, French and Italian leagues—at once.
Read More: Barcelona
by Maxwell Kuhl · April 16, 2011
“Frankly, Barça never looks patient to me”. That is exactly right, there is almost a desperation to get the ball when they haven’t got it, and for each individual to release it when they have.
Excellent piece, which I enjoyed tremendously despite disagreeing with most of it. But I loved the line ‘it’s both all about football and all about something else’. Extremely well-put.
One minor factual point: Athletic Bilbao still have a Basques-only policy, as far as I’m aware. It’s Real Sociedad who sign foreigners but not (non-Basque) Spanish players. But I stand to be corrected on that.
Hey John, I believe they both only hire Spanish players from Pais Vasco, but it is Sociedad that allows foreign nationals. Thanks for the correction.
I appreciate you choosing a clip of that Messi header unmarred by his likely-contractual kissing of his brand new Adidas boots.
Athletic don’t only sign Basques- Javi Martinez and Fernando Llorente, for example, are both not Basque. They do, however, only sign players that have been brought up in the Basque country as footballers. I’m sure there’s a cut-off age of some sort, I just don’t know what it is.
Actually the ‘galacticos’ era goes back to 2000, when Florentino Perez made good on his promise to sign Luis Figo and one big star every summer after that, while promoting worthy youngsters from Real Madrid’s farm team. They had Figo, Raul, Makelele, Zidane and Beckham on the team back then…
@Jiwonsi You’re kidding with this, right?
Atleti Bilbao are much more of a nationalist team than Real Sociedade…only players with Basque blood are accepted
@Maxwell Kuhl actually, la real has no restrictions on signing players whatsoever. in the 1980s, la real opened themselves up to foreign players, while still maintaining a basque-only policy when it came to spanish nationals. that’s why john aldridge was signed from liverpool.
nowadays, however, la real signs anyone from anywhere – that’s why raul tamudo (formerly of espanyol, the club i support) plays for them.
@dgm You’re right that Real Sociedad, unlike Athletic Bilbao, has no official restrictions, although they typically have very, very few Spanish players from outside of Pais Vasco or their cantera (which continues a heavily Basque orientation, and integration into the club) who are not foreign, which is a startling similarity to the economic and demographic history of Pais Vasco as a “nation”. The greater point is that those nationalistic lines are sharper in Pais Vasco than in Catalunya, whose history is far more internationally integrated, and whose nationalism is, I believe, in reality far more complicated and subtle than than people often make it seem, and not as relevant to the club as it’s often portrayed.
Hum, it’s interesting, because I’m reminded too of how Xavi said in an interview that there is still this lingering pessimism that hovers like a shadow over Barca. He went on to say that this was Real Madrid’s strength, that swagger seems to permeate RM’s narrative, even as they seem disorderly and grasping at the moment. (He didn’t say it quite like this, but that was his point.) Which makes me laugh to think that Mourinho was considered as a possible manager for Barca. Mourinho prefers to be the sole manufacturer of his siege mentality, us vs. them , methinks.
Perhaps this pessimism explains the overreaching and the doggedness for goal. I’m still trying to figure out how they’re litigious in their play tho, being a litigator myself.
I am relatively new to football, but even I know that with this Barcelona team, we are witness to something that has never been seen before. People talk about the Brazil team of the ’70 World Cup, or Zico’s Brazil, and even the Magical Magyars as some of the greatest teams of all time. I can not explain it, but I just know when watching Xavi and Iniesta and Messi et al, that they are about more than the game. They have elevated the work’s game to something transcendent, ethereal, and majestic. These are not words to be used lightly, yet they feel slightly insufficient when applied to this team. Excellent piece.
Real Madrid ooze entitlement like a conservative political party, which makes them look like whiny blow-hards when they’re not in power. Their constant complaining gets tedious after a while. People are starting to roll their eyes.
Barcelona have the initial warming glow of a socialist alliance – “awww, we’re all in this together!” – but the self-righteousness gets tedious after a while. People are starting to roll their eyes.
Donde esta Valencia o Athletico?
Not to mention the fact that most of the team members have been in Barca for quite a while and 8 of them play for the Spanish national team. Talk about teamwork, these guys know each other very unlike other clubs who dump and sign players like nothing. Even with Villa coming in Pedro, Iniesta, Xavi and Busquets, Puyol, and Pique have played with him . They know the league, the team, and are excellent players. The whole sytem of tiki-taka is about passing and how can it fail when the team knows each other so well. You cant say the same about Madrid, Man City, Liverpool, Milan and others. Perhaps Man U can compare to teammate familiarity with the exception of poor form from most of its starting XI throughout the season. Otherwise, I believe they could have performed much better than they are presently. Obviously different style and different league but their success up to now has been great with Barcelona performing the best in years.
@Brian Philips
Why would I kid? The statement the “sextuplet of championships in 2009 persuaded Real to spend record amounts assembling a team dubbed ‘galactic’” is rather misleading. The team originally dubbed “el equipo galáctico” predated those titles, and was not formed in reaction to them. I thought everybody knew that. Just like I thought that everybody knew that the club’s official name is F.C. Barcelona (Futbol Club Barcelona in catalán), not Barcelona FC (as it says in the very first sentence of this article).
@Jiwonsi Everybody does know that. It’s a “reference,” see.
@Jiwonsi I think that the adjective “galactic” is quite relevant to current incarnation of the team, especially the members brought after 2009, who were widely referred to as “galacticos” in their own right at that time (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/european_football/article6814423.ece) and, as that article suggests, maybe more “galactic” than their predecessors given the record breaking transfer fees Real Madrid paid to get them together. For those reasons I put “appropriately dubbed galactic”, rather than just “dubbed galactic”.
I always appreciate the posts here, no matter the subject, but I find that the Barcelona hype gets tiresome and a bit threadbare — this post, for example, talks about “tiki-taka-goal” but was posted directly following a game in which Barcelona’s only goal came from a penalty and in which most of their passing appeared to little effect. I know it was written before el clasico, but good analysis should be reinforced by results.
(As an aside, the pseudo-Calvinism of Barcelona never ceases to gall me. The idea that one is born with Barca DNA, that only teams who were playing together in utero are legitimate, and everyone else is “anti-football” …it’s grating, to say the least.)
@elle Barcelona have scored 86 goals in La Liga this year and have a +69 goal differential. Good analysis isn’t refuted by one outlying result.
@Brian Phillips Maybe so, but it’s unfortunate that this story comes directly after the outlying result — especially when Barcelona’s ball possession statistics were as dominant as usual.
Barca won the first leg of the Clasico at Camp Nou 5-0, and beat Sevilla and Real Sociedad by the same score and crushed lowly Almeria 8-0. They average nearly 3 goals a game this year, which, I believe, is actually more important than tiki-taka and at the very least statistically bizarre for a “possession” based team. I agree that there is a lot of hype around the Barca group right now, and I think that a lot of it (mes que un club; Catalan-ism; tiki-taka) represents a narrative that is often distracting or plain false, but nonetheless necessary to confront. It was my hope to qualify that hype, which, so long as they continue to win Champions League games by four goals, seems warranted.
@elle Wow, your interpretation of Barça DNA is a bit strange. Calvinistic? Um, no. When they talk about Barça DNA they are simply referring to players who went through La Masía and therefore share a particular footballing philosophy. That’s it. There’s no predestination involved. I don’t even understand your other criticism about “teams playing in utero together or it’s anti-football”; what does it respond to? In Spain, when we talk about anti-football, we refer to teams that play not to lose, like last year’s Inter who, as Mourinho himself clearly stated, “didn’t want the ball”. In the second leg of that SF all they wanted was to destroy, to make sure that Barça couldn’t play, ergo “anti-football”.
It’s amazing really, to think of how the handprints of Cruyff are all over this Barcelona team. The style of play, the almost manic attack that rarely relents. Rinus Michels must be proud to see his handywork with Ajax being carried into a new generation.
@elle Agreed. Barca is a fascinating phenomenon at the moment but overdone, and the holier-than-thou airs (Xavi seems to provide a lot of soundbites about what football TRULY is, etc) really are grating.
I despise Real Madrid, but in any case given that the second leg is at Camp Nou, will Barca turn the sprinklers on again if they lose?
At risk of overkill, we take a bit of a different slant on Barca’s success and their perception of themselves. We looked at them in terms of auteur theory and a looming victim complex. http://bit.ly/ekgxZ3
Athletic Bilbao has a “Basque-only” policy, but its definition of “Basque” has grown broader over time, including players from La Rioja (Santi Ezquerro.)
Seeing as we’re talking about La Liga, how about the rumoured Getafe rebranding. ‘Getafe Team Dubai’? Does chutzpah rise incrementally with wealth? The mind boggles.
@Russell Err, but he’s talking about when they’re in possession of the ball. But it is an interesting point, this one about patience, or lack thereof. The team constantly probe, pulling this way and that, investigating new avenues, restlessly searching for the space to inflict pain on their opponent. Still, I do think they are patient, too, at least when patience is required. They are happy to enjoy the feel of the ball amongst themselves, to pass a yard and receive it back again with no ground gained. This you might call urgency masquerading as patience, for as soon as the defence feels settled, they’ll construct a path to goal with laser-like precision. It’s this fluctuation between quiet and loud, lethargy and speed, that makes Barca almost impossible to predict. Not patience — but almost.
http://equaliserfootball.com/2011/04/13/part-one/
Series on Barcelona And Real Madrid’s connection with politics.
I am just sick and tired of Barcelona. Are they are great team? Yes, but they are not even close to being one of the best of all time. For whatever is worth, they did not even win two Champions League in row, so can we really say they are better team than for example, Nottingham Forest from Brian Clough’s era. Plus, they play in La Liga, which is two horse race last several years. They always point to their homegrown talent, but they forget to say that they pay these players more than anyone else. Their story is not different than many other teams, where money buys success. ” The average first team pay at Barcelona has been calculated at £95,081 [$152,130] per player per week, or £4,944,211 [$7,910,737] per year in the period under review. Real Madrid’s players in No2 place earned £88,421 [$141,474] per week (£4.6m [or $7.4m] per year) while first-team stars at the Yankees, at No3, will earn an average of £81,206 [$129,929] per man per week in the 2011 season, or £4.2m [$6.8m] per year.”
@ZZ. And how many of those first team players did Real or the Yankees produce? Barcelona do pay their players well, but it is only because they were able to integrate so perfectly into the Barcelona philosophy. And yeah, I really find it valid to compare a great team from today to a great team from thirty years ago. The tactics, training methods, and player management of today are millennia ahead of Cloughs era. Don’t hate on the Barcarole man. They deserve their praise.
@ZZ
They generate insane amount of $$ why not pay the kids that come through their system and play for the Team?
Comparing Nott Forest to this Barca all the while knowing the players, tactics, the skill, the intensity, THE ONE GENIUS that Barca have, i question you mental stability.
European Cup is NOT Champions League, its 1000 times tougher.
Come 10 years & so later, this Barca side WILL be considered The Greatest Ever, Get used to it or continue to be a hater.
@Varun
I am not saying that this Barcelona will not be considered one of the greatest team ever, but I think it is too early for that. I actually do not have Barcelona (or any other teams), but I prefer watching Barcelona with Romario, Stoickhov, Koeman, and Laudrup then current Barcelona. I tend to disagree that the current Champion Leagues is tougher than previous version of the same competition. For one, the number of foreigner was limited (3 maximum), so many countries had much stronger side than now (for example, teams from Romania, Bulgaria, former Yugoslavia, Sweden, Austria…). The second, the whole competition was based on the random draw, and it was possible the play very strong team in the first round. The third, just an idea of home and away game, gives more chance to underdogs. In the current system, the favorites can be defeated in the first two games in their group and still easily make it through. This year we have three teams in the Champions League semis that were not even champions of their country, which was not possible before. Also, I am not sure are you referring to Messi as The One Genius, but if you do, that’s the same player that scored one goal during two world cups, so I am not sure what happens to the Genius when he plays for Argentina. While he is the great, I think he is still too young to be considered one the best. Plus, he needs to do something at the biggest stage to be considered one of the best.
@Eric If only Michels hadn’t stopped Cruijff becoming manager of the Dutch national side…. we probably would have seen different tactics in orange; certainly during the final
@Maxwell I will not comment on you soccer views, as we could be debating for ever and ever, about who is better, scored more goals, etc… But I find there are too many factual mistakes in your article and subsequent rebuttals, and I would like to point them out.
For starters, FC Barcelona itself claims the title of the most important institution (not just a soccer club) in Cataluña. To say that “mes que un club” is not a claim on nationalism is completely wrong, and so extremely far from the truth, that it shows you do not understand the idiosyncrasy of FC Barcelona. That phrase symbolizes the Catalan people’s desire for freedom, as Barça has become a symbol of Catalan culture and Catalanism, dating to the days of Franco’s dictatorship.
Adding to this idea, you say that “nationalistic lines are sharper in Pais Vasco than in Catalunya, whose history is far more internationally integrated, and whose nationalism is, I believe, in reality far more complicated and subtle than than people often make it seem, and not as relevant to the club as it’s often portrayed.” That is again wrong on both ends, politically one cannot compare the situation in the Basque Country to the situation in Cataluña, or claim that Cataluña is more internationally integrated. What’s the basis for this? The fact that Barcelona gets more tourists than Bilbao? And to say that nationalism is not as relevant to FC Barcelona as it’s often portrayed, is so completely and absolutely wrong. Here are some examples of their nationalism: Barcelona fans booed the Spanish National anthem in the Final of the Copa del Rey in 2009 and in 2011, even burning Spanish flags in 2009. Not a single Spanish flag was used to celebrate all of their victories in 2009, or in any other year or that matter. Even the FC Barcelona players that won the World Cup, used a a flag of Catluña to celebrate, not a flag of Spain. Barcelona wears the Catalan flag in their uniform, not the Spanish flag. It would be too long to point out all the political and social connotations of what this soccer team represents to Catalans, from even before Franco to the present day.
They say a language I the most important part of the identity of a culture, so just to give you a quick glimpse (btw, something extremely obvious to anyone doing a little research on the subject) to what FC Barcelona is all about, let’s just use the language (catalan) as an example:
- FC Barcelona release all of their press notes in Catalan (also in Spanish), but the year end financial statements only in Catalan.
- FC Barcelona holds all club meetings with their members, entirely in Catalan.
- FC Barcelona, stopped flying Air Berlin, because they refused to change their policy, and give their announcements in Catalan; not just for the team, but for the general public.
- FC Barcelona players (specially the foreign ones) are encouraged to learn Catalan (but not Spanish), and the club provides a tutor free of charge to all players.
- Joan Laporta, previous president of the club, has always advocated for the independence of Cataluña. To the point where, after leaving the presidency, he formed his own political party, whose main guideline is the independence of Cataluña.
To sum up, FC Barcelona are a very nationalistic club, who try to uphold the sentiment of being Catalan wherever they go, even within Spain. How much time have you spent in Spain, Cataluña and Pais Vasco?
@Spaniard Thanks for the comment. I’ll try to explain my position a little more fully. But first, I’d like to stress that this is an opinion, based in my experience with Spain, Spanish football and art. Furthermore, it is in the larger context of describing influences on style of play.
A few things are going on simultaneously, and I (very briefly) brush over them in this essay. The first thing I try to identify, and maybe you can tell me if you see the same thing happening, is that FC Barcelona’s style of football has a compelling similarity to the city, for example the overemphasis on the beautiful and the ornate, which recall uniquely Catalan art (poetry, architecture) and-this is of course quite a stretch- a “litigious style of play” which recalls to me an attitude uniquely Catalan, and at least insofar as it’s not at all Real Madrid-esque.
The reason I stress these things is because while “nationalism” is deeply important to the Club, it’s not a revealing characteristic of their style of play. I find this especially interesting because, as I mentioned above, it seems like characteristics unique to the city of Barcelona, and by extension Catalunya, seep onto the pitch, but they are never discussed as such. On the contrary, the historic isolationism of Pais Vasco is explicitly expressed on the pitch, by the selection of players on a few of their Clubs.
“Nationalism” is often discussed in terms of the FC Barcelona, and the Madrid-Barcelona rivalry carries a symbolic weight that is profound, lasting and essential. I certainly don’t deny that, nor do I hope to marginalize the “nationalistic” sentiments of Catalunya in terms of the Club. But they are not simple, and the problem is that they are simplistically expressed.
Secondly, to quote Hughes again, “Nationalism deludes and enslaves people by treating them as abstractions.” This is what I think often happens to the team, though it’s seldom so macabre. (Some) people turn the Club into a simple abstraction of a complicated experience and sentiment (which is quite different than seeing the Club as a symbol of cultural freedom) and it’s that very abstracting I wanted to identify and refute. It’s not that “nationalism” isn’t important, it’s that it’s not an explanation of FC Barcelona’s style of play (though, as you point out, it may be a explanation of how they run the Club as a business), and it’s also not the only thing that makes Barcelona an important Club.
@elle Agree with the tiresomeness of all the Barcelona paeans. Is it because RoP is all about a more evocative form of prose, and only Barcelona lends itself to comparisons to all things bright and beautiful?
So is it Catalan national pride that made them react as if shot when brushed past last night? I ask merely to know, as a new soccer fan, if Barcelona is usually a bunch of flopping ref-bullying prima donnas (seriously, what was that red card doing out), or if it’s just a Real Madrid-baiting thing.
(That second Messi goal was unreal.)
@Scott Ha! My point is exactly the opposite, as you can see in the comments (I hope): nationalism is greatly important, but mostly a distraction when it comes to style. It’s not nationalism but culture, which is quite different. On the contrary, if there is some nationalism seeping onto the pitch, and thereby, I think, muddling the game, it’s not sort of thing that leads to any useful analysis of football. These Real and Barca squads fucking hate each other right now (not as people, not forever, but as players, in the midst of this quartet of matches) and I think that is a huge part of what comes out on the pitch: the fouls, the faux-fouls and so on. These players know each other really well, are some of the best in the world, expect to win every game and hate losing. I don’t get the sense that the Barca players are trying to topple the specter of Fascism-or its remaining symbolism, or even that they see those things when Casillas holds up the Copa del Rey trophy, just as I don’t get the sense that Real is trying to impose anything other than football on Barca as symbolic of a region. Fans may heap all that they want (on the backs of their players and that is not worthless or illegitimate (and it’s monumentally important for various reasons), but it doesn’t move us any closer to understanding what is beautiful, ugly, effective or feckless about they way their clubs play football.
@Maxwell Kuhl Heh! I wasn’t directing at anyone in particular, but your comments are definitely illuminating. It’s also interesting to see where narratives end and personal animus begins.
@Scott
Barcelona’s theatrics was a response to Madrid’s violent style of play. That was a perfectly deserver red card and there should have been two more, one for Marcelo and one for Adebayor. Real Madrid unde Mourinho have become a cinical team that seems to forget that this is a club were offensive football is praised, not “park the bus”. I don’t like those exagerations that I saw at Busquets and Pedro but I don’t like it when footbal becames rugby either.
Current Barca side as greatest ever? Perhaps. They’re certainly earning the right to be included in the debate. Can’t ignore the context though. They’re operating in European and Spanish footballing environments where the concentration of wealth has become acute. Do we downgrade Barcelona’s astonishing statistical achievements because they’re playing in a league that’s starting to resemble the SPL?
I really miss watching the strong Valenica, Depor and (latterly) Sevilla sides we saw in the nineties and noughties. I miss Zaragoza winning European silverware and Atletico Madrid winning the league. I love the power and the glory of RM and Barca, but their impact is becoming cheapened by the paucity of their surroundings.
@Maxwell Kuhl
To answer your points, I personally think that to say that “FC Barcelona’s style of football has a compelling similarity to the city”, is like you mention, quite a stretch. I do not mean to sound rude or condescending, but the style of play from FC Barcelona has nothing to do with the city of Barcelona itself. And I would ask you, does this happen in any other European city? So this means that Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham should have a similar style of play because they are all London teams?
FC Barcelona’s current style of football (the same they’ve had since 1988) comes solely from following the doctrines of Johan Cruyff, which he copied from Ajax. Upon arrival at the club as a coach, he asked to be named manager of “everything” football related (hiring, firings, youth team, etc…), and imposed the same style of attacking football on all of the teams of the youth system. This style is, obviously, very closely followed by Guardiola, who epitomized the typical player brought up in La Masia thanks to the Cruyff method of playing, like Milla and Amor before him, and Xavi, Arteta, Fabregas and Iniesta after he retired. FC Barcelona found a great way to “understand” football as an orchestra that makes beautiful music, and have implemented this attacking philosophy since then, through many coaches and players. And alluding to what I said earlier, I mentioned a coincidence, because before Cruyff (the coach) came along, FC Barcelona did not have a specific style of play, and it depended on whichever coach was in charge.
Based on what I just described, I can agree with you that while nationalism is deeply important to the Club, it’s not a revealing characteristic of their style of play. But nationalism is what fuels the those players born in Barcelona, or brought up through the youth system, especially when the play against Real Madrid. It’s that extra push that makes them want to score one more goal. Take any of the comments made by the players during the recent 4 Madrid-Barca matches as an example. According to Real Madrid Players Pique told them on the way out to the pitch on the first game: hey little Spaniards, we won YOUR Spanish league, and now we are going to win the Cup of YOUR King. On the other side, when asked yesterday who was he rooting for on the Champions league final, Casillas said: I’m rooting for football, and for a good show and a good match. And this sort of covert semi-nationalistic comments have peppered these games for many, many years, and it will continue to be that way.
To really fully comprehend the nationalistic roots of all the attitudes surrounding these matches, one has to understand and have experienced the history and politics of what it means to live in Cataluña, Madrid and Spain. These players don’t hate each other because they play for the 2 best teams in Spain, they hate each other, because they specifically play for FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, and those teams hate each other, period. Btw, did you notice, absolutely no Spanish flags on the part of the players or the fans in the celebrations after winning the league? Even Dani Alves (Brazilian) was quoted screaming “Visca Barca, Visca Catalunya”, in Catalan, a language he does not speak… understandable, he is just trying to fit in
And in the current FC Barcelona squad, this attitude of nationalistic pride over the oppression coming from Madrid is something very easy to accomplish. Of the Spanish (including Cataluña) players, only David Villa (and Pinto, but he doesn’t count…) have not been brought up through the youth system. The rest know very well who is the enemy, and when you pick Barcelona (or Real Madrid) you quickly learn who is the enemy. Btw, the same could be said for the Madrid born or bred players of Real Madrid.