How Barcelona shaped the modern-day champion coach

Luis Enrique joined an illustrious line of highly successful coaches to come out of Barcelona

As Neymar swung his left foot at the Olympiastadion, sending the ball past a hapless Gianluigi Buffon, the curtains fell on an enthralling season of European football as Barcelona won the treble at Juventus’ expense. The two managers – Max Allegri and Luis Enrique – had inherited two teams in relative pre-season disarray and transformed them into juggernauts, with the unstoppable force of the Blaugrana being the only power to prevail over the immovable object that the Bianconeri had been.

If one goes back to the pre-season, it is difficult to believe how much Allegri has changed the mindset of The Old Lady of Turin. Tasked with the unenviable role of following in none other than Antonio Conte’s footsteps, Allegri moulded the Italian giants into European giants in the space of a solitary season. His treble-winning counterpart from Spain, meanwhile, has done an equally brilliant job.

However, if one looks beyond the dressing room unrest and the backdrop of his appointment, and into his Barcelona upbringing, it is easy to see why Luis Enrique has done the unthinkable.

Mes Que Un Club is the proud proclamation made by the Blaugrana, figureheads of the Catalunyan fight for independence. This is a club swathed in patriotic or anarchical fabric, depending on which side of the wall you stand. And this anti-establishment mentality was never more evident than when they played the capital club, the club of the totalitarian regime, Real Madrid.

However, a fiercely charged rivalry never held much relevance in terms of silverware as the Blancos were light years ahead of their rivals. Enter Hendrik Johannes Cruyff.

Dutch transformation at Barcelona

Johann Cruyff was the pioneer of Barcelona’s playing style

Johan Cruyff changed the way FC Barcelona played football. While he weaved magic on the pitch during his heydays, it was his vision outside it that made the Catalans what they are today. Transforming an 18th-century farmhouse into what is known today as La Masia, Cruyff’s version of the beautiful game had the adjective stamped on every pass, every move.

This wasn’t achieved with divas, but with a combination of a tactically brilliant and technically superior workforce, and a smattering of mercurial mavericks here and there. Schooled in the art of space management and intricate tactics, little did Josep Nunez, Johan Cruyff and the Cules imagine that the revolution off and on the pitch would engineer a conveyor belt of elite coaches.

Once Nunez and Cruyff left the Camp Nou, another Dutchman, much more popular today, took over the reins at Catalunya. Louis van Gaal took off where his illustrious predecessors left off, to mixed success.

While success on the pitch was never straightforward or guaranteed, the ethos of the club didn’t change during this time. Another crop of players developed into tactically sound craftsmen, showing a nous for the game that would later hold them in good stead – including the likes of Xavi and Andres Iniesta.

Before we talk about the graduates of the Cruyff and Van Gaal schools of contemporary football, it is imperative to mention a long-haired German enigma (yes, a rare combination) – the first Barcelona player to become a mainstream manager in the 21st century.

Bernd Schuster, one of those rare players to have bridged the Clasico divide, coached FC Koln, Shakhtar Donetsk, Levante and Getafe, enjoying moderate success, before being thrust upon the limelight as he was appointed the manager of Real Madrid in 2007. In spite of winning the La Liga though, he soon fell out with the hierarchy and moved to Besiktas and Malaga, with the Andalusian club being his last one as of today.

With Schuster being the non-conformist that he was, attributing Barcelona and their school of thought to his managerial success isn’t entirely true. However, the Blaugrana men who soon followed the blonde bombshell’s footsteps into the nasty world of football management were all schooled in what is quintessentially the Barcelona way.

The moderately successful coaches from Barcelona’s school of thought

Michael Laudrup, the jewel of Cruyff's Dream Team, was always destined to be a manager. A tactically astute student of the game, the fact that Laudrup has fallen well short of his exalted standards in the tuxedo job is a real shame, though he still has time to revive a flailing managerial career.

After incredible success with both Brondby and Getafe, Laudrup’s coaching career has been in free fall ever since, with him failing at Spartak Moscow and Mallorca, while succeeding only sporadically at Swansea City. The Great Dane is now the manager of the defending QSL champions Lekhwiya.

Where Laudrup failed to maintain the tempo, his former teammate Ronald Koeman succeeded in doing so. The defensive rock upon which Cruyff built his all-conquering team, Koeman was the Beckenbauer of the 1990s, a player possessing intelligence in abundance. This intelligence permeated his coaching career too, as he completed successful assistant coaching stints for both the Oranje and Barcelona.

Koeman Laudrup — Ronald Koeman (L) and Michael Laudrup (R)

He then went on to coach each of the big four and Vitesse Arnhem in the Eredivisie, having also coached Valencia and Benfica in between. He’s still going strong at Southampton, where he oversaw a hugely successful transitional season after losing key players.

Returning to the Class of ‘96, one of them went on to become a domestic champion this season, in his very first job at the helm. A widely acclaimed midfielder during his time, Phillip Cocu was the archetypal Barcelona player – strong and fluent with the ball, hard-working and quick-thinking without it.

He seems to have shown the same penchant for managing too. Having taken over PSV Eindhoven as caretaker manager, Cocu has finally managed to break the Ajax stranglehold by running away with the Eredivisie title this season.

Honourable mentions: Juan Antonio Pizzi (Club Leon), Roberto Prosinecki (Azerbaijan), Patrick Kluivert (Curacao).

The prodigal sons

Phillip Cocu, Laurent Blanc, Pep Guardiola, Luis Enrique and Jose Mourinho – League title winning coaches in 2014/15

Now, while the former Oranje midfield general has done a phenomenal job of turning PSV’s fortunes around, many people don’t count his achievement to be extraordinary. With Feyenoord and Ajax suffering from depleted squads, many feel that PSV had it easy in an already impoverished league.

But then, the success of Cocu and others mentioned so far, who have come out of the Camp Nou dressing room and into the Russian Roulette of football management, is just the tip of the iceberg. After all, the winners of five of Europe’s top seven domestic leagues (including the Eredivisie) have been managed by men who learnt the tricks of the trade at Camp Nou.

When Ricardo Quaresma mesmerized the Dragao with a quick-fire brace against the mighty Bayern Munich, life looked rosy for FC Porto and their manager, Julen Lopetegui. A week and an absolute drubbing later, however, they’re back to the drawing board, with Benfica having wrested the Liga Sagres from them.

For Lopetegui, the former Barcelona goalie with a CV filled with age-group management experience, the second part of the current season has been a real learning curve. However, his bold management and Porto’s bold foray into doors only meant for the European elite mean that the former Catalan custodian’s name is on the radar of many a club.

Laurent Blanc, yet another member of that famed class of ‘96, is another Barcelona graduate who has enjoyed enormous success in coaching. Le President, who made an all-guns-blazing entry into management, winning the Manager of the Year in his debut year and the Ligue 1 in his second year with Bordeaux, is the epitome of a thinking defender.

Possessed with a calm demeanour, it is this equanimity that saw him not get flustered by a disappointing period as the supremo of Les Bleus. Having won a domestic treble with PSG this season, Laurent Blanc is here to stay.

Barcelona celebrate their Spanish Supercopa win in 1996

The Class of ‘96 has been an oft-repeated phrase in this article. And here we see them, Laurent Blanc, Luis Enrique and others celebrating the 1996 Spanish Supercopa victory. However, one look at the right end of the photo shows the two opposing forces of football today; the yin and the yang of the beautiful game.

With a plethora of titles as player and manager, Pep Guardiola is arguably the greatest student of the game we’ll ever witness. Standing right next to him is the then assistant to Bobby Robson and preliminary translator of FC Barcelona, a certain Jose Mourinho.

One is Catalan born and bred. The other is an Iberian who had to sweat his way up the ladder. With a mind-boggling 13 league titles and 4 Champions League titles between them, these two men are arguably the best in the business today, and that too by a considerable margin.

While one seems to have perfected and fused Marcelo Bielsa’s pressing game with Cruyff’s emphasis on ball retention, the other has borrowed his ideas heavily from the likes of Cesar Luis Menotti and Helenio Herrera – exponents of tough, winning football. With philosophies that lie at the opposite ends of the spectrum, their’s is a rivalry of ego, persona, silverware and most of all, of wits.

Needless to say, it’s been a battle between two of the same family. Like most epic ones are. And the game is all the richer for it.

Epilogue

Every battle comes to an end at some point of time. And then, it is time to deliver those glowing epitaphs for the fallen heroes. FC Barcelona have had a fallen hero of their own, their own son who was cruelly taken away from them.

Tito Vilanova was more than just a manager who realised his childhood dream of leading his favourite team. He was the symbol of everything good about a team that prided itself on Tots Units Fem Forca – Together, we are stronger. And he must be revelling from above, seeing the success and camaraderie in the Blaugrana dressing room right now.

He will always be their leader. Per Sempre Etern, Tito!

Edited by Staff Editor