Henry: League, 19; Copa del Rey, 1; 6 in five Champions League games: total = 25.
Eto’o: League, 30; 6 in five Champions League games: total = 36.
The following season Pep Guardiola decided to dispense with the services of Samuel Eto’o. He spoke of ‘feeling’ (using the English word at a press conference), to avoid having to explain that Eto’o had no wish to continue playing second fiddle to the new star. In one training session he had shouted at Guardiola, reminding him that he was a forward and that Guardiola had never been one; that he knew what he was doing. At the end of that campaign there was no longer any understanding, or patience. Pep was conscious of the enormous effort that Eto’o had made that year, but they had reached an impasse. The coach’s decision was inevitable: the development of ‘the Flea’ required he be given all the leeway that Eto’o was demanding.
GB: How do you explain the departure of Samuel Eto’o?
PG: It was a tactical decision, a purely tactical choice, nothing else. No other reason. It would have been impossible to win everything we won that first year without Samuel, absolutely impossible. He adapted to Leo when I told him to do so, and to the tactical plans at the Bernabéu and also in Rome. But I decided Leo was going to play regularly down the middle and I thought it would be unfair to ask Samuel to play every game on the wing. I did not think it was right to ask him to adapt to Leo eighty games a season, it was not the correct thing to do. Pedro, Jeffrén, Bojan … they could; not Samuel.
‘Ronaldinho brought hope to the “Barcelonistas” back to the club and Eto’o helped immensely with the victories that came as a consequence,’ explains Joan Laporta. ‘I assumed the responsibility of telling Samuel that he would not be continuing at the club. For a player as temperamental as him, it is difficult to take on board that concept of “feeling” that Pep mentioned, even though he knew that he could have done more to please the coach. This was not a whim of Pep’s, rather a decision that was very difficult for us to take. That year we wanted to sign Villa, or Forlán or Ibrahimović. We tried Villa first of all, but financially it was impossible. Finally it was Ibra. We needed Eto’o to agree to the deal before we could bring in his replacement, but Samuel did not want to go on loan to Valencia, although he said yes to Milan. What’s more, Ibra was the technical staff’s preference. Manchester City offered us €32 million for Eto’o, but he did not want to go there either because they still had not qualified for the Champions League.’ Zlatan cost the €20 million at which Eto’o was valued plus €46 million more, making him the most expensive player in the history of the club.
The new tactical approach offered the possibility of implementing the classic Dutch 4-3-3 formation with a forward in Ibra capable of holding the ball and playing with his back to goal, something that gave the option of using the long ball more often, but also someone with the talent to drive at goal and to score. Pep had played in such a formation under Louis Van Gaal, with Patrick Kluivert the player up front.
But for that to work a fruitful relationship had to be established between Zlatan and his colleagues up front, especially Leo, who would often come inside with dangerous diagonal runs. That was the challenge for the coming season and it would reach its peak in December when the club hoped to consolidate all that it had set out to do a year and a half earlier. To do so they had to win the sixth title out of six, the FIFA Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi.
Leo had a minor ankle injury and had some recuperative sessions with Juanjo Brau on the beach at Abu Dhabi. He was not yet ready to start the semi-final against the Mexican club Atlante, and stayed on the bench. The game became an uphill battle after Barcelona conceded a goal in the fourth minute. Not even Atlante were ready for that: they knew they were up against the best team of the year and felt they didn’t stand a chance. ‘Boys, we’ll defend deep and let’s hope we don’t concede five,’ said one of the senior players before taking to the field. But, given the chance, the Mexicans were not going to give anything away. Busquets equalised in the thirty-fifth minute, but it was difficult to create chances against the defensiveness of Atlante. In the fifty-fourth minute, Ibrahimović placed the ball in space for Leo, who had just come on, to run on to and he scored to make it 2–1. Pedro scored the final goal to make it 3–1, becoming at that moment the only player to score in all competitions in a single year.
Before the final against the Argentinian team Estudiantes de la Plata, Messi witnessed one of the most memorable speeches Pep Guardiola ever gave his team. He ended it with the words: ‘If we lose today, we will still be the best team in the world. If we win, we will be eternal.’
But Estudiantes scored the first goal and then dropped deep to defend their advantage.
19 December 2009. FIFA Club World Cup Championship. Estudiantes 1–2 Barcelona. Abu Dhabi
Barcelona: Valdés; Alvés, Puyol, Piqué, Abidal; Xavi, Busquets (Touré, 79th minute), Keita (Pedro, 46th minute); Messi, Ibra and Henry (Jeffrén, 82nd minute).
Estudiantes: Albil; Rodríguez, Cellay, Desábato, Ré (Rojo, 90th+1 minute); Díaz, Benítez (Sánchez, 76th minute), Verón, Braña; Enzo Pérez (Máxi Núñez, 79th minute) and Boselli.
Goals: 1–0, 37th minute: Boselli. 1–1, 89th minute: Pedro. 1–2, 110th minute; Messi.
Ramón Besa, El País. Messi doesn’t just have feet and a head, although he probably has the best ones in the world, but he is also very good with his chest. And he scores goals with a heart that wins titles as he did yesterday in Abu Dhabi. Such are the subtleties of football. Something so serious, a title as grand as the World Club Championship ends up being child’s play, Messi’s chest, Jeffrén’s legs, Pedro’s head … Pedro forced extra time in the penultimate minute. He scored following a Barcelona attack, and once Albil was beaten it was only a matter into the net off his chest following a cross from Dani Alvés. The best pibe [little kid] ended up confirming the defeat of his Argentine compatriots.
Luis Martín, El País: The ball came to him following the slightest of deflections, perfect for finishing off and anyone else would have looked to meet it with their head. Not Messi; he’d shown what he could do with his head in Rome, the day his boot came off and Barcelona won the Champions League and with it the treble. Yesterday he invented a goal with his chest. Or was it his heart? He showed his back to Verón and Cellay and his chest to the ball. And Albil was left there looking at the ball as it went in. ‘I stayed up there because I wanted to make sure, that’s all. I hit it with my chest and my heart,’ the Argentine explained. And then, Messi ran off with his face bursting with happiness. His colleagues embraced him, and when he emerged from that cluster he raised his arms to the sky in tribute to his late grandmother, Celia. And it was over. What no one had ever managed to do before, Guardiola’s Barcelona did yesterday: in one year, six titles. The lot. And Messi was in all of them. He celebrated on and off the pitch, where he was prompted to say: ‘A lot of time is going to have to pass by for us to appreciate what we have achieved but it is great. Today we don’t realise it. It’s going to be very difficult for anyone to repeat it because no other side has ever managed it.’ Leo’s words.
‘I felt more confident doing it like that because I was too close to the goalkeeper to try a header. The ball came to me at a strange angle, we’d been practising a lot and as I was so close I thought about guiding it more than just hitting it with my head,’ he told Martín Souto in the interview for TyC. Leo explained in El País that ‘I tried to guide the ball. I saw the goalkeeper going in one direction and I thought I would send it the other way.’
It was the day that Pep Guardiola cried on the pitch, the culmination of an extraordinary year and a half of pressure, pleasure and results. Leo was the first to hug him, grateful, before going to shake the hand of all his rivals, all defeated Argentinians.
‘This group and Barcelona owe a great deal to Pep for everything that he has done,’ explained Leo after the title had been won. ‘He arrived when we had gone through two bad years, where we had failed to meet our objectiv
es, and he changed the mentality of the dressing room.’
Leo was now undoubtedly one of the main protagonists in a side that had entered the history books, part of a collective that identified him as a beacon, that vital piece among a group of people who understood a type of football that would survive football’s normally limited memory span.
The players took photos in the dressing room with the latest trophy and then there was a party. Together and apart. Ibrahimović with his people, Leo with his brothers.
‘The thing is,’ recalls Joan Laporta, ‘I remember him dancing when we were celebrating winning the title in Abu Dhabi in 2009. And he was messing around as usual when the senior players (Xavi, Puyol, Iniesta, Valdés) came up to me and asked me for their bonuses. When that happened, Leo was always there, watching, because they would share the final decision with him simply with a look.’
Ibrahimović never did understand the senior players’ acquiescent nature.
6. FOUR GOALS IN THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE QUARTER-FINALS AGAINST ARSENAL, 2010
In fourteen months, Leo Messi had signed two new contracts: one in July 2008 on an annual salary of €7.8 million with a €1.5 million bonus for matches played; his release clause stood at €150 million. But in September 2009, Barcelona offered him a new deal which reflected the success in Guardiola’s first season: his salary reached €12 million. If the team won the league or Champions League and he played 60 per cent of the games, bonuses of up to €2 million would be added as a fixed wage the following season. The contract expired in 2016 and also had a release clause. If someone wanted to sign Leo without negotiating with Barcelona, his price was now €250 million.
After victory in the FIFA Club World Cup the players left for their holidays. On their return they were to face Villarreal. Those Christmas holidays, unlike the previous year, were used to the last day, and Leo returned the day before the match. Guardiola wanted to save him for a cup match against Sevilla three days later. The player said he was available for the league match but Pep stuck to his guns. After the 1–1 draw with Villarreal, the coach mixed some fringe players (Pinto, Chigrinski, Maxwell, Thiago and Bojan, who played as a number 9) with first team players against Sevilla. In fact, the bench, with the exception of Ibra, had played in both the Champions League final and the Club World Cup final. Messi started on the wing.
Sevilla applied a simple but effective tactic: they defended very deep and launched long balls in behind the defence. On seeing the disillusionment within the squad after the defeat, Pep felt he had disappointed them and determined to reward their ambition by fielding the strongest possible team for the return leg, except for Pinto in goal, the cup goalkeeper.
5 January 2010. First leg. Barcelona 1–2 Sevilla
Barcelona: Pinto; Alvés, Milito (Busquets, 66th minute), Chigrinski, Maxwell; Thiago (Xavi, 71st minute), Márquez, Iniesta; Messi, Bojan and Pedro (Ibrahimović, 46th minute). Subs not used: Valdés, Henry, Puyol and Piqué.
Sevilla: Palop; Konko, Escudé, Dragutinović, Navarro; Romarić, Lolo (Duscher, 81st minute); Capel, Navas (Renato, 46th minute), Perotti and Koné (Negredo, 69th minute). Subs not used: Dani Jiménez, Cala, José Carlos and Redondo.
Goals: 0–1. 60th minute: Capel puts away a Perotti cross which Renato dummies. 1–1. 73rd minute: Ibrahimović, from a Márquez pass. 1–2. 75th minute: Negredo penalty.
Jordi Quixano, El País: Messi returned from Argentina bringing back with him fantasy football. Two bursts from the wing were the highlights of the duel. After one, he fired in a venomous shot which Palop diverted round the post. Then in a brilliant move, with almost no space for the shot, the genius curled an effort against the woodwork.
In eighteen months Guardiola’s Barcelona had still not lost a single knockout match.
His players’ response in Sevilla was magnificent, in a real cup tie played in torrential rain which added an epic touch: the raids on goal, defended by an extraordinary Palop, were incessant, especially in the second half.
‘He was burning with rage,’ remembers Gerard Piqué. He was crying silently, with his shirt covering his face, discreetly, crestfallen. Away from everyone. ‘If you didn’t look carefully, you wouldn’t even realise.’ In those circumstances, it’s better to leave him alone, which is what most of his team-mates did that night.
13 January 2010. Second leg. Sevilla 0–1 Barcelona
Barcelona: Pinto; Alvés (Pedro, 84th minute), Piqué, Puyol, Abidal; Xavi, Busquets, Iniesta; Messi, Ibrahimović (Bojan, 84th minute) and Henry. Subs not used: Valdés; Milito, Chigrinski, Maxwell and Jonathan.
Sevilla: Palop; Konkó, Escudé, Dragutinović, Navarro; Navas, Duscher (Lolo, 58th minute), Romarić (Cala, 92nd minute), Adriano (Capel, 64th minute); Renato and Negredo. Subs not used: Javi Varas; Koné, José Carlos and Stankevicius.
Goal: 0–1. 63rd minute: Xavi slots a well-placed shot just inside the post from the edge of the area.
Martí Perarnau, Sport: José Manuel Pinto and Leo Messi already have something else in common, apart from belonging to the same club and winning six cups in one year: they cried disconsolately on that early Wednesday morning in full view of all of their team-mates in the Sánchez Pizjuán dressing room. Compatriot Gabi Milito, the man who acts as a bodyguard for the blaugrana forward, tried to console Messi … The example of the man who fights to the limit of his sporting ability transcends a timely triumph, or a bitter defeat, in a society all too accustomed to throwing in the towel in the face of the slightest difficulty. Today’s world no longer needs stars, but examples.
It was the first title that Guardiola had failed to win.
Pep went to console Leo. The Argentinian felt guilty about the elimination and told the coach as much. ‘Nobody is guilty here,’ Guardiola told him. ‘And if the finger should be pointed at anyone it should be at me for not knowing how to lead you into the next round.’
GB: What do you say to Leo when he is crying? Or is it better to leave him to weep?
PG: It is best to let him be. You see him and you think, ‘He will be okay’. You realise that it is best, as a coach, to have this kind of player rather than those who, after a defeat, start playing poker and laughing on the team bus home. You prefer a guy who, yes, can play poker at the end, but he has also expressed clearly that he hates losing.
GB: In Argentina, there is a saying: a game shouldn’t make you cry. But if you do cry after a defeat it must be because somehow you are playing for your life.
PG: Maybe it is what you say. That love to win, the passion, the competitiveness … he is an animal, as Tiger Woods is, or Michael Jordan, or Rafa Nadal. Those athletes are unique and all you have to do when you meet them is try to understand them. You cannot say, ‘I am the coach, I have the moral authority because the club has put me here and we are going to do what I want you to do.’ They are a rare species that you have to make the effort to understand. You have to get inside their heads. Manel Estiarte was key for that learning process, having been the best ever at his sport. At the start of Manel’s career he wanted the ball all the time, he wanted everything his own way, he had days where he did not want to talk to anybody. When Leo got like that, Manel would say, ‘let him be. In a few days try to approach him again and chat again.’ But what you cannot do is let him do everything he wants; you have to demand a series of things from him, always trying to synchronise with the way he thinks. His mind is that of a privileged player, unique. And as such you have to try to understand how he thinks.
GB: What do you think motivates him?
PG: Leo’s facial expression and body language tell you how he feels, how he is. And going by that, it is evident that he doesn’t compete to have a fantastic girlfriend perhaps, or to be in magazines or in the press, or to film an advertisement. He competes to win in those 90 minutes, the rest doesn’t interest him. He is like Cristiano Ronaldo, decisive and imperious. Coaches have to give him all the elements so that he can express himself near the area and be happy. He does the rest, he has that special gift. H
e’s at his happiest when he’s on the pitch.
And if he wins, of course. And scores. In three consecutive matches in February, luck was not on Messi’s side and he was less prominent than usual. The third of those was the first leg of the last 16 against Stuttgart in the Champions League, a match which had consequences for Guardiola’s future plans. Barcelona drew 1–1 in Germany and Leo was unnoteworthy. What was happening? Any other coach would have sat the footballer down, given him a break and allowed him to reflect. Pep reacted in another way. He blamed himself for not managing to get the best out of Leo and studied the reasons for such a poor Messi, together with assistant Tito Vilanova. The conclusion was not surprising: his talent was being wasted on the wing.
With Ibrahimović in the centre of the attack in the usual 4-3-3, Pep told Messi to start on the wing but play inside as often as he wanted. But Leo did not touch the ball often enough in those circumstances.
And, in addition, Leo no longer ran down the touchline. Those diagonal runs inside caused a serious problem to his own team: the team suffered defensively. ‘They murdered us down that flank,’ it was said privately after the match in Germany. Cristian Molinaro, the left-back, pushed forward with total freedom as Leo did not track back. Pep, who remembered similar problems against Lyon, admitted after the match that Leo was no longer going to play on the wing, he clearly didn’t want to and shouldn’t: the risk was too great and that could be very costly in Europe.
Pep knew that Messi did his talking on the pitch and those constant diagonal bursts sent out a clear message: ‘This is my game.’ And not only that, but his habitat, the area in which he wanted to be most influential, was the space between defenders and central midfielders.
There was an added problem: when he made those runs, the presence of other attackers, his own team-mates, literally blocked his route to goal; they were in his way. Something had to be done. The tactical evolution of Leo and, therefore the side, was irresistible from then on.
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