Welcome Back, Pep

By: Isaiah | May 15th, 2008

Well, it’s out with the old, in with the new. The new, of course, just happens to be an old face around the Camp Nou: Josep “Pep” Guardiola.

But who is Pep Guardiola and what does he bring to the table? First, let’s discuss what he has already brought to the table in the past. Born in 1971, Guardiola first joined Barcelona B at the age of 13. In 1990, at the age of 19, he made the step up to the first team. He played for Barça for 11 years, earning the captaincy in 1997. He left in 2001 and began to move from team to team, ending up in Italy, Qatar, and eventually Mexico, where he retired in 2006. As a member of the Spanish national team, Guardiola won the gold medal at the ‘92 Barcelona Olympics (the first U-23 Olympic competition) and played in the 1994 World Cup and Euro2000.

In 2007, he returned to the Camp Nou to take the job of managing Barcelona B. His success there (leading the team to the top of their Tercera division table with one game remaining, though they’ve already qualified for the Segunda B playoffs, which, I think, is why he won’t become official manager of the first team until July 1), contributed to Laporta appointed him as Rijkaard’s replacement.

However, there’s a lot more to Guardiola than just another player-cum-manager. In doing hasty (and perhaps cursory) research for this post, I ran across this telling passage in Jimmy Burns’ Barça: A People’s Passion:

The earliest and clearest image most cules have of Guardiola is of a skinny, unshaven waterboy running out from the touch-line and embracing Pichi Alonso the night Venables’s team qualified for the European Cup final. Guardiola had broken the rules but claimed afterwards that he had acted just like any fan who happens to be there at a sublime moment of victory. When Barça lost the final, he would also go silent like all the other fans.

It’s this undeniable passion that makes Guardiola a good fit for Barcelona, politically. The fans love him, as they loved Cruyff’s return, and no cule who remembers the Dream Team can fail to link the two together. Guardiola, after all, was given his shot by Cruyff, and really was a major catalyst in jump starting that golden age. But that brings more questions than answers to my mind. Perhaps it’s the history major in me that is making these connections and perhaps they’re not even real connections worth making, but hear me out and have your say in the comments.

There is little denying that Cruyff is a legend-among-legends in Barcelona. He stands not only for his playing days and his spectacular goals*, but for his managerial days when Barcelona stood alone atop world soccer. Is Laporta attempting to do just what Nuñez did before him, bringing in a prized member of the pantheon of blaugrana deities in order to assuage the fans? Jimmy Burns, whose gospel I have already quoted, writes that Nuñez and Cruyff’s partnership was a “marriage of convenience,” which wouldn’t be a far cry from what Laporta is doing. He has cast the blame on Rijkaard rather than on himself (and, in fact, on everyone other than himself), so he has replaced Rijkaard and is moving to replace several of the “black sheep” in the locker room, regardless of whether the falling heads will really serve a purpose. I will not delve deeper into this, but it’s certainly a parallel to a prior time — anyone who supports Laporta, and really most everyone, will point out that the Cruyff era was actually really awesome. So perhaps Laporta is not being devious in this, but rather looking to history to light his path. I, however, don’t read Laporta as a leading thinking, but rather as a conniving politician, so it taints my view of him.**

There is also little denying the influence Cruyff still maintains within the club and within the Catalan media is immense. Whether this will cause Guardiola grief or give him good counsel is yet to be seen, but should certainly be taken into consideration when judging the potential Guardiola has. Whether it’s good or bad that he listen (or not listen) to Cruyff’s judgments on all things blaugrana depends on your opinion of Cruyff. I, for one, tend to agree with what he has said in his columns and interviews over the last couple of years (those that I have read, anyway, which can be counted on one hand), so I don’t necessarily think Cruyff, a paragon of beautiful soccer, will bring a negative influence to the situation unless he becomes the de facto manager.

Guardiola, though, has a personal connection with several of the players he will be coaching, from having been former teammates, to having already been their manager in Barcelona B, if the rumors of Gai’s and Thiago’s upward move are to be believed. Xavi and Puyol are the most obvious connections, but it can’t be denied that others who grew up in the Barça system (Valdes, Jorquera, Iniesta, Messi, Bojan, Gio, Oleguer even) will look at him with quite a bit of awe and perhaps camaraderie. I wonder, though, if that closeness won’t create tension between those who don’t know him so well and those that do…It is up to Guardiola to dispatch that notion and to embrace all the players equally, regardless of their background.

So there you have it: Pep Guardiola in an Offside nutshell. Of course, if you want to know what the official site has to say about him, just click here.

*Here is a video of a lot of his goals. Skip ahead to 2:50 if you want to see what I think is his “impossible goal”; at 2:28, though is a hilarious twist on the PK. Why don’t people do that more often?

**Heh, I said taint.