Cruyff built the cathedral,” Pep Guardiola once famously said. “Our job is to maintain it.” But financial difficulties left Barcelona in disrepair. Now the restoration has begun. Twelve games unbeaten in La Liga and up to third in the table having won more points than any other side since the turn of the year, Barcelona still go into El Clasico tomorrow as underdogs.
They could well be beaten in the Bernabeu, but the clarity of purpose has returned. Xavi’s arrival – Barca’s revival – has arrested the sense of drift.
It is Xavi, perhaps more than any player of the past two decades, who symbolises the Barcelona way. His playmaking partner Andres Iniesta was adored, a hero for all of Spain. Lionel Messi was Lionel Messi, a global icon.
His was a mantle inherited from Guardiola, the carrier of the flame, an idea passed down from Johan Cruyff himself.
Before Cruyff, Barcelona was a famous football club – more than a club, as they proclaim – but that identity was visible off the pitch rather than on it. He gave them a style all of their own.
Oscar Garcia played alongside both Guardiola and Xavi, making his Barcelona debut under Cruyff and later assisting him in his role as head coach of the Catalunya national team.
“To train every day with Johan Cruyff was to go to school,” he told Sky Sports. “You go to each training session with your eyes wide open because you want to learn. But the most important thing he taught us was to understand the game – to see what is happening and why it is happening and what we can do to change things.
“I never had a coach like this. A teacher. I learned so much from him, from Charly Rexach who was his assistant.
“It was a fantastic education.”
It worked too. Under Cruyff, Barcelona became champions of Europe for the first time. Since Cruyff, they have won the Champions League on five occasions playing his football.
“When Barcelona played with this identity, Barcelona normally won the league,” said Oscar.“The play of Barcelona everyone could recognise; they lost this philosophy.”
The erosion was gradual and then sudden even under a series of former Barcelona players, there was a move away from the ideals.
Luis Enrique, coach for the most recent European triumph now seven years ago, sought to quicken the tempo. Ernesto Valverde brought some success with a slightly different style.
Ronald Koeman delivered neither and the whole edifice appeared to be crumbling when the club’s financial crisis made it necessary to allow Messi to leave. This was the end of an era.
There were missteps in the summer. New president Joan Laporta, returning to the role that he had held between 2003 and 2010, was working on the fly amid considerable uncertainty.
Some had assumed that Barcelona still had enough to compete for trophies. They always had for as long as many cared to remember. But results were sobering.
By the end of October, Barca had lost as many games as they had won. Their Champions League exit loomed.
The return of Jordi Cruyff was significant. This had long been mooted with Laporta’s predecessor Josep Maria Bartomeu keen to involve him.
A rival candidate to Laporte, Victor Font, set out his vision to have Xavi and Cruyff working in partnership as long ago as 2020.
Cruyff came back to the club where his father is so revered in September but he has since assumed greater control over football affairs. He is now the de facto sporting director.
Mateu Alemany is the money man, a shrewd operator in the market, he is tasked with balancing the books at a time when that has never been more difficult at Barcelona.
Xavi returned as head coach in November but such is the influence he wields, even at a club with as many competing interests as Barcelona, he is more akin to an old-style manager.
Laporta has the final say, but with technical secretary Ramon Planes leaving weeks after Xavi’s appointment, it is this group of Xavi, Jordi and Alemany that is Barcelona’s new triumvirate. There were reports at the time that Jordi had been reluctant for Koeman to be sacked but it is understood that this was a supposition based on the fact that the two are friends.
There was a long-held desire for the two to work together, a shared ethos. The recent transfer window was the first with their fingerprints on it and there was a clear shift in strategy – one that may have surprised some given its emphasis.
A theory has emerged in Spain that teams from La Liga now struggle to cope with the speed and physicality of the game that is being played by clubs from the Premier League.
Xavi has always espoused the view that no player can move quicker than the ball but even he has come to accept that there was a need to help the team’s technical players.
Meanwhile, three players arrived in the window. All came from the Premier League. Ferran Torres was signed from Manchester City, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang came in from Arsenal, and Adama Traore was brought in on loan from Wolves with an option to buy.
There can be no more conspicuous example of the desire for physicality than the acquisition of Traore, a player Jordi is known to have pushed for.
His impact was swift, with four assists in his first five games soon winning over some of the doubters. Ousmane Dembele has been successfully – and somewhat surprisingly – rehabilitated, so Xavi has options out wide now.
With seven goals in his last seven appearances, Aubameyang has been an even more obvious hit, scoring a hat-trick away to Valencia.
His most recent goal came in the win over Osasuna – a game that Barcelona won by four goals with two of them scored by Torres.
One of the problems when buying from Premier League clubs is that it is hard to make the numbers work given the salaries involved.
There was some surprise that the fee for Torres was not higher given that he had adjusted so impressively to the Premier League, making significant strides under Guardiola.
The deal for Traore, on relatively modest wages because of the player’s desire to return to his boyhood club, is an excellent one given that there is no obligation to buy in the summer.
With only one year left on his contract at the end of the loan, there is even the potential to renegotiate the fee.
Aubameyang was an opportunity seized. Barca needed a striker following Sergio Aguero’s enforced retirement. The market was difficult with interest in Edinson Cavani and Alvaro Morata complicated by clubs unwilling to sell.
Another thread that has run through Barcelona’s recruitment is the preference for having an understanding of the club. Xavi and Jordi personify that tradition through experience and bloodline but it is something that they want to see in the squad too.
Traore was born mere yards away from La Masia and made his Champions League debut against Ajax in 2013, a game in which Xavi had played.
But even before the winter transfer window, the new coach had sent a message with his very first signing – a free agent brought back in November and Dani Alves came home.
The Brazilian is now 38 but even past his prime he is an infectious character and always a popular figure in the dressing room. As someone Xavi trusts and as a natural leader, he can influence the culture at the club, help to create the right environment to foster success.
He even set out his ambition explicitly when announcing his return: “I want to be able to enjoy and rebuild the Barcelona that we loved so much.”
Dani Alves is another visible connection to Barcelona’s glory years and there is a poetic element to his return too. Xavi’s first signing was initially brought to the club in the summer of 2008 – one of the first to arrive after Guardiola was appointed as coach.
Now he is playing alongside Pedri and Gavi – guiding the next generation.