La Liga
HOW FC BARCELONA BECAME FC MESSI
BY SIMON KUPER.
FC Barcelona have relied on a player for two highly successful decades but they took the idea too far.
The best footballer of probably any era has lived for almost his entire career in the unremarkable town of Castelldefels, outside Barcelona.
I’m writing a book about FC Barcelona, and when a local drove me past Lionel Messi’s home one afternoon, I realised: the essential underpinning of 15 years of routinely brilliant football is a boring life.
On a hill away from the local beaches, Messi has bought a neighbour’s house and constructed a compound complete with mini-football field.
Palm trees, bougainvillea and white walls provide privacy. It looks like a fairly standard millionaire’s home in Orange County.
His wife Antonella (whom he has known since childhood in Rosario, Argentina) helps him distance himself from football once work is done.
He says that raising three young sons, he feels “destroyed” by evening and goes to bed early.
On match days, the 33-year-old will shine in the Camp Nou, then commute 25 minutes home along the almost empty midnight highway, usually car-sharing with his neighbour and best friend Luis Suárez.
Three days later, he does it again. On Tuesday Messi wrote to Barça asking to be allowed to leave for free.
Since the 8-2 hammering by Bayern Munich on August 14, the club have imploded. It looks like the end of an era in which FC Barcelona morphed into FC Messi.
The trend in football in the past quarter century is for mobile, multimillionaire, near irreplaceable footballers to amass power.
They no longer accept authoritarian managers. But no club took player power further than Barcelona.
That’s because for years no club had better players. Messi and an exceptional Spanish generation won at least one trophy every season from 2009 through 2019.
Before Messi, Barça frequently existed in an eternal present where the next match was the next crisis. The Argentine became an umbrella for the organisation.
He made running Barça relatively easy. The morning after the first team beat Real Madrid, every club employee arrived at work relaxed and smiling.
Messi lived by the dictum that the best player was responsible for the result. When Barcelona weren’t playing well, he felt it was on him to change the match.
If he gave tactical instructions to a teammate, or addressed the team in the changing room before kick-off, his word was law even to the head coach — a post filled by low-profile Messi-compatible names since 2012.
Outsiders often mistake him for a meek and silent figure. Inside Barça, many people fear him. One former club president told me: “He doesn’t need to speak.
His body language is the strongest I’ve seen in my life. I’ve seen him with a look in the locker room that everyone knows whether he agrees or not with a suggestion.
And that’s it. He is much more clever than people think — or what he transmits.” “What does he want?” I asked. “He wants football,” replied the ex-president, meaning that Messi wanted Barça to play exactly the way he wanted them to.
Recommended Scoreboard Scoreboard: Should FC Barcelona and Lionel Messi part ways? Premium Messi didn’t particularly like having power.
He would have preferred that the club’s directors and coaches took care of everything — as long as they did what he wanted.
He has always irritably denied having a say over transfers and coaching appointments, and it’s true that he didn’t have a veto.
However, Barça considered his wishes in every big decision. Last summer he called for the return of the Brazilian Neymar, sold to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017.
Barcelona’s directors had no intention of bidding €200m for an injury-prone 27-year-old, but they spent two months more or less pretending to, so that they could eventually tell Messi,
“Sorry, we tried but we couldn’t get him.” Messi wasn’t impressed. He blames the board for fluffing the task of talent recruitment.
Barça have spent over €1bn on transfers since summer 2014, more than any other club, yet have ended up with an old team almost devoid of resale value.
That’s partly because Messi’s generation overstayed their welcome. Earning among the highest average salaries in all of team sports, among brilliant peers, in the most liveable spot in Europe, why would they leave?
They gradually lightened their training load, pressed less in games and still beat most opponents on talent and knowhow.
That’s how Barça came to line up against Bayern with six outfield players aged 31 and over.
Messi had been warning for months that the team weren’t good enough to win trophies. Asked about his future, he always said: “The most important thing is to have a winning project.”
Barcelona now look incapable of constructing a new one. They intend to clear out their oldies — Suárez, also 33, has been asked to leave — but they can’t afford to buy younger stars.
And their once world-beating youth academy, the Masia, has produced just one great player in a decade: Thiago Alcântara, who this month demolished Barcelona and won the Champions League with Bayern.
A 20-year marriage between player and club appears to be over. It contributed a fair bit to global happiness.
– FINANCIAL TIMES
Raphinha knew there was no reason to panic as Barcelona struggled to break down Espanyol on Thursday and said it was only a matter of time before the “golden feet” of Lamine Yamal steered them to a title-winning victory with a glorious goal.
Yamal, 17, took the ball on the right touchline and made a superb lateral run across the edge of the box before unleashing a curling strike between two defenders and into the top corner to break the deadlock early in the second half.
The stunning strike set Barca on course for a 2-0 win that secured the LaLiga title, with Real Madrid seven points back with only two games left to play.
“We didn’t have many clear chances but we have a kid in there who sometimes pulls something out of the golden feet he has and he gave us peace of mind to stay in the game more calmly,” Raphinha said.
“In January some people were saying we would fight to be third. We have confidence in ourselves. That’s the key. We trust in the work and in what we know we can do.”
Raphinha has scored 18 league goals this season, including a brace in Saturday’s crucial 4-3 win over Real Madrid, and was quick to credit the trust shown in him by coach Hansi Flick.
The Brazilian tripled his goal tally from last season and also has the third-highest number of assists in the competition with nine, three less than leader Yamal.
“The most important thing was the confidence of the coach. Knowing at the start of the season that he was counting on me, a person who controls the team … it changes you in the end,” he said.
-Reuters
Former Spain midfielder Xabi Alonso is set to become the next Real Madrid manager on a three-year deal when he leaves Bayer Leverkusen after this season, Spanish media reported on Monday.
Alonso, 43, is expected to replace current Real boss Carlo Ancelotti, who is being lined up for the vacant Brazil job ahead of the 2026 World Cup, soccer sources told Reuters.
Despite the Italian having a year remaining on his contract, Real’s underwhelming season and his desire to coach Brazil have led to a mutual agreement to part ways, the sources added.
Alonso, who said earlier this month that he was leaving Leverkusen after guiding them to the double last term, will join Real before the inaugural Club World Cup in the United States from June 14 to July 14, multiple media reports said.
Alonso, who also played for Liverpool and Bayern Munich, last season steered Leverkusen to their first Bundesliga title, ending the Bavarians’ 11-year domination, and they also won the German Cup and German Super Cup.
Reports of Ancelotti’s likely departure come as no surprise after Real’s 4-3 defeat at Barcelona in a thrilling ‘El Clasico’ on Sunday left his side on the brink of a trophyless season.
The 65-year-old Italian, who returned for a second stint at Real in June 2021, led the Spanish giants to two Champions League and LaLiga doubles, the latest of which came last season.
He is the most successful manager in the club’s history with a total of 15 trophies and the first coach to claim titles in Europe’s top five leagues.
However, this season Real were knocked out of the Champions League in the quarter-finals by Arsenal and allowed Barca to fight back and win 3-2 in the Copa del Rey final.
Second-placed Real are seven points adrift of Barcelona, who could secure the league title on Wednesday without kicking a ball if Real fail to win at home to Mallorca.
Regardless of Real’s result, a Barca victory in the city derby away to Espanyol on Thursday would clinch the title.
An official announcement regarding a managerial change is expected before Real’s last game of the season at home to Real Sociedad on May 25.
-Reuters
Schmuelgen/File Photo
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It was mission accomplished, said Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti after his side fought back from two-goals behind to snatch a rip-roaring 4-4 draw on Tuesday for a 5-4 aggregate win that put them through to the Copa del Rey final.
Ancelotti brushed off questions about a sub-par performance by his side and praised his players’ effort in what he considered a highly entertaining encounter.
“We have achieved our goal today which was to reach the final and there is not much time to think about it,” Ancelotti told a press conference.
“It was an entertaining game with some mistakes and a lot of good things. It was fun and we are in the final.
“I never saw ourselves out of it because anything can happen at the Bernabeu. When we have to come from behind, we never give up. We never give up, especially at home, with the fans by our side.”
Ancelotti said David Alaba was not to blame after he deflected two balls into his own goal, calling it “bad luck” by the Austrian defender, but urged his defence to play with better focus moving forward.
“It’s not good to concede four goals in a game,” Ancelotti said.
“Right now we are a team that has a lot of effectiveness up-front, but little balance.
“However, we can’t ignore what we did in attack, scoring four goals against Real is not that easy. I think we are doing quite well.”
Real Madrid, who have won the Spanish Cup only once in over a decade, will play either Barcelona or Atletico Madrid in a mouth-watering final in Seville next month.
Atletico fought back to hold Barca to a thrilling 4-4 draw ahead of Wednesday’s second-leg in Madrid.
-Reuters
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