FC Barcelona managers come and FC Barcelona managers go – I’ve seen eight of them in a decade or so, and it’s like watching someone being slowly crushed by a giant blue and maroon bear.
Friendly, that big bear, cuddly even… at first.
The press room at the club’s training ground on the outskirts of the city has a temporary feel to it, sort of like a portable cabin on a building site. Apt, somehow. And it’s about as far away from where the players and coaches actually gather as is physically possible.
It’s a similar deal with the press pen beside the main training pitch. Sometimes the media are allowed to wander up there to watch the start of a training session, and the players are again kept as far away as possible. Maybe the club is trying to say something about the press.
It’s hardly a surprise really – there are hordes of them. There are two daily newspapers dedicated to covering the club, plus the other papers and the local TV and radio stations, fanzines and websites and countless bloggers from around the world.
There is a weekly ritual, sometimes twice a week, the day before every La Liga game, that allows the media pitchside access to the first 15 minutes of a training session, which typically means watching the players stretch and warm up a bit.
We then all shuffle back to the press room and await our prey – the coach. All managers are contractually obliged to give a press conference, they can’t swerve it or send an assistant.
Barça’s motto is “Més Que Un Club” (More Than a Club) and it’s true, the club is part of the very fabric of Catalan society. Barça coaches even get asked about the local political situation which, if they’re a bit too keen and very silly, they try to answer.
I’ve seen eight managers bounce on to the creaky little stage in the press room full of schemes and vigour, sometimes even charm. The bear embraces them. When finally, eyes bulging and face turning from burgundy to blue, the bear lets them go a season or two later, they look desperate for daylight and clean air.
Barça’s latest new manager is the German Hansi Flick. He seems nice enough, a self-effacing football nerd who is no doubt happiest in his tracksuit and working out formations on a board.
He doesn’t speak Catalan, obviously, and he isn’t confident enough to answer questions in Spanish. So he listens to the translation of the barrage of questions and answers in English.
“I think we have a really strong team, a good team,” he said. “In football, it’s all about win or lose. If you win, everyone is happy.” And if not…
Barça are not at their best right now. In the past, they’d simply try to buy their way out of trouble by signing the best players. They also somehow contrived to blow astronomical sums on others who were nowhere near good enough – which means that Barça are now skint.
Flick was asked about his hopes and dreams, as new managers always are, and he was also asked, as they always are, if Barça can compete with Real Madrid. Barcelona’s “eternal rivals” bought Kylian Mbappé, the world’s second best player (after Lionel Messi), in the summer from Paris Saint-Germain. What’s more, Real had already won La Liga and the Champions League last season without him. Oh dear.
Flick’s predecessor, Xavi Hernández, is a Barça legend, a local boy from Terrassa who speaks Catalan, Spanish and English. That didn’t do him much good though, and he was given his marching orders in the summer even though he’d won the league the previous season. But at Barça, the only acceptable outcome is winning the treble – the league, Champions League and domestic cup. Nothing else will keep the bear happy.
And so the manager’s job is so hard as to be almost impossible. When Barça win, it wasn’t him, it was the star talent on the pitch. And if they lose? Success has many fathers, but failure has a single parent. Flick needs to understand one simple fact: he can never win.
Adrian Addison is a journalist based mostly in Barcelona
