Soccer Fan Blog

2009 has been a year very rich in personages. Presently, the best players of the world are in The League and very much one has spoken on the duel Messi-CR9 (and what we have left …), or on Xavi, Iniesta, Fábregas and Towers. But if there is a personage who has stood out over the others, there is not doubt that 2009 has been the year of Pep Guardiola.

The true thing is that the Pep good one was the chosen one by Joan Laporta the bottom was saved. With the love much fly after two years without qualifications, 60 % of the associates voted in favor of the vote of censure against the board, so the megalomaníaco culé only had left president the option to find someone who was serving to him as shield. And of course appealing to another shield, which takes in the T-shirt, Laporta managed to convince to Money box and this one came to the stool after only one year in the branch.
Money box made debut like trainer of the First Division (still in 2008) harvesting only one point in two parties against very low rivals, Numantia and Racing. In two weeks, the ominous villains, the prophets of the apocalypse, the hungry vultures carroñeros, began with “give him that I beat you” of that Money box was very green to sit down in the stool of the Barca. That if it did not have experience, which if he had left big the position, which if Extra drops were going to be burned before time …, as the time has been in charge of demonstrating; and it is that, as Quique Sánchez Flower says, in the world of the trainers the experience is a comb that they give you when you are already remaining a bald person.

At the beginning of 2009 the Barca of Pep had already taken the point. The team kept on forming with 4-3-3 of Rikjaard but many things had changed. The pressure was already not a thing of any (I remember Eto’o and Deco breaking the bottom while Ronaldinho was diddling and complaining for any thing), but a collective obligation. The defense was standing firm again moved forward and, with the arrival of Dani Alves, it changes his movements according to the game. This way, Pep arranges 4-3-3 in defense, but when the team attacks, the Brazilian side street joins the offensive, forming a balanced one 3-4-3 thanks to the basculación of the rear others.

Another practice introduced by that of Santpedor has been the defense in area before extract to ball stopped on contrary, variant not much extended in the current soccer. For novel and risky, it has been a quite criticized option because a good number of the goals got for the Barca was in this type of moves, although this perhaps should to the fact that it is in this type of events where up to the smallest team it can hurt you, while in the regular game most of opponents scarcely were throwing a pair of times to door in the whole party. But if the Money box style has an element that characterizes it, this is the way in which the team begins to play from behind.

The arrival of Gerard Piqué (personal bet of Money box that turned out to be the whole wise move and a real bargain after seeing that it has turned into the best central of the world), one more player added with skill to extract the played ball; this way, with Puyol playing big part of the year of left side street, the Barca formed with Piquenbauer and Márquez of head offices, what disqualified the habit of the rivals of doing rinses to him to the least skillful head office. All the game of the Barca depends on the transition between the rear and the centrocampo and the maxim is the following one: if from the defense it is capable of extracting the played ball provoking an imbalance in the hostile avant-garde, the ball will be able to come to the jugones with more clarity and once there, everything receives sense. With Xavi and Iniesta, more the contribution of Busquets, Touré and Keita (none is lame in this of touching the ball), the Barca is provided with a midfield of unbeatable touch, by what everything is based that the opposite is not capable of creating a funnel in the way and, for it, it is indispensable already to provoke a superiority from the defense.

Some of the movements raised in this sense are really avant-garde and they had not been seen in the elite soccer since the transfer of the ball one prevented the doorman. When the team rival does not wait to the Barca in his field and decides to press the exit of the ball, the head offices of the Barca are placed in the corners of the area while the wings advance up to half of his midfield and the defensive pivot backs up to being located in the center of four rear ones. We could see this solution along the whole period and it was taken to the end in the Final of the Cup of the King opposite to Athletic Club. Another novel element is the movement of head offices with the ball in the feet: Márquez and, especially, I Stung often they do not look for the clear way, but they advance towards the spaces occupied by the midfielders, looking that the rivals feel forced to go out to the step for them, stopping to his free mark, what he enables to the head office to find his free partner. Pep takes care so much of these details that even in the throws in there has a series of options prepared from the slate…

Also, there is known by all the work of video that a series of technical staff realizes so that Vilanova and Money box could study on the contrary. Bearing in mind that Pep is a Cruyff ward, it is logical that it has certain inclination to realize some tactical changes in the most important, those parties in which he believes that the rival also will study them to them. The best example of it was the positional change between Messi and Eto’o in 2-6 of the Bernabeu that it put to each one in his situated one in the final straight line of the past campaign: the native of Cameroon formed in the right wing, with clear orders of which it had to sacrifice itself, support to the position and not look for the center, while The Flea was located in the center of the attack, but any more like a mediapunta than like a battering-ram. This way, without a forward in strict sense, the Barca one more jugón added to the midfield, trusting that if they were winning in this area, to overcome the slowness of Metzelder and Cannavaro would not be a problem.

Pep Money box would not be provided with experience in the elite but more soccer has in the head that nobody. In this, all those who know it coincide: he was already a trainer when he was a player, not only in the field, where it was ordering, correcting, he was cheering up, but at all the levels. If something feigns that of Santpedor the fact is that it has the very clear ideas: he knows that the soccer is born in the players because they are those who give spectacle, which fill stadiums, but it understands that without a strong hand who guides them, the teams of soccer are a band formed by twenty-two egos. He is between the players and the board and only it understands a way of working: he orders in everything what has to do in the team and does not stop that the palatial intrigues affect either he or to the players to him. During this year that starts very much one will speak about the renewal, but there will only be something of true in all this: Money box will only treat his future with the board formed after the elections, because he is a gentleman and his nobility prevents him from making use of the conjuncture (Laporta would like to leave bundle so that his shade gets longer) to benefit personally.

After fifteen months since entrandor it has gained the Spanish League, Cup and Superglass, the Champions League, the Spanish Superglass and the Mundialito of Clubs. Six of six, what nobody had been capable of doing and, also, all this in his first period. Be what will belong to him in the future, Money box either form part of the History of the soccer.

In NdF | Special 2009