When I was little, I slept under the Pyrenees. On the wall next to the top bunk bed, in the room I shared with two of my brothers, we had placed a poster of the Pyrenees, from Cape Higer to Cap de Creus. Every night, we looked at those mountains with the hope of one day getting lost in their rocky peaks. In those days, my idol was the mountaineer Reynold Messner, not so much for the what – a beast capable of climbing eight thousand like a titan – as for the how. Messner changed the history of mountaineering because he transmitted his way of understanding mountains and did so with his own style. He climbed without fixed ropes, along the most difficult routes, without support or oxygen: it was him and the mountain. He was not the man who reached the most peaks, but he climbed them like no one else until then.
At Barça we had our Messner. When Johan Cruyff arrived at the club, everything changed forever. In his second year as coach, he ordered that all La Masia teams train like the first team and that shaped a new way of understanding football at the Catalan club. He also breathed a winning character into Barça, he taught us to believe, but above all the Dutchman left a legacy that went beyond victories: it was Barça and the ball. Since Cruyff it's not just about winning, it's about how. To be remembered.
It happens that there is another Messner who, if the club overcomes its self-destructive gene, should soon help build the Barça of the future. And I think it's still possible. I'm talking, of course, about Pep Guardiola.
The one from Santpedor has already created, with the help of a generation of extraordinary footballers, the best team in the history of football. That Pep's Barça won a lot, but achieved something more valuable: being remembered. It was eternal.
Today, Guardiola is a better coach even than then. His experience in Munich and, above all, his prowess at Manchester City, with the help of other culés like Txiki Begiristain or Ferran Soriano in the offices, would be of incalculable value for Barça. It's not too late and I'm not just talking about the bench. I'm talking about being aware of the opportunity: in one of the club's most delicate moments, plagued by debt and the threat of state teams, Barça must face an uncertain future and has an ace at its fingertips: the best coach in the world and those responsible at the controls of the best English club are culés. And even more: some players from the best Barça, like the current coach Xavi, but also Piqué, Messi or Puyol, who understand why Barça is different, can now take a step forward. They could add.
Messner and Cruyff changed everything because they believed when it seemed impossible.
A Barça with Pep, Txiki, Soriano, Xavi or Piqué seems impossible. But it would change everything.
