how to die with your boots on: Pep Guardiola's very bad year

"I remember when I received [Guardiola's] call and...I pick up and tease him a bit, but notice in his voice a serious tone. And then he says: 'I need a lawyer.'" - Manel Estiarte, translated by Total Barca

In the glittering, storybook career of Pep Guardiola, one bleak episode stands out from amongst the triumphs. I am referring to the competitive ban and suspended prison sentence he received due to two positive tests for the banned substance nandrolone. Years later, even this unhappy event became part of the Guardiola mythology, an illustration of his legendary obstinacy. But it wasn't always like that.

"I've been in front of the press many times but this is the first time that I've convened a press conference. After a meeting with President Gaspart, who can't be here today due to travel, I decided I have to announce something."

"I came to Barcelona without a penny and I'm leaving as a father, I'm proud of having grown up here but on balance I want to leave to get to know a new league, another culture, new friends and new rivals."

Pep Guardiola announced his departure from FC Barcelona at an explosive press conference on 11 April 2001. He had chosen not to renew his contract, thus ending a 17-year association with Barca. The club captain and figurehead, loved, respected - some would say feared by members of the club hierarchy who did not like the extent of his power - appeared alone. He had been diminished by a series of devastating injuries and equally devastating departures of key allies from what had been a great team.

In an emotional announcement, he informed the more than 100 journalists present of his intention to walk away, insisting that he had no particular destination in mind. Some were convinced that he was jumping before he could be pushed, a casualty of the the vicious power struggle at a dysfunctional Barca.



Five months later, to the surprise of many, Guardiola turned up at Brescia, in northern Italy. He spoke decent Italian at his first press conference and appeared excited by this new adventure, keen to leave his unseemingly departure from Barca behind.

Guardiola's new team mates included the great Roberto Baggio, with whom he formed a warm friendship, as well as a young Luca Toni, who still has great things to say about him. His manager was one of the great old figures of Italian football, Carlo Mazzone, who Guardiola eventually came to call his Italian father.


[Eight years later, at his most glorious hour yet, Guardiola remembered Mazzone. Facing the Italian press after the final whistle in Rome, he dedicated the victory to Mazzone, as well as the recently retired Paolo Maldini.]

The future looked bright. Then came the failed drug test.

"Thank you for being here. My name is Pep Guardiola Sala. I'm a football player. A machine says that I have taken nandrolone. Next to this machine there is a man who says it's not true."

Manel Estiarte, the man Guardiola refers to as his 'guardian angel', current Barca team liaison and retired waterpolo great, had been based in Italy for most of his professional playing career and knew the country far better than his old friend, who called him for advice in his time of need.

And Guardiola was definitely in need. He had tested postive for the banned substance nandrolone after a league match against Piacenza on October 21, becoming yet another entry in the rash of nandrolone positives returned by prominent players in Italy during and after the turn of the century.

In Spain, the news was greeted with incredulity. Old friends and rivals rushed to his defence, Real Madrid captain Fernando Hierro stating: "I believe in his innocence and his honesty as a sportsman." Former team mate Miguel Angel Nadal said that he would hold his hand in the fire to vouch for Pep's innocence.

Similar statements came from Mazzone and his new team mates. Nevertheless, the positive test led to Guardiola's suspension by the disciplinary commission of the Italian league.

A second positive test in November confirmed his sentence - a four month suspension from football and a fine of 50,000 Euros. Guardiola despaired and even thought of leaving football, but his path was always clear. It wasn't for him to protest his innocence, serve the ban and then get on with his life. As he told Estiarte, he was willing to spend every last Euro proving his innocence.

"If I am guilty, the punishment should have been four years. If I am innocent, as I will prove someday, then I didn't deserve a single day."

In May 2005, a Brescia court examined Guardiola's appeal. Far from exonerating him, the court affirmed his sporting sentence, added a seven month suspended jail term and fined him an additional 2,000 Euros under new anti-doping legislation.

But this outcome did not deter Guardiola. Over the next six years, as his career took him to Rome, the Middle East, Mexico, and back to Spain, he never stopped putting time and resources into the legal battle, vowing to take the case up to the highest levels of European justice if necessary. The ban may have been ancient history by then, but Guardiola would not rest until he had cleared the blot on his name.

In the meantime, his old friend Manel Estiarte had informed him of changes made by the World Anti-Doping Agency to their regulatory guidelines. New scientific findings had proven that some athletes' bodies naturally generated a certain amount of nandrolone, as Guardiola's legal team had maintained all along.

23 October 2007. The Brescia Court of Appeal clears Guardiola of all charges.* Pep tells the press that he feels liberated, as if a weight had been taken off him. He talks about his happiness in an interview with El Pais, while recognising that his relative wealth had enabled him to carry on an expensive legal process where other wrongly convicted people might have had to give in because of lack of funds.

Even out of the ranks of professional sportspeople with ample resources, Guardiola's persistence is remarkable. The announcement of his innocence came as he was embarking on his coaching career with Barcelona B, six years after the first positive drug test and a year after he retired from the game as a player.

That's the kind of person he is - a man obstinate enough to match his famously intractable mentor Johan Cruyff. This bloody-minded-ness has, I would argue, served him well in his current high pressure post, and will continue to mark his decision-making in the future.



[*The Italian National Olympic Committee attempted to reopen the case in 2009, but their appeal was rejected by the National Anti-Doping Tribunal.]


(On a different note, I now contribute regularly to Barcelona Football Blog, and recently wrote a piece on - topically enough - youth transfers for In Bed With Maradona.)

If Pep Guardiola didn't exist, we'd have to invent him

In a way, that's exactly what Barca have done. As ball boy, trainee, player, captain and now coach, they've shaped the skinny kid from a small town into the charming, well-spoken man in a sharp suit he is today.

In recent years, everyone from players, club management, Catalan politicians, entertainers of all stripes and Jose Mourinho have called him the perfect manager for Barca. And he is. 99 percent of the time, he reflects the way Barca and Barcelonistas would like to be perceived. (And the remaining 1 percent - well, the post of Barca manager is enough to drive anyone a little dotty.)

As Simon Kuper pointed out in one of his ever-perceptive FT.com columns:

The key point about Guardiola is that he has been identified with Barcelona almost from birth. He comes from a Catalan village and has spent most of his life in the square kilometre of the Nou Camp. As Jimmy Burns writes in Barça: A People's Passion , locals still remember Guardiola as a skinny 15-year-old ballboy illegally running on to the pitch and hugging a player during a European semi-final in 1986. They remember him as a skinny playmaker, standing on the balcony of the Generalitat building in 1992, holding aloft the European Cup, and saying in Catalan, " Ja la teniu aquí " ("Here you have it"). The phrase gave many in the crowd goosebumps, because it deliberately echoed the legendary " Ja soc aquí " ("Here I am") of Josep Tarradellas, the Catalan president, when he returned from French exile after General Franco died.

In other words, Guardiola, a reader of Catalan poetry, is such a perfect Catalan hero that he is practically a character from a 19th-century poem himself.

The story goes that when Guardiola was scouted for La Masia one of the coaches, having witnessed his less-than-impressive speed, tackling and dribbling ability commented that the only outwardly remarkable thing about the boy was that he had a very large head for such a skinny, frail-looking body. And that's precisely the point - it was what went on inside that big head that was so valuable, even as a young player.

Johan Cruyff is said to have once compared Guardiola's speed on the pitch to his grandmother (unfavourably, if you're wondering). Nevertheless, he too saw something in the young Guardiola that pointed to the capacity for tactical intelligence and evolution necessary to become the midfield fulcrum of the team he was building. Years later, it was Cruyff's endorsement once again that proved crucial in (now ex-) president Joan Laporta's unexpected - some would say reckless - decision to appoint Guardiola as first team manager at a time when Barca desperately needed direction.

Off the pitch, Guardiola has an equal reputation for intelligence and introspection. As the late, great Sir Bobby Robson once wrote:

"He knew the game and knew how to conduct himself. Some footballers wouldn't stand for anything. They can't see beyond themselves. You'd have no chance of engaging them in any kind of sensible debate, but Pep had class. He had bearing."

This reputation as a sensitive intellectual makes his many touchline antics - up to and including the red card inducing ones - all the more amusing. Guardiola can come across as somewhat long-suffering and infuriatingly non-committal, especially when placed next to his old associate Jose Mourinho, but it would be a grave mistake to regard him as the blandly polite angel to Mourinho's entertainingly incendiary devil.

While it is true that Guardiola's default setting seems to be Diplomatic (and he seems to feel that it would be unseemingly to complain outright about perceived injustices), he is also not one to shrink from a little controversy - witness the incident preceding the away match against Dynamo Kiev last season, when he spoke frankly about his prominent use of Catalan in press conferences in response to a question from an Ukrainian journalist - or from using the aftementioned press conferences as a bully pulpit, against his own club president if need be. He is admired partly because his actions embody the signature Catalan concept of seny (wisdom/sensibleness). In some ways he and Mourinho are more similar than they are different. One is simply more of a showman than the other.

Pete Jenson writes that Jose and Pep went for canapes together after the recent FIFA World Player Gala. I wonder if the over-the-top, almost cartoonish devotion they inspire from their players came up as a subject for discussion. The Mourinho Effect is well known. His players - Drogba being the chief example, but there are many - tend to look upon him as an almost omnipotent figure. Tributes to Guardiola from his players run along curiously similar lines. My favourites, though, don't speak to omnipotence so much as persuasiveness:

"He's a passionate perfectionist. So if he believes something is white and you think it is black, you will end up believing that it is white." - Xavi

If Pep told me to throw myself off the 3rd tier of Camp Nou, I’d think ‘there must be something good down there'. - Dani Alves

This bond with his players suggests that behind the demanding disciplinarian lies a brother/father figure to whom the players can relate, in some cases very closely. Again, is this starting to sound familiar? All of the above was dramatically illustrated in that comical episode during the latest Clasico, when Cristiano Ronaldo sparked a 23-man brawl by pushing Guardiola in the chest under extreme provocation. Well, a little provocation, but with the backdrop of everything else that was happening Ronaldo's annoyance was understandable. And you can't deny that seeing mild little Andres Iniesta lose his rag is hilarious.

Reading about or watching Mourinho's antics, one often gets the feeling that we're watching mythology being created - there's a certain unreality about the media character of Jose Mourinho, genius manager. Equally, I'd argue the same applies to Guardiola, the man they called 'the myth' (as in too good to be true). If he's a myth, he's an engrossing one, dreamed up and produced by Barcelona. Long may his reign continue.



[Written on the occasion of Pep Guardiola's 40th birthday.]

on Barca and shirt sponsorship

On the day the news broke, I was filled with unreasoning anger. If you asked me to articulate why I was so mad, I would have had trouble, which is really not very good going for someone trained to make well reasoned arguments.

There's been a lot of link spilled on the topic already, whether in support of the Qatar Foundation deal or in opposition to it. I read with interest the results of polls in both El Mundo Deportivo and Sport which were evenly split between those who agreed with the decision of the board and those who didn't. It's clear that this issue is just as divisive amongst Cules as Rosell's membership policies, and for good reason.

I wanted to set out the reasoning behind my opposition in part to set this issue to rest in my own mind and in part because for all the excellent articles I've read voicing opposition - including that of Our Spiritual Godfather (TM) Johan Cruyff - I venture that I can still contribute something to the debate.

Let me begin with the Cruyff column which has been so widely excerpted:

This club is unique in the world. Nobody has kept its shirt intact over its history and at the same time still be competitive as anyone else. Will you sell this uniqueness for 6 or 7 % of your budget? It is what Barca stands for and what differentiates it in this world; are there no other avenues that can be used to increase the club’s income? Have the new executive board thought this thing through? Do they think the previous board is so empty-headed [not to have thought about this]?

[With thanks to Total Barca for the translation. The whole column is very interesting and worth a read.]

Normally I tend to agree with Cruyff despite myself. This time I disagree with him despite myself. It seems to me that an argument constructed upon the supposed uniqueness of Barca amongst football clubs is a difficult proposition. The moral high ground is a perilous place for any club with an eye on having their name in lights, particularly under the conditions of modern football. The higher you put yourself, the easier it is for others to knock you down. And us Cules know better than anyone else how shaky any claims of moral supremacy are, because we're the ones staring the rotten bits in the face day after day. Furthermore, the whole we're so special routine carries a certain sanctimoniousness that I - and a lot of neutrals, at a guess - find off-putting on general principle.

So, then, if I don't think Barca are too special for shirt sponsorship, why do I oppose it? We might as well recast the question: why do we - generic we, as in football fans - cherish the traditions of our clubs? They don't have to make the club special - as in better than other clubs - but they are part of the DNA of the institution. Maybe some particular trait of your club is a major reason for your support. The reason doesn't even have to make sense. (These things often don't.) It's probably been in place for so long that it's become part of your life as a supporter.

The particular culture and tradition of a club doesn't make it better or worse than any other club. That's not the point. But what is a football club if it can't depend upon its own painstakingly constructed identity, its colours, quirks, the things that make up its personality? It might as well not exist.

The lack of shirt sponsorship was part of Barca's longstanding identity. Personally, I always liked that the front of the shirt was bare. It was another mark of identification, just like the blaugrana and the hideous away kits of [insert highlighter colour here]. The introduction of the UNICEF logo was acceptable because it at least meant some money going towards an organisation that needs it, however small the amount. (Your mileage may vary, depending upon whether you believe incremental good matters when done under the backdrop of other dubious deeds. Which is actually perfectly illustrated by the whole UNICEF logo being right under the Nike logo on the current shirt. But that's a discussion for another day.)

The Qatar Foundation deal, on the other hand, helps the club pay for approximately 6% of its budget. That's it. The current board will point to the economic necessity of such a move, to sustain other aspects of the club's existence. Some of us have serious doubts about their maths. By which I don't just mean their accounting, but the maths which led to them weighing up the money to be gained via the deal against the intangible, long-term loss represented by the introduction of shirt sponsorship and deciding that it would be worth it.

Or, putting it into terms that businessmen like Rosell and co. understand: the blow to brand identity caused by this deal over the long term seems like a triumph of damaging short-termism to me. (And now I have to wash my mouth out for talking about brand identity and football in the same sentence. Excuse me.)

On a final note, I'd like to ask for your pardon in two respects: 1) it was perhaps a mistake to attempt to rationalize an intensely emotional reaction, but I felt that the attempt might be worthwhile given the intensity of the debate, and 2) this is too much sentimental mush for these cynical times, I know. It's not cool to be this eye-bleedingly sincere about football these days.

It won't happen again for at least another two weeks, I promise you that.

barca 09/10: the review

Some incredibly disorganised thoughts about the past season:

horse race

I think Guardiola is absolutely correct when he says that Barca would not have reached the highs they hit this season without being pushed so hard by Real. In fact, Perez's spending spree was probably the most effective form of motivation money could buy for the Barca players, who'd won every single trophy they competed for by the end of 2009.

Winning the league this season was particularly satisfying for this Cule because I was so fearful at the beginning of the season that Real's spending (and hitting upon a good coach, seemingly by accident) would take them past Barca, who could never live up to the glories of the season just gone and would falter under the strain of trying. Once again, I'm eating my words and loving every bite. It certainly wasn't easy, and in patches I thought Real were the more likely champions, but in the end Barca's consistency (both collective and individual) and defensive solidarity won out.

elections

I've never hidden my dislike for Joan Laporta. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner the man stops speaking for the club, the better. However, to give the guy his due, he definitely left Barca in much better shape than he found it in, institutionally, financially, and on the sporting front. (Not difficult, given how the Gaspart era ended, but Barca have had very good years under Laporta.)

For now, the trend of me disliking the president looks set to continue, as Sandro Rosell is currently the presumed front-runner. My dislike of Rosell began long before this election season and has its roots in some of the proposals he put forward as vice president during Laporta's first term. It was cemented by his recent comments on the question of membership. On this issue, I highly recommend Ramzi's post, which lays it out better than I could. I'll just say that to limit membership goes against everything I believe Barca should stand for.

signings

How you can recognise a geeky Barca fanatic: when they're more excited by the kids graduating from the youth system than they are by big name signings. This has been me for the past 3 or 4 seasons. I'll just quickly mention a few names I'm looking forward to seeing more of next season: midfielders Jonathan Dos Santos and Thiago Alcantara (both born of Brazilian parents, but Jono plays for Mexico and Thiago plays for Spain at youth level), as well as defenders Marc Muniesa and Martin Montoya (both Spanish).

Moving on to signings, of course Villa is a fantastic striker who will score tons of goals, but he's 28. I can't help feeling Barca brought him a season later than they should have. Still, more than glad to have such a reliable goalscorer who will fit easily into the Barca system.

As for the midfield, if Yaya Toure leaves it will be a very sad day indeed, but I do understand his desire for more playing time. He'll need to be replaced, and my preference is for someone versatile like Keita who can play as a central or defensive midfielder. Lord knows who that will end up being at this point.

Ideally, I would also like one more defender. Alves, Puyol, Pique, Milito, Abidal and Maxwell are all fine, but from there things get a little dicey, and that's not good enough.

standout performers

Leo Messi: 47 goals and 14 assists in 53 appearances. The (ridiculous) stats say it all. Except they don't. He makes everybody else play better, not only because of the passes and runs he makes, but because he attracts defenders like few other players on the planet. Rightly so, because - and it's been this way since 06-07, really - when nobody else has anything, and the game looks like petering out, he's the one who makes it happen.

Xavi: As Guardiola said, best midfielder in the history of Barca. Insanely consistent, absolutely tireless, and the best passer of the ball in Europe.

Puyol: At the beginning of the season, people thought his career was over. Please. A tremendous competitor with the work ethic of a true pro and the physical conditioning of a man ten years younger. He'll be around for a while yet.

Pique: Has good enough feet to play striker, can pass like a midfield general, and somehow keeps up with CRon in full flight when in defence. I don't get him. Whip-smart, too, underneath the bluster.

Pedro: I had no idea he could play like that. Fortunately, I'm in some pretty good company there, as nobody but Guardiola seemed to have any clue. Pedro Rodriguez was about to be shipped out when Guardiola came on the scene at what was then Barca B 3 years ago. And now he's scored 23 goals for Barca in his first full season. Could maybe use a little more composure at times when being harried, but that's just a nitpick. Good with both feet, tactically disciplined, tracks back like his life depends on it, no ego to speak of. What else can you ask for?

guardiola's bias

Guardiola's pro-La Masia agenda is obvious. I think he might even admit it if you bought it up. As much as I approve of the idea of a team mostly made up of youth team grads, I was initially very skeptical of the practicalities involved. Well, surprise surprise, I was wrong and he was right. Players like Sergio Busquets and Pedro Rodriguez made the step up seamlessly, and of course Guardiola was lucky enough to inherit the likes of Xavi, Puyol and Messi. Would a team with 8 home-grown starters be possible without the tremendous luck of inheriting such a golden generation of players? Probably not. But equally, the explosive development of Pedro and Busquets would not have been possible without Guardiola's championing.

(Hey, look at that, all the standouts I named above are La Masia grads. Hm.)

a longer view

I hadn't actually thought about this until El Pais reminded me - Barca have won 10 league titles in the past two decades (1990-94, 97-99, 04-06, 08-10) to Real's 6 (94/95, 96/97, 00/01, 02/03, 06-08). Barca only have 20 league titles in total. I think if any statistic illustrates the way Johan Cruyff the coach (and the 'Godfather'/mentor) changed Barca for the better, it's probably that one. Cruyff's an infuriating man at times, but he deserves every accolade for his vision and achievements.

argentina's preliminary squad: dear diego

Without going into shadowy conspiracy theories (I'll just say that I broadly agree with the thoughts of Sam over at Hasta El Gol Siempre and move on for now), a few thoughts below.

Goalkeepers: Sergio Romero (AZ Alkmaar, Netherlands), Mariano Andujar (Catania, Italy), Diego Pozo (Colon, Argentina)


Romero has been really impressive everytime I've seen him play (since his days in the youth/Olympic teams), although neither he or Andujar are what you'd call hugely experienced at international level. No bone to pick here.


Defenders: Walter Samuel (Internazionale, Italy), Martin Demichelis (Bayern Munich, Germany), Gabriel Heinze (Marseille, France), Nicolas Otamendi (Velez Sarsfield, Argentina), Nicolas Burdisso (Roma, Italy), Clemente Rodriguez (Estudiantes, Argentina), Ariel Garce (Colon, Argentina), Juan Manuel Insaurralde (Newell’s Old Boys, Argentina), Fabricio Coloccini (Newcastle United, England)


I got two words for you: Gabi Milito. I know, my Cule bias is showing, but is anyone seriously going to argue that Coloccini and/or Burdisso are better options? Also a little worried about Micho, who's had an injury-plagued season.


Midfielders: Juan Sebastian Veron (Estudiantes, Argentina), Javier Mascherano (Liverpool, England), Jonas Gutierrez (Newcastle United, England), Mario Bolatti (Fiorentina, Italy), Juan Mercier (Argentinos Juniors, Argentina), Maxi Rodriguez (Liverpool, England), Angel Di Maria (Benfica, Portugal), Javier Pastore (Palermo, Italy), Jose Sosa (Estudiantes, Argentina), Jesus Datolo (Olympiakos, Greece, Sebastian Blanco (Lanus, Argentina)


I've had mixed feelings about Veron in the NT for sometime. Won't go over them again here, but suffice to say that at least he'll be a staunch ally for Messi in the squad should the need arise. Great to see Di Maria and Pastore on there - I hope they both make the final list. Would have liked Aimar as well, but at least with him I do get why you'd exclude such an injury-prone player. On the other hand, Bolatti instead of, say, Banega (who's had a pretty good season) or Cambiasso (ditto) is far more questionable. And don't even get me started on the eternally scorned Lucho Gonzalez.


Forwards:
Martin Palermo (Boca Juniors, Argentina), Lionel Messi (Barcelona, Spain), Gonzalo Higuain (Real Madrid, Spain), Carlos Tevez (Manchester City, England), Sergio Aguero (Atletico Madrid, Spain), Diego Milito (Internazionale, Italy), Ezequiel Lavezzi (Napoli, Italy)


Great to see Lavezzi on there, even though he's unlikely to make the final list. We all know by now that it's probably going to be Messi-Higuain up there when the first game rolls around, so in terms of alternative attacking options I can sort of understand the inclusion of Palermo. If I squint really hard. Maybe. But if it came down to a choice between him and Diego Milito, there's no question which I'd prefer. (And I swear to you this has nothing to do with my longstanding Riquelme fandom. Really.)



You can follow me on Twitter @blackwhitengrey if you want to see my less rational reactions. Oh Diego, why are you doing this to us?

narrative, what narrative?

The trend is much-discussed in political coverage, but it's equally prevalent in football. I'm speaking of our need to make sense of the big stories of the day by playing them into some kind of morality play context, as if somehow the fine margins of an offside decisions or whether the ball hits the post or goes inside the net has to come together to mean something bigger.

Speaking as a Cule, I couldn't blame fans of teams who've played big games against Barca in the past, say, 5 years if they got frustrated with being painted as the antagonist in Football As Art: the Musical. It's nonsense. I find it infuriating when Brazil get treated that way in the press, and I find it just as difficult to swallow when it's a team I support being given the idealized treatment.

Did it really mean something deep and profound when Barca advanced over Chelsea in last season's Champions League semi-final when they did it via a last-ditch goal and amidst so many contentious refereeing decisions? It certainly advanced the smaller narrative of Barca and Chelsea's grievances against each other, piling up from each of their explosive meetings in Europe, but beyond that, you'd have to ignore a lot of key facts to paint it as some kind of moral victory. It was a victory, sure, and one that easily made my week (okay, month), but let's not give it a gloss it doesn't deserve.

I'll give you the final - the victory over Manchester United probably could be taken as a vindication of Barca's commitment to its style, especially given the absence of key players, and of course it capped off Barca's treble. If you want to derive some meaning from that, feel free. It makes sense.

Like Guardiola pointed out in his (scrupulously gracious, no matter what quotes you've seen taken out of context) pre-match press conference for Barca-Inter, no matter what happened in that game, the Barca of the Six Cups had written their name into the club's history already. One game couldn't change that, for better or for worse. If we're talking narratives, I'll commit to that one.

But please, Arsenal aren't just a collection of too-young ingénues (more on age in a later post). Inter are not the Devil. Nor were Chelsea last season. Real, on the other hand...

I'm just kidding. But we'll have to wait until the end of the season too see how that narrative of sustained development versus sudden lavish investment plays out.


ETA: Almost forgot. You can follow me on Twitter @blackwhitengrey if you're that way inclined. Be warned: I tweet a lot of amusing Guardiola quotes.

pep guardiola and the importance of winning, part 2

“We came to the home of the league leaders who’d won all 15 games here so far this season. I give a lot of value to winning this one – it’s an honour to come here and win. They’ve got 77 points and that’s incredible." - Pep Guardiola on the result

Shots: 16 v 8
Shots on goal: 7 v 4

Usually when I see stats like these, I tend to expect Barca to be the bigger number. Unless it's a difficult away fixture, it's usually a safe assumption to make. In this case, Real being a very difficult away fixture indeed, Barca had less shots, only shaded possession (58%) by their standards and didn't even hit 85% passing accuracy (shocking, I know).

Perhaps, then, the Real players and their coach are entitled to feel a little hard done by. Maybe Arbeloa is right to say that Barca were lucky.

I'm going to pause here for a flashback. Back in Frank Rijkaard's first season as Barca manager, he packed the midfield for his first Clasico (at Camp Nou), lost, and got labelled a coward by the Catalan press. Rijkaard faced it all with his usual good grace and resiliency, even stating outright that he'd make the same tactical decision again regardless of the name-calling.

We laugh now about that infamous quote from scholar of football Tim Lovejoy in which he accused Barca of only knowing how to play one way, but there's a certain truth to it if you look at it the right way. I think there's a certain pride and intimidation factor in never compromising one's style no matter what the circumstances, or at least in having that reputation, and occasionally Barca can be guilty of being too intoxicated by that idea.

When I say that, I obviously don't mean Pep Guardiola's team. Guardiola has shown both a willingness to experiment and to hold his hand up and admit failure when it doesn't work out (for an example of the latter, see his apology after Barca's loss to Sevilla in the Copa del Rey this season). He bought Zlatan Ibrahimovic to add another dimension to Barca's play. He's happy to flood the midfield or play no strikers or start two leftbacks and three centerbacks (as he did against Athletic Bilbao), and he's not afraid of gambling in the big games.

Which brings us back to the Clasico, and Puyol at rightback with Alves as the right winger. Not only a gamble but a decidedly conservative move, which combined with Pellegrini's tinkering resulted in the opening twenty minutes playing out like a chess match, La Gazzetta dello Sport likening it to a classic Serie A encounter. Whether or not it worked - Alves definitely struggled as a winger, resulting in him being switched back at half-time - the fact that Guardiola felt like he could and should try it speaks volumes.

During the slow decline of Rijkaard's team, one of the often-heard laments was that Barca was set up in such a way that they could only win by playing well. Some of the Clasico match reports I've been reading have praised this Barca for winning by not playing particularly well, but by being composed and clever.

Nothing wrong with that. If you said that to Pep Guardiola's face, he'd probably take it as a compliment.

"We’ve got good players. I try and make sure that they all run and that they help each other, but there aren’t many secrets – I work hard, work long hours and I’ve got good players. They know that if they don’t run, I’ll let them know and since they don’t like that, they work all the harder." - Guardiola on the secrets of his success

On a different note, do my eyes deceive me or is Cristiano Ronaldo actually getting criticised in the Madrid press this morning? Really surprised to see that.