The most successful Barca Manager to date, Johan Cruyff, has talked at length to the Barca Official Website on the new show called ‘Recorda Míster’ (Remember Boss), and discussed at length everything related to his time as a player and coach at Barcelona and about football in general. The inaugural programme is the first of a three-part series on Johan Cruyff, who holds the record for consecutive seasons in charge of the first team. This first episode is entitled “Put the pieces in their position and don’t let them leave it”. He admits: “The result’s not everything, only a part” and while he recognises the importance of the result, he focuses on “good football”.

Technique and possession

In Cruyff’s opinion, there are two key elements in football: “For me the basis of football is technique and possession. I always want to have the ball, dominate and do what I want on the pitch. I never adapt to others. This is the most difficult football to play”.

No football without the team

Johan Cruyff sees football as a team game: “There are no stars that shine more than the others. They’re all stars and everyone has to carry out their obligations. Somebody will be better on one day and somebody else the next, but it all has to come together in a single team, never in a team of individuals. I’ve always put the team above the individual. If the team works , the star is on top of all”.

Reading the match

“It’s true that football also has strategy. If I see that a team has a full back with certain characteristics, I’ll play a winger who can beat him. But all the decisions you can take before a match stay up in the air because you never know how the other team will play. You can apply the strategy as you go, after seeing how the match is going after five minutes and you make the changes you believe are appropriate. Reading the match as a player and then as a coach has been one of my best virtues”. These are the words of the manager who has won the most silverware with Barça.

The Legend

First team + reserves = success

The treble-winning season was, with all due respect to many other factors, a triumph for the home-grown players. The contribution of the players that have been through the Barça academy was a pleasing bonus that consolidated as the season went on. Home-grown talent played a similarly important role under Johan Cruyff

“I’ve always considered youth football as a fundamental aspect to take into account. There are always cards, injuries and other setbacks and it’s important to know that you can count on the reserves. This encourages the reserves since you make them see that if they make an effort and, above all, take their opportunities, they have a good chance of breaking into the first team. It’s the best way to manage a club”.

Guardiola took his chance

Current Barça manager, Josep Guardiola, got his opportunity to make the leap from the reserves to the first team when Cruyff was the manager: “Then there were a lot of players, I think Guardiola was one of the first, who trained with the first team but played for the B team. He knew that he had to work hard and give 100% if he wanted to be part of the senior squad. In the whole teaching process it’s important to go one step at a time and be patient so that things work out well. Step by step and patience”.

Never say never

Although it’s hard to believe, Cruyff never saw himself as a coach giving orders to a group of players: “I’d always thought that I would never become a trainer. Though, logically, I was interested in a lot of things related to football, apart from being a player, I didn’t want to be a trainer at all”.

A change of mind in the USA

Cruyff first felt the need to take on the challenge of management when he was thousands of miles away from his native Amsterdam: “When I played in the United States during my final years as a player, I discovered a whole new world, beyond the football on the pitch. There I learned everything about organization. I already knew about football and I didn’t need to know any more. But I did need to learn about other things. For example, how to manage a team, how the organigram of a squad of footballers works, the day by day work of the offices with their corresponding departments etc.”.

“I learned things there that still didn’t exist in Europe and it was then that the interest in becoming a manager one day awoke in me. I don’t like office work so I thought that if I wanted to change something my place was on the pitch”.

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