Pep vs Tito

I’d like to concentrate on our (the people’s) perception on a small part of current football. In this case, I’m talking about Josep Guardiola vs Tito Vilanova. I’d like to point out the differences between the Pep’s Barcelona and Tito’s Barcelona – tactically and holistically speaking.

On the 27^th of May 2009 Barcelona FC won an historic champions league trophy under the leadership of the ‘Dream Team’ captain Josep Guardiola. The ‘Dream Team’ of 1992 that won the club its first Champions League trophy in Wembley. This time though, he led the team from the dugout. The beginning of the Guardiola era was not as smooth as the beginnings of the some of the more fortunate managers in the more recent history of the club. After failing to win his first 2 games in the league in disappointing fashion, criticism and questions seemed to go hand-in-hand for Guardiola. However, with time things started looking up, and boy did they look up. However, a point to note was, that even after Pep won all that he won in his first season in charge of FC Barcelona, there were those people who said that his predecessor (Frank Rijkaard) handed him the team he used to attain such great success. The years following would silence those people (for a while at least).

Guardiola: The 'face of' the Central Midfielder in the Modern Game

I was born in the early nineties. Unfortunately, I did not have the chance to watch the Barcelona 'Dream Team' led by a certain Johan Cruyff. which dominated European football at the time and brought back home the first European Cup (now the Champions League) won by FC Barcelona in 1992. While stars like Ronald Koeman, Michael Laudrup, Romario and Hristo Stoichkov stole the limelight, it was Josep Guardiola which kept the clock ticking. His presence was profound and it was a delight watching him spray passes all over the pitch from his deep-lying position from in front of the back four. He was, arguably The central midfielder of his decade. But, upon all that significance, Josep Guardiola was forced into early retirement from the elite clubs in Europe, only to finally stop playing football at the age of 35, with arguable some magic still present in his feet.

Fabregas, a Barcelona player again (UPDATED!!)

Finally, one of the worse transfer sagas of the modern football game has come to end. I'm sure no one wants to read anymore about this, so all I'm saying is: Rumor has it, Fabregas will be on a flight to Barcelona later today to sign, and will be presented by the club tomorrow.

De Gea's Dilemma

As commented by Greg Stobart in his article about the ‘The five things we learned from the Community Shield’ on Goal.com, De Gea is simply not yet ready to play in the English top flight.

Not too long ago, I remember having a large argument with a group of football enthusiasts as to how Spain could replicate their World Cup performance and their current world dominance in professional football for many more years to come. For every position, we seemed to argue about who would rightfully own their position in Russia 2018, except in between the sticks. De Gea, to us, owned that position. After all, he was the greatest Spanish youth prospect, AND he was getting a lot of play time with Athletico Madrid at the time. But Manchester United is different.