The Fans Football Blog3

An era ended, a new one started. Since the end of last season, the team witnessed a lot of changes, and it's good to take advantage of this international break to make an overview that covers all the aspects of the team including the new coach and his philosophy, transfers and their impact, and the expectations and demands for the near future.

The end of a glorious cycle!

It’s not possible to start talking about the new cycle before briefing about the previous one, even though it will need more than a briefing to give the Rijkaard era a fair analysis. Especially that, even for a person who has never been a big fan of Frank like me, it feels bad when I notice that the new fashion is to criticize Frank to praise Pep. So I will consider this part as a message of gratitude for this man.

While making a fast research to support my topic, I found an article about the Frank Rijkaard era on Wikipedia, so I need to mention that the following is a mix between what I read and what I believe, aiming to create an objective point of view.

Frank was appointed in a period where everything sounded too pessimistic for Barcelona. The team was under achieving, the club was in debt, there was nothing you could hang your hopes on, except a new board of directors from the new generation of Socis, with lot of enthusiasm and desire to turn the table! Even though they started their era with a huge disappointment for Barcelona fans - then - when they failed to sign David Beckham, who was the fans favorite target and the board election’s promise, but instead signed the secondary option, Ronaldinho.

The squad Rijkaard inherited was a mix of the old underachieving players who yield no success since 1999.

Rijkaard had a disappointing start at Barcelona that saw some sections of the club's fans call for his resignation, and even caused crisis when the board of directors split between those who wanted to sack him, and those who wanted to keep faith. He drew flak from the media when the team lost to Real Madrid in December 2003, before he unlocked the path for Barcelona to enjoy one of its best cycles, finishing second in 2003-2004 after a heroic come back, then with the strong support of Laporta, and within the next couple of years finally managed to win La Liga both in 2004–05 and in 2005–06. After rebuilding the squad signing new players like Deco, Samuel Eto'o, and Rafa Marquez.

He became the first Barcelona coach to have won twice at Real Madrid's stadium, an achievement which even successful managers like Johan Cruijff, Louis van Gaal and Luis Aragonés were unable to accomplish, so it wasn’t strange that he was among the five nominated coaches for UEFA's Team of the Year 2005. On March 8, 2006 he was also honored by UEFA for his contributions to the European Cup Competition throughout his career as player and manager.

As a coach, Frank Rijkaard's essential philosophy is to guide his team towards playing attack-minded football as a cohesive unit. In doing this, he believes a team can achieve the dual objectives of winning games and ensuring the audience's enjoyment of the spectacle.

The tactics used during his tenure as manager of FC Barcelona best exemplify Frank Rijkaard's commitment to playing stylish attacking football. During the team's 2004–05 and 2005–06 campaigns, the coach frequently fielded a 4-1-2-2-1 formation, a system which encouraged the creativity of the players in the front third of the field and created optimal interplay between the midfielders and forwards during attacks. Within this system the four defenders also tended to play in a relatively high position on the pitch to support the midfield which frequently advanced to participate in the attack. The team generally focuses on maintaining possession in the opponents' half of the field, applying pressure in order to force the opposition to make errors in defense and offensive counter-attacking.

With regards to man-management and motivation, Rijkaard rejects the notion of a "star system" and promotes the idea that every one of his players is a valuable member of the team. He rarely praises one individual over another in the squad, although he has been known to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of a player within the context of a team performance.

Yet, here are things I don’t like about him as a coach, but let me start with what I like:

• No doubt he made very difficult and brave decisions; it wasn’t easy to release some of the most notable players in the squad like Juan Román Riquelme, Patrick Kluivert, and some other stars who were considered as untouchables, Beside giving the opportunity for Victor Valdes to take Rüştü Reçber's place – some may draw a sarcastic smile while reading this, but those who know how it was before will worship Valdes as a goal keeper. I simply like the coach when he makes his decisions based on what suits his vision, the coach needs to build his squad picking the right players, not the good players. That’s something Rijkaard must be appreciated for taking in consideration.
• Even though the standard tactical structure of 4 – 3 – 3 is not an invention, especially for a Dutchman, but no one can doubt that it clicked for him perfectly. In addition his well to give his players the freedom to express themselves offered the perfect environment for Ronaldinho to turn the world around.
• He was a decent figure, we never felt worried when we watched him in an interview because we knew he will never say or behave in a way that may scratch the club image or stature.

What I didn’t like about him:

• He was not a tactical genius by any mean; poor reading of the game caused bad substitutions, inability to change the tactical structure or to enrich what’s existed.

• Related to previous point, and the overdose of dependence on individual talent rather than collaborative work. It worked at the start because the squad contained a supernatural group of hungry talents including the most gifted player walking on the planet, beside the fact that the rise of Barcelona was timed with the declining of most of the major teams in Europe where most of them were at the end of a cycle – that may give an answer of how the hell Monaco and Porto played a Champions league final! But later on, when things became serious and when tactics became crucial he failed to meet the demands of the new challenge.
• Inability to create a disciplined environment and to put boundaries for the players, neither outside the field – long nights – nor in the field whether it was during training or games.
• Allowing some players to force their way into the starting line up based on their reputation and not on their form.

In brief, even though he is not the most gifted coach, but he was the perfect coach in the perfect situation, Barcelona had talents who only needed a coach to give them the chance to express themselves, and Rijkaard with his flexible tactics was a perfect choice for them, we saw in Barcelona a version of Ronaldinho that we hadn’t seen in France – PSG, where he had a more tactical oriented coach. What makes a coach good or bad is actually – besides knowledge - the kind of teams he coach and the conditions that govern his career, which is exactly what makes José Mourinho for example seems to be a more qualified coach than Guus Hiddink!

A coach who leads the club to win as many titles as Frank Rijkaard did, deserves to be imported in the clubs books and fans hearts.