The roots of the conflict between Lionel Messi and Josep Bartomeu can be traced back to 1988, when club captain Lionel Messi was less than a year old and club President Josep Maria Bartomeu was an average Basketball player in Catalonia.
Josep Lluis Nunez. Johan Cruyff. Two individuals who didn’t just lay blueprint for the success that Barcelona has achieved, but also for the conflicts that the club has within, even today. Whether it is the reason behind Pep Guardiola leaving Barcelona or the pretty recent tensions between Lionel Messi and the club president, Josep Maria Bartomeu. And this isn’t some wild theory. Pure philosophy, politics and sociology help us in perceiving as to how FC Barcelona has functioned over the last few decades.
What we first need to understand is the club structure. FC Barcelona is a club run by its fans. Socios, as they are called. There are only four teams currently in Spain that are run by this model. Real Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, Osasuna and Barca. A socio is basically a fan who pays to the club to become part of a community that collectively takes decisions for a club to function smoothly.
As open and democratic as it may sound, there are gaping holes in this that are exploited more than often by those in power. Especially the club president, who is the head of management at the club and is elected by the socios. As of today, Barcelona flaunt a fan-owned model of 110,000 socios.
The Origin of The Philosophies
Josep Lluis Nunez was appointed as Barcelona president in 1978 and remained in power till the year 2000. The longest span any Barca president has enjoyed till date. Born in Guriezo, more than 650km from Barcelona, Nunez was appointed as the 35th FCB president despite of having no connections to anyone at the club before. So, it was pretty difficult for him to understand and relate to the club, its foundation and fans. That he was a conservative didn’t help either.
The team wasn’t doing well despite of the big buck players. Things went from bad to worse in 1988 as the frustrated squad made an attempt to make the president leave his post, as they gathered at Hesperia hotel to sign a manifesto.
“The professionalism and honesty of the squad can’t be put in doubt by anyone,” it read. “We’ve lost all confidence in the president. He’s always tried to buy us off and separate us. We feel totally cheated by the president.
All those who signed the paper — 14 players and head coach Luis Aragones — left the club in the next transfer window. And in the summer, Nunez made possibly his best decision at Barcelona. Bringing Johan Cruyff as first team manager.
The relationship between the two was smooth and pivotal in Barcelona’s success as they won eight titles in five years, including the 1991-92 UEFA Champions League. There were signs of disagreement. But they only turn into wounds, when the team doesn’t perform. And when that began, it became a public spat. With two schools of thoughts.
Nunism and Cruyffism. To better explain the two, conservatism against innovation. Johan Cruyff, one of the greatest to have ever kicked the ball spent his entire life playing and preaching about innovative football. And it was his thinking that had transformed Barcelona from an average side into one of the best teams to watch.
The team’s success meant that most Barcelona fans always backed Cruyff. It didn’t help though, as the relationship between him and Nunez became ugly and the dutchman was sacked in 1996 following a string of smears on his name. His successors Bobby Robson and Louis van Gaal could not deliver the same level of stylish glory that fans had become used to, and the president’s position never really recovered.
After 22 years at helm, Núñez finally resigned in 2000, proclaiming that “they crucified Jesus Christ, too” in typically understated fashion. Although the two men left the club and never really came back to take up a full-time role, the friction in their relationship created a divide that can be felt to this day at FC Barcelona and among their supporters. Two cases vindicate the same.
Pep Guardiola-Sandro Rosell
A similar president-manager brawl was in the setting when Pep Guardiola arrived at FC Barcelona in June 2007. Pep was a star student of Johan Cruyff’s successful Barcelona side. When he arrived, Joan Laporta was the president, who brought him in to manage Barca’s B team. Upon witnessing Pep’s love for innovative football, Laporta who himself was a huge admirer of Cruyff, made him the first team manager within a year. Barcelona’s first team needed some serious repair work.
Being a classic Cruyffist from his playing days, Pep knew what thinking outside the box and taking risks meant. And he made sure his team adhered to the same thinking. As soon as he took charge, he decided to tell Ronaldinho, Deco, Samuel Eto’o that they are no longer needed at Barcelona. A bold move. But one that resulted in instant success for Barcelona as they won the treble that season.
Although Pep and Laporta’s relationship was that of shifting powers, but the latter did support the former in his moves, which he knew were taken for the betterment of the team. Within a year, Pep had won all the trophies that a manager could in Spain. With Cruyffists in the foreground given the team’s success, two individuals were all set to change the balance of power.
In early 2010, Presidential elections loomed large and Sandro Rosell was the favourite to win. Born and brought up in Barcelona, Rosell had been vice-president from 2003 to 2005, until disagreements with Laporta forced him to resign. He won the elections with an overwhelming majority and that was the beginning of the end for Pep and Cruyffism at Barca.
A former Nike executive, Rosell had lot many similarities with Nunez, who himself was a construction magnate and founder of a family business outside of being Barca president. Rosell just like Nunez, was a conservative and opposed Cruyffism’s open minded and revolutionary ideas. Infact he, publicly humiliated Johan Cruyff when he stripped him off the Honorary presidency of FC Barcelona. To make his stand clear, the new president invited the previously disgraced Josep Lluis Nunez back to club events. As newly appointed president, Rosell made sure everyone at Barca, including Pep looked like they were against his predecessor and his policies when he was incharge.
The strain became too much for the Barca manager when the new president showed lack of support for his plans to make drastic changes to the squad. Plans which apparently included selling players like Gerard Pique, Cesc Fabregas and Dani Alves. And in 2012, after delivering 14 titles in four years, Pep decided to leave. A sign of innovation succumbing against conservatism.
Rosell liked money. Why did he resign?
Lionel Messi-Josep Maria Bartomeu
History repeated itself at Barcelona. Only the characters changed. The two biggest powers at the club yet again fought the philosophical battle (they still are) that started about three decades ago at the club.
Post Luis Enrique’s departure in 2017, Barcelona have had two coaches sacked in the space of half a year. Both Ernesto Valverde and Quique Setien were conservative to the core. Something that Omar Hawwash, founder and chief editor of Blaugranagram told me in July, when he came on the Classroom Football pod.
It wasn’t a mere coincidence that the man who appointed the two was Josep Maria Bartomeu. Bartomeu was openly associated with Rosell as part of the opposition to Laporta, and in March 2005, he too was removed of his duties after the club chief publicly disagreed with him in a press conference.
So, when Rosell came back to power in 2010, he made sure his intimate friend came along. His friend who used to play basketball in Catalonia in mid-80’s and later joined the family engineering business that led to him becoming the CEO of Barcelona’s successful Adelte group. Ring a bell? A club president who was also heading a major business outside football. Bartomeu ticked all the boxes that Rosell and Nunez did. And in January 2014, when Rosell decided to step down as the President, it was declared post an emergency board meeting that Bartomeu would step up for the top job.
Things went well on field in his early years after the appointment of Luis Enrique and Barca winning the treble in 2015. However, his characteristics slowly started getting synced with those of a Nunist.
It has been talked about well in Spanish football circles that Nunez orchestrated the tradition of power centralised at the very top. Something which was evident during the Rosell era and still is with Bartomeu in power. He has dissolved several posts within the management and added to his control over the decision-making system. Embracing dictatorship with open arms.
And in the absence of a strong figure in a manager, Barcelona’s captain has had to step up to speak against the direction in which the team is going. Messi has been a huge fan of the Cruyff style of football and played his best football under Cruyff’s best disciple, Pep Guardiola. Over time we have also seen Messi go through the same struggle that Cruyff and Guardiola went through against strong conservative chiefs at Barca. His pleads to sign innovative players that fit in the Cruyff-Pep-Barca way to play hasn’t been heard.
Why hear the player though? If we are to understand this from conserving a dying art perspective, Messi is to Guardiola what the latter was to Cruyff. And all three of them have dedicated their entire lives at FC Barcelona to innovation and out-of-the-box football. But despite of the support from the fans and most of the socios, they have lost against three management tycoons who have resisted the very idea of revolution. Something you can’t do in Barcelona.
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