Messi (89 page)

Ernesto Valverde and Manuel Pellegrini were spoken of to replace Vilanova, and Luis Enrique was approached when Tito had to leave the bench. In the end, four days after the announcement of his departure, an ex-Newell’s player from Rosario was chosen. He held the record for the most appearances for the Argentine outfit and, fittingly, a little Leo did kick-ups in the middle of the pitch during his testimonial. His only European experience was playing for Tenerife for a couple of months.

The reasons for choosing Gerardo ‘Tata’ Martino are numerous: he had just won the league and reached the semi-final of the Copa Libertadores with a Newell’s Old Boys team that favoured high pressing and possession; he did not know Leo Messi personally, but he did know his father Jorge and the reports that reached Barcelona from different sources were excellent. ‘There are no other teams which play like us, but there is a culture of play which we have established,’ writes Andoni Zubizarreta in the club magazine. ‘This has become universal and you can therefore find some solutions which aren’t necessarily the closest to home.’

Sandro Rosell had known Martino for years and they had spoken about football on various occasions when the Barcelona president was working at Nike. He asked a mutual friend, the Paraguay president, for
el Tata
’s phone number, and he called him immediately. ‘Let’s do it,’ answered Martino when he was offered the post, and he immediately abandoned his idea of taking a year off. ‘And overcoming the distance, the perception was that he had a thorough command of where we were,’ relates Zubizarreta.

Leo had said in
Olé
a year earlier that he admired
el Tata
, in charge of his beloved
Ñuls
.
‘I like Martino, he’s a really great coach. You could see what he was doing with the team at the Clausura competition – the good results, the good football. He found the right eleven, made them play well and earned their respect.’

‘I know the Messis spoke to Barça and I thank them for that,’ said the new coach before travelling from Buenos Aires to Barcelona. ‘I’m sure Lionel and Jorge have had an influence and have spoken to the Barça management.’

Matías Messi wrote on his Twitter account: ‘What a beautiful surprise it is that Martino has been chosen as the coach of this team.’ And a day later, after a friendly against Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena, Leo declared: ‘I haven’t anything to do with Martino joining nor do I have to give explanations. It is between President Rosell and the club.’

Martino had ‘assumed’ things that
el Tata
himself had to deny in his first press conference at the Camp Nou. In this book Sandro Rosell also denies the Messis had anything to do with his arrival. But the recognition that Martino was on Leo’s wavelength was logical: in terms of geography, feelings towards the same club and because, until then, Barcelona’s success had occurred because the conditions were put in place to enable their star to shine at the top level – bringing in a coach who understood him was therefore a logical step.

The new Barcelona coach was involved in a major project in the lower ranks at Newell’s which he has had to leave in the hands of ex-Under 20 Argentine international Jorge Theiler and other ex-players. Málaga, who wanted to sign Martino, just as Real Sociedad did, have invested in the programme and, for a while, they tried to convince Jorge and Leo Messi to participate. Adrián Coria, Leo’s
x-coach in Rosario, is part of the technical team which
el Tata
took with him to Barcelona. But they say in Rosario that the connection between the Messis and Martino does not go any further than that.

Before they met each other, Leo and his role in the team were discussed at the presentation of the new coach: ‘Leo has played in different positions in recent years, recently as a central striker, which suits his style. And he has exploited a role as a goalscorer, which he did not have in previous years. Given that, I would tell you that he will carry on playing in the same position. The ideal scenario would be to have a team that goes back to look after him. It’s a difficult situation because Barcelona have won it all and anybody who talks that way seems to be suggesting something new, which is not the case. I want him to find the same comforts, to feel at ease in the team and allow him to take care of the rest.’

Martino knew that he had taken over a squad with big stars and great footballers, but he wanted to make clear what their job was from day one. And he did it in a very intelligent way: by announcing in his inaugural talk that he would not change anything. ‘Don’t get tired of winning,’ he told them, and he announced that he wanted to bring back the high pressing from Guardiola’s best years.

Even the physical trainer Professor Elvio Paolorosso insisted on the idea that everything was going to continue in the same vein – Barcelona’s methodology had been studied and he would not be introducing many variations. ‘My only goal is to make you happy and for us to be a united group,’ concluded Paolorosso.

That day,
el Tata
followed Leo very closely. The Argentinian had a sensational training session, pressing, destabilising, scoring goals, stealing the ball. ‘Even the little one wants to press when we lose it,’ one of the veterans stated privately at the end of the session. ‘And at the end of the day that fires us all up.’ The team seemed very focused after Martino’s arrival.

Leo and
el Tata
spoke during training and Martino later had a meeting with captain Carles Puyol, to whom he emphasised the same key points: he told him not to worry as he did not plan to change the training sessions and would still allow the whole squad to get together on the day of a game, a favourite remnant of the Pep era.

He basically told them: ‘Guys, the status quo remains.’

The first league match, against Levante, marked the new pattern:
el Tata
substituted Leo in the seventy-first minute. Messi had not been replaced since May 2010 except for injuries. Neymar went on in the sixty-fourth minute; his integration into the team was going to be gradual. He played on the left wing.

Martino explained himself in a press conference: ‘You have to save minutes. Leo is very intelligent and we reached an agreement very quickly in this sense. I spoke to him a few weeks ago about the importance of understanding that it was good to rest. Various parts of various matches where you sit on the bench are like resting for a whole match. I will not replace him in a tight game. I won’t, nor will anyone. It would be crazy.’ Barcelona beat Levante 7–0.

Martino was thus making a necessary point about rotation the season after the team seemed exhausted in the last months. And, at the same time, he placed Neymar in the role which belonged to him: the Brazilian was going to play to benefit the star’s qualities.

He asked the full-backs to push forward less; the wingers to open play up instead of coming inside; the midfielders to get into the box more, not to come as deep to pick up the ball and to find the forwards quicker; the centre-backs to bring the ball out calmly and to launch diagonal passes to the wingers; the defenders to man-mark on long balls; and the goalkeeper to play it long sometimes. He also demanded a change in attitude to restore pressing high up the field.

Despite what Tata had said in his first press conference, he discussed with Leo the possibility of playing him in a different position, and even using a system similar to the one applied with Argentina, with Leo behind a striker like Higuaín. Leo agreed that in some games it was a good idea to surprise rivals playing him wide or deeper, as he ended up doing in the first Clásico of the La Liga season at the Camp Nou.

Thus did Martino change things. From day one.

What came out was a more direct game, just as with Vilanova, and that suited players such as Messi, Cesc and Neymar who started enjoying more space.

The concepts applied corresponded to those of a modern coach, who was tweaking the Barça model that had reached a sublime state under Pep Guardiola.

But Leo, who felt comfortable with the tactical changes, had
already explained in March 2013 (in an interview with Martín Souto on TyC Sports) that he felt the team had to rethink and to look for alternatives:

Martino’s proposal received general acceptance. ‘We have recovered automatism which was lost over time due to Tito’s absence,’ said Xavi, who added: ‘Last year we did very little on tactics in training.’ Alvés, Busquets, Piqué (who spoke about being slaves to the tiki taka), Valdés, strong presences in the dressing room, publicly backed the changes, although the press debated the merits of a style that was moving away from the one which had taken them to footballing heaven, especially when, for the first time in four years, an opponent (the modest Rayo Vallecano) had more possession than Barcelona in a match. Leo joined in with the praise: ‘The more variants we have, the better.’

El Tata
found himself with another matter which he had to manage in the dressing room to guarantee progress along the right path that season, and in the ones to come: the change of leadership. The four captains were going through a transitory phase: Víctor Valdés was leaving the club, Carles Puyol made a titanic effort to recover from his latest knee injury, one that kept him away from the day to
day, Xavi could no longer play as often as in previous years, and Iniesta now preferred to show his influence on the group on the pitch. Gerard Piqué, Javier Mascherano and Cesc Fàbregas were gradually gaining influence as a result of their personalities and output on the pitch.

Meanwhile, Leo experienced an irregular start to the campaign in terms of physical fitness: he suffered an injury on 22 August in the first leg of the Super Cup against Atlético de Madrid, a bruise to the femoral biceps in his left leg. Until that moment he had completed only one match out of 25, the 4–0 loss against Bayern Munich. He was injured once again on 29 September against Almería, a muscle injury to the right thigh, the same one he suffered against PSG; when there is scarring there is a 30 per cent chance that the injury will recur.

It was said at the club that he had not rested enough over the summer, but the medical team gave away as little as possible, not in order to hide information but to calm Leo’s mind, as he finds it difficult to bear being far from the ball.

In a World Cup year, in his year, Leo wanted to reach the end of the season in perfect condition: both physically and mentally.

So he reduced his levels of intensity in training, which he did à la carte as it were, following his body’s instructions and those of Juanjo Brau. He once again put himself in the hands of a nutritionist, this time one from outside the club, and lost two kilos and bulked up in September.

If his body answered him and got rid of the injuries, allowing him to make a comeback in a time of change, the season was looking good. Real Madrid lost points at the start of the league campaign and the team was working well in Europe, too.

In the first
clásico
of the Martino era, at the Camp Nou on 26 October, new variations were introduced: predicting rightly that Real Madrid, to avoid being outnumbered, were going to play with three midfielders, and one of them the centre-back Sergio Ramos who would try to stop the runs of Leo from the midfield, Martino decided to play Messi on the right-hand side of the attack, which attracted defenders and allowed Neymar on the other side and Cesc as a false nine to have more space.

A couple of things happened: Messi, in his second game in five
days after being out for three weeks with his muscle injury, spent some of this energy tracking back and also applying pressure to Madrid defenders when they had the ball, and he chose his runs with the ball as he was not yet physically ready for an intense 90-minute game. So his influence in the game was reduced and the team looked more for Neymar as they felt he was sharper than ‘the Flea’.

But that match also sent worrying signals despite the 2–1 victory with Neymar and Alexis the goalscorers, and Real youngster Jesé finding the net in the ninety-second minute. Barcelona are a team that can only defend with the ball but the insistence of Neymar and Messi on finishing the attacks early, without slowly ‘cooking’ the moves with Xavi and Iniesta, forced the team to run up and down the pitch much more than usual, unable to find the right positioning with so much directness to try to apply pressure high up. That killed the energy of most of the players and in the second half Barcelona dropped very deep – Real could have got at least a point from the game. Martino had to balance the team to do damage in the big games.

Early results were suggesting, though, that the Tata effect was bearing fruit: squad rotation was becoming regular, the arrival of a new talent offered new solutions, Messi played new roles in the side, the coach’s authority had reappeared without trauma. The Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan story all over again.

In that first year of Neymar, Leo and
el Tata
together, everyone was there to combine efforts. The biggest challenge of his new era would take place after the World Cup.