The Pep Guardiola era at Barcelona had many peaks,
but none higher than the Champions League final win over Manchester United in 2011,
when his team gave a performance that charmed the watching world.
The victory was Guardiola’s signature triumph, and this is its story. Perhaps the hardest-earned
trophy, and, on reflection, just as characteristic of his side’s durability as it was their class.
The 2010/11 season was a grind - on and sometimes off the pitch - and after back-to-back LaLiga
titles it would begin with significant change. Rafael Marquez and Thierry Henry departed for MLS
in the summer of 2010, and losses were cut on Zlatan Ibrahimovic,
who departed to AC Milan on loan. and Dmytro Chygrynskyi, who returned
to the Ukraine. Yaya Toure was also sold to Manchester City.
Arriving in their place to garnish the side’s La Masia core,
were prolific goalscorer David Villa and combative international midfielder Javier Mascherano,
who took a significant pay-cut to join from Liverpool.
Mascherano would be converted into an outstanding centre-half,
key during a season in which Puyol would suffer continuously with a knee injury.
In Villa, however, Barcelona captured a player they’d coveted for a long time,
but also – crucially – a hugely talented all-round forward with the necessary humility
to defer to both Guardiola’s system and the positional and tactical role of Lionel Messi.
It was a signing that completed an already excellent side, putting in perfect harmony.
Beginning with Victor Valdes, the extra outfielder who revelled in having the ball at his feet.
Then in Puyol, Pique and often Mascherano, the centre-halves who could receive passes anywhere
in the defensive third, under any pressure, before pushing possession up the alleys,
or Eric Abidal and Dani Alves, whose sharp contrasts complemented each other perfectly.
Further forward, Guardiola had assembled – maybe – the most press-resistant midfield the sport had
ever seen. Deep-lying pivote Sergio Busquets was the cultured enforcer, happy to screen or
even drop into the defence, but with the skill and sharp passing range to cut the lines ahead of him.
Busquets was the failsafe. His emergence at Barcelona allowed Xavi to be pushed further up
the field, and – in turn – Iniesta to be moved even higher and closer to a forward line which
dovetailed around perhaps the greatest player of all time. A forward line that,
by the end of the season, would have scored 83 goals in the league and Champions League combined.
But, despite that, Barcelona’s start in Europe was still underwhelming.
They emerged from their group undefeated, but only after falling behind against Rubin Kazan,
and being held in Denmark by a hard-running FC Copenhagen side, in a game which ended in an
angry confrontation between Guardiola and opposing manager Stale Solbakken.
They would also suffer a scare in the Round of 16 after a wasteful performance against
Arsenal left them chasing a 2-1 deficit. Eventually overwhelming the English side in
the second leg, they went on to dismantle Shakhtar Donetsk in the quarter-final,
setting the scene for what would become the season’s centrepiece and one of the most notorious
episodes in their rivalry with Real Madrid - then under the new management of Jose Mourinho.
But by the start of that Spring, Barcelona were suffering.
Since the European Championship of 2008, the Spanish contingent had been involved in the
Confederations Cup of 2009 and the World Cup triumph of 2010. For the majority, it had been
three years of continuous football without a proper break - and it was starting to show.
Xavi would suffer with Achilles tendon problems throughout 2011. After his knee injury in January,
Puyol would play in just four more games – three of them against Real Madrid, out of necessity.
Added to which, in an interview with The Guardian’s Sid Lowe,
Andres Iniesta spoke of the great pressures he felt during that period of his career,
and “difficult, uncomfortable” moments that were only chased away by World Cup success
in 2010. By 2010-11 he had personally rebounded, but he was describing an
emotional toll that success takes – and the resilience required to maintain it.
Much more seriously, it was announced in March 2011
that a tumour had been discovered in Eric Abidal’s liver and that the French full-back
needed immediate surgery. Miraculously, he would return to play before the end of the season,
even starting the game at Wembley, but it was a heavy emotional blow.
Between the 16th April and the 3rd May, Barca would face Mourinho’s Real in four
different games. Once in the league, once in the final of the Copa del Rey,
and twice across the two legs of the Champions League semi-final.
It was a sequence which helped crystalise the binary relationship between Guardiola
and Mourinho - and the heat from those fixtures last to this day.
In 2008, when then-Barcelona President Joan Laporta was searching for Rijkaard’s successor,
Mourinho had been a strong candidate for the job that was eventually given to Guardiola. And so,
when Florentino Perez brought him to Real Madrid specifically in response
to Barcelona’s ascendency, the Portuguese carried that rejection into an already acrid
rivalry – which became nastier after Barcelona inflicted a 5-0 clasico defeat in November.
The real tone was set by the games that followed, though: a 1-1 draw in the league, and a niggly,
nasty Copa del Rey final, which Cristiano Ronaldo eventually won with a brilliant, towering header.
That match at La Mestalla left a legacy. In friendships strained by its combative nature,
in the constant haranguing of officials and then in the rising bile, which would spill out across
the media. It began with Guardiola referencing the correct decision to disallow a Pedro goal
and was inflamed when, somewhat inevitably, in the press-conference held the night before
their next meeting, in the first leg of the semi-final, Mourinho retaliated with a mischievous
diatribe which claimed that his opponent was “accustomed to referees favouring Barcelona”.
Unusually, Guardiola answered. “In this particular pressroom
he’s the fucking boss. The big fucking chief” he said,
before sending up Mourinho’s press-room theatrics with a terse, steel-tongue rebuttal
which – according to the journalist Graham Hunter – sent delighted text messages pinging
between his players and earned him a standing ovation upon his return to the team hotel.
The year before, when his Inter Milan had defeated Barcelona, Mourinho had successfully
built what he referred to as a ‘prison’ around Leo Messi, minimising his effect from the deeper
false-nine role. He tried the same trick again, constructing a midfield repurposed Lassana Diarra,
Xabi Alonso and the repurposed centre-half Pepe. He also ordered that the Bernabeu’s
grass be allowed to grow to 3mm, three-times longer than Camp Nou’s 1mm, and for it not to
be watered before kick-off, each an age-old attempt to slow the circulation of the ball.
It was a negative tactic and – ultimately – a negative performance. The prison around Lionel
Messi wouldn’t hold either, particularly after Pepe received a 61stminute red card
for a reckless challenge on Alves. The door sprung open and Messi took over,
scoring first at the near-post and then, with three minutes left,
with one of the great goals of the era, putting the tie all but out of reach.
Mourinho had been raging since Pepe’s dismissal. He’d also been sent to the
stands in its aftermath. Barcelona substitute Pinto was dismissed from the bench, too, after
a spiteful confrontation between the two teams at half-time. It was a poisonous night of football,
full of cheating and hostility, and, inevitably, both clubs were subsequently charged by UEFA.
Barcelona would advance in the second-leg with a 1-1 draw
that was relatively drama free, but it would still end a notorious sequence of games.
Far from Passion Plays illuminated by the world’s best players, these were clasicos
that had been endured and which had left anyone who experienced them rubbed raw.
Wembley was the balm. It was a catharsis which occurred in a special place for
Barcelona. The club had won their first European Cup in North London in 1992,
and Johan Cruyff had won his first as a player with Ajax in 1971.
And the performance was fitting, containing all side’s familiar hallmark.
The carousel-like ball circulation, which left Manchester United constantly outnumbered in the
middle of the pitch and chasing players who had already moved. And the goals,
which described the technicolour of Barcelona’s football.
The mesmerising Xavi-Pedro combination for the first.
Messi’s thrusting, transfixing brilliance for the second. And, finally,
Villa’s cultured third, which put a dizzied and beaten United away for good.
The night would provide one final lasting image, as Guardiola led his side up to the royal box.
Puyol, a very late substitute, handed the captain’s armband to Eric Abidal,
who had started the game having made his return in the semi-final. Two and
half months after his diagnosis, he emerged out onto the gallery to receive the European Cup,
before lifting it to an enormous roar from the Barcelona end.