I'm curious now what area it was. Was it the coast? Looked at the tourism numbers and the gap with Italy is far smaller than I'd expect (in particular the receipts, which I think is more relevant than the estimated arrivals). The arrivals are merely (less than) half of Germany and UK. Italy their income from tourism is apparently only ~2.5 times as big (sources vary slightly in the exact number). Germany only 2 times. Amsterdam is easily in the top fifteen among the cities. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-countries-where-youre-surrounded-by-tourists/amp/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings#Europe_2 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ei6EVgDWAAEGuFa?format=jpg&name=medium (less surprised about extracting so much money from each tourist, that's how we roll tourism is not a culture but a business). Something similar can be said about football. Here in this early 90s report it is said after 6:30 (as an aside, LvG and JC are 100% in agreement there on Bryan Roy as 'overrated', in the terminology of this thread): "The youth academy of Ajax is almost unique in the world of football. Each year the club spends around 2 million guilders on the education of footballers. Tens of scouts form the base behind the system. Costly, but also very profitable. The association Ajax earns many millions with the selling of player registrations. More than 100 footballers from the Ajax academy now play somewhere else. From Leeuwarden to Milan. (1992)" The Bosman ruling was a 'killer' behind that business model. In the late 1980s Ajax had some problems with the FIOD (the fiscal police). FIOD said: you are legally an association, but is that what you really do? Why shouldn't we treat you as a private company? They have been heavily taxed (already in the 70s btw). In the late 90s the statutes was changed (when it got listed on the stock exchange).
I don't think he elaborated at all about the area. I imagine maybe a similar area to where Arnold Muhren was from would make sense, but it could have equally been the guy enjoyed the cities, so I could only guess really.
Yeah, I think that’s right that it wasn’t a revolutionary system, in the sense that it all stems back from Cruyff’s influence on the club. That’s a good point. I do think that it’s fair to say that those teams took the system further than it had been taken before (i.e. even more possession, etc.). That may be due to having better players as you mention, but there’s probably other factors as well (for instance, I think the fact that pitches are better maintained now helps take a possession-based style further).
About this, its not that I think Xavi or Iniesta are overrated by the average football fan. I think they're probably correctly or even underrated. But there are some instances in your arguments in their favour, Xavi's in particular, where I think it might be overstepping a bit. For instance, point #1 says the "revolutionary system" was built around Xavi. In some sense this is true, as Xavi was tika-taka personified, and the focal point of the possession based style of Guardiola. But I've even seen you describe it as "Xavi-ball", as if Xavi is the defining element and mastermind behind it all, which I think is going too far. @PuckVanHeel already made sure to raise the point that the Guardiola style is not necessarily new, but adapted from previous work in new, more advantageous conditions. I think the "revolutionary system" of Barcelona 2008-2012 is more of a "perfect storm" scenario, which included the elements of a "revolutionary system" re-imagined by Guardiola, a golden era from La Masia, a GOAT level player in Messi, the financial muscle of the club at the time, etc... From the above point, it follows that your subsequent points might be missing the mark a bit, because they are directed at the "revolutionary system" and not the perfect storm of elements behind that era of success. The Guardiola system not winning the UCL without Xavi and Iniesta is not to clearly say that those two were the defining factors of its success (though they were obviously huge factors), but merely to say that all the factors needed to win a UCL have not lined up in one particular year, which includes luck, as Barca 2009 had. It was very possible that Pep's Barca would have only won 1 in 4 UCLs they participated in (2011). That's not the knock the greatness of the team, but to recognize how difficult and contingent it is to win the UCL. We must be careful using it as a bench mark in this scenario I think. Pep's teams have still dominated to an enormous extent in league play, which does boost the ratings and output of his players to a huge degree. Point 3, Barca kept a similar style after Pep because that is the La Masia style. The "revolutionary system" or rather, perfect storm conditions, had gone; teams have cycles that typically don't last beyond a few years. Yet, they still managed to win the UCL in 2015 by reinvigorating the squad with new signings and a slightly more direct style of play. For this, they had only Iniesta as a starter and not Xavi. I know you rate Xavi for playing a crucial sub role in this season, coming off the bench in La Liga to see out matches, but I don't think he is meaningfully a main driver of success especially in the UCL. So to say, "they only made the semifinals once after Xavi left while playing the same system" as if Xavi is the crucial element here, I think is not quite right, as they already won the UCL without him as a major influence. And its not so much "the system" that defined Barca's legendary period but the perfect storm of elements which had long gone by this point. The decline of the team is more due to its cycle having come and gone (which Xavi's influence was a relative proportion of). The same can be said for the decline Spain, the golden generation had run its course, but to a lesser degree because Spain never won anything after Xavi and Iniesta's peak. I mean this all respectfully. I'm not trying to disparage Xavi and Iniesta. They are amazing, amazing footballers who I adore watching and who helped define a generation. But at the moment, I think there is probably some truth that they benefited in terms of ratings and output thanks to being in such dominant, possession style teams, even if they were among the biggest factors for their team's dominance. For instance, over the past few years, I look at the goals and assists of some Man. City players and know with near certainty that their numbers would probably be halved if they played at almost any other club. I recently re-watched Milan's 2004/05 UCL campaign and was very surprised at their two games against Barca. Rijkaard's side dominated possession easily in both matches against an absolutely legendary team. Watching these two games, especially the leg at the Camp Nou, you would think Xavi, Deco, Edmilson >>> Pirlo, Seedorf, Gattuso, such was the possession dominance. Xavi looked great, especially at the Camp Nou. I know 04/05 is considered probably his best season prior to the Guardiola era, and it showed. Then, watching the semi-final of Milan vs. United, I thought Scholes and Keane looked like school boys next to Pirlo, Gattuso, and Seedorf. Admittedly, that Milan team was inconsistent, so that could have something to do with it, but it really reinforced that ball-playing midfielders will look/perform better when their team dominates the ball. It doesn't mean Scholes wasn't as good as Pirlo, because no matter how good he is individually, his team wasn't going to be able to dominate the midfield. There are so many factors to that beyond one or two players. In 2010, when the shoe was on the other foot, Scholes looked great and Pirlo, who had much less of the ball, looked unable to exert much influence on the game. I remember you saying once (I believe it was you, anyways) that Pirlo vs England in 2012 was basically Xavi but every game. While this was obviously hyperbole, I think more of what you are seeing here is that Pirlo vs England, where Italy utterly dominated the ball, is what it would look like if Pirlo played on a team that was as dominant as Barca or Spain 2008-2012 every game. He had much more time on the on the ball and enjoyed possession in better, more advanced areas, which allowed him to show off his skills and influence the game more. PS. sorry for the huge response
As an initial matter, @PrimoCalcio thank you for the very well thought out and respectful response. While I don’t agree with everything (more on that below), it was a joy to read and I certainly respect the views you’ve put forth here. I don’t really think I disagree with this. I used the term “revolutionary system” because it had been used in the post I responded to, not because I think the style didn’t have earlier roots (and note: I used the term “Xavi-ball” in the past only as a shorthand after someone else here used it—I forget who). Ultimately, the way I see it, Guardiola’s Barcelona was the culmination of things that had been going on at Barcelona for a while. Barcelona basically inherited a certain philosophy and style from Cruyff. And Guardiola’s Barcelona implemented that philosophy/style to a notably greater degree than ever before, for various reasons, including that they had the ideal personnel to do that. That ideal personnel, though, includes very prominently Xavi—who, as you note, was the focal point of the style (both for Guardiola and for Spain). And that’s what I meant when I said the system was built around Xavi. Not that the system was invented for Xavi, but that it was emphasized even further at Barcelona and Spain in significant part because those teams had Xavi, and that he was the focal point for it on the pitch. So I’m not suggesting that Xavi came up with some new system/style. Nor am I suggesting that the style could’ve worked nearly so well without other great players around him. In fact, in the ceiling-raiser vs. floor-raiser thread, I specifically used Xavi as an example of a quintessential ceiling-raiser, because the style of play he’s most suited for requires the players around him to be very technically proficient. I think you make a good point about the randomness of the CL. But I think the Guardiola Barcelona teams are seen as dominant and possibly the greatest team ever not just because of their actual CL record. In fact, I think they’re seen as a better team than that CL record would suggest—after all, they’re looked upon as one of the very top candidates for greatest team ever, but there actually are several teams that have had as much or more CL/European Cup success. And there’s a good argument that they were unlucky to win only 2 CL’s (after all, they certainly had the better of the chances against Inter 2010 and Chelsea 2012). The fact that they’re looked at so highly is, IMO, mostly about having a mythical level of midfield control (along with having Messi of course) that even their greatest opponents couldn’t really touch. And that has not been matched by Guardiola’s subsequent teams. The fact that Guardiola’s teams haven’t won the CL is perhaps a result of lacking that level of midfield control, but you are right that there’s also a randomness element with the CL. All that said, I think the inability to replicate that outrageous midfield control elsewhere is in large part (but yes, not entirely) due to not having Xavi and Iniesta. At the very least, my point was that affirmatively reducing Xavi and Iniesta to players who merely benefited from a “revolutionary system,” seems odd because that same “revolutionary system” hasn’t produced nearly the same success or the same heralded teams without them. You, of course, weren’t the one to make that “revolutionary system” argument regarding Xavi/Iniesta, so I’m not sure we really disagree much on this. This is all a fair point IMO. You are of course right that Xavi was not a key player in 2015, though he was a contributor. So that’s certainly a caveat to what I said. Barcelona was able to win a CL title with Xavi no longer a key player, while playing a bit more directly and relying on the magic of a Messi, Neymar, and Suarez front line. But that 2015 team isn’t regarded quite as highly in terms of greatest teams ever as the Guardiola team was, and IMO that’s precisely because they didn’t control games as much in the midfield. Ultimately, even if we count that 2015 team as having been a sort-of-without-Xavi year (which I concede is fair), it is certainly still true that Barcelona had notably more success, was notably more dominant, and is more highly regarded in history for the time with Xavi than without Xavi. That’s despite Barcelona having a superior front line for several years in the post-Xavi era (Messi/Henry/Eto’o and Messi/Villa/Pedro were great, but I do think Messi/Neymar/Suarez was meaningfully superior to both). And I think that that speaks to the fact that Xavi wasn’t just a beneficiary of a system that made his teams dominant/great, but rather was a primary element of making that system so dominant. Of course, it’s not *all* about Xavi though, as I could point to other ways in which the team declined in those years (as you mention, teams have cycles). But I certainly think there’s enough context to conclude that Xavi was a big part of this difference, and his success wasn’t from just playing in some inherently superior system. I don’t think we disagree all that much on the crux of this (I certainly agree generally that players’ legacies benefit from being on great teams—and that includes Xavi and Iniesta). I do want to note though that I don’t think the “benefited in terms of…output” thing applies much here. The system in Barcelona didn’t really produce huge numbers for Xavi or Iniesta in terms of goals and assists. There was maybe a year or two in there early on, where Xavi produced some amazing assist stats (I think he had 30 assists in the 2008-2009 season), but as he developed as a playmaker Messi pretty quickly started sharing a lot of the final-ball duties. Meanwhile, the system really discouraged the kind of long shots that a lot of midfielders get a decent few goals from. So, overall, aside from Xavi in 2008-2009, I don’t know that Xavi’s and Iniesta’s statistical output really benefited very much from the team they were on, despite the teams being incredibly good (unless output includes passes per game, in which case it absolutely did benefit). I think this is a good point. And I do think it’s true that Xavi couldn’t have looked as dominant in midfield with lesser teammates (though I note that dominating the midfield with Deco and Edmilson against Pirlo, Seedorf, and Gattuso is very impressive and certainly not an example of dominating with a superior team IMO). One thing I’d add, though, is that I think Xavi made his teammates better and more dominant at this style than they otherwise would be. This is because I think he was absolutely elite at moving into open space without the ball, to make himself available for a pass. It’s a lot easier not to make mistakes and lose the ball if you almost always have Xavi sitting there in open space as a passing option. Indeed, Xavi would tell young players at Barcelona that if they weren’t sure what to do just pass him the ball. This sounds like a simple thing, but you need tons of stamina, awareness, anticipation, and concentration to constantly make yourself open for passes. And while I absolutely love Pirlo (so please do not take this as an attack on him), I don’t think he was quite at Xavi’s level in this regard—not that he didn’t make himself open for passes quite a lot, but Pirlo was just a bit more of a static player than Xavi in terms of movement. So I think Pirlo might therefore end up being more prone to having games where his team gets dominated in midfield, because he didn’t quite help his teammates make fewer mistakes as much as Xavi did.
@PrimoCalcio Just to provide some examples regarding my last point above, Barcelona was actually still dominant in terms of midfield control even in matches where Seydou Keita—a perfectly fine player, but nothing special—started in midfield against really good teams, including when he started instead of Iniesta. A couple examples: - Barcelona started Seydou Keita instead of Iniesta against Real Madrid in the first leg (the away leg) of their 2010-2011 Champions League semifinal (so the midfield was Xavi, Busquets, Keita). And they dominated the midfield to the point of having 76.4% possession in the game. Part of that is of course that Real Madrid got a red card 61 minutes in (and to be fair, Barcelona didn’t score until after that), but they were dominating the midfield the whole game. - They also played with Keita instead of Iniesta in both legs in the 2009-2010 CL QF’s against Arsenal—a team that themselves had a very possession-based style. And, again, I don’t have possession stats, but it looks like it must’ve been about 65% possession for Barcelona over the course of the tie. Of course, possession isn’t everything (you can certainly lose a match you have more possession in), and some of this possession dominance is an inherent result of tactics (playing narrow and relatively low tempo will tend to produce more possession). It’s also true that Keita is a perfectly fine player, and the rest of Barcelona was obviously still quite technically proficient. But I guess my point is that the dominance of the midfield wasn’t just a product of the sheer overwhelming quality of having all of Xavi, Iniesta, and Busquets in midfield, since they were having dominant midfield control against great teams even with Keita in. And I think that that, in part, reflects on Xavi making things a lot easier on his teammates in midfield, with his off-ball movement (as well as the weight of his passes being easy to control).
Likewise to you. I am enjoying this discussion. I don't suspect there is a ton of disagreement actually, rather that we are just arriving at more nuance. The bolded section speaks exactly to the point I was trying to make. I was not trying to suggest that Barca during Xavi's prime wasn't as good as MSN Barca, or not as good as we remember, by bringing up the fact that they may easily have only won 1 UCL (like you said, they were perhaps the greatest club team ever and could have won 4 straight), but precisely that the amount of UCLs won don't necessarily tell us about how dominant they were. Likewise, this logic should be applied to Guardiola's subsequent teams, which have reached extremely high levels of dominance in his system without winning the UCL. This is all to say that I think there is nuance, and that, to loosely paraphrase 'Guardiola couldn't win UCL without Xavi/Iniesta', assigns too much weight on those players and not enough on every other factor contributing to UCL wins, including the fact that teams have adapted to tika-taka/Guardiola ball since his Barca days when it was brand new to opposition teams. Maybe a minor point, but that's where I was headed with that. Generally, there is not too much you've said that I have a problem with. Not even the blatant attack on Pirlo.... I may reply in more depth later, but for now I'm out of time. Cheers!
For this section, I just wanted to say this is where it gets tough to determine Xavi's exact influence, because it's not just his teammates that make the difference in Pep's Barca, its the whole system/philosophy/general dominance in a revolutionary context where opposition haven't caught up and adapted yet too. Barcelona, since Rijkaard's time at least, have always been a possession based team, but obviously taken to the extreme under Guardiola. When playing against an AC Milan team in 2004/05, who were apparently happy to try to hit on the counter (this is one of my criticisms of Ancelotti's Milan, that they were inconsistent, typically Italian in keeping a low line and relying on individual quality to create danger, and often played below their level), they easily dominated the ball. Xavi was really good in this context, probably approaching the level of his form 2008-2012, but I'm not sure how consistently he displayed this against all sorts of quality teams prior to this period (emphasis on "not sure"), despite obviously not lacking the skill and ability of his 2008-2012 version. I would say Deco and Edmilson, in a vaccuum, might be a better duo of teammates for midfield control than Keita and Mascherano, yet Xavi could consistently exert more influence with Keita and Masch in Pep's team than he could with perhaps even better midfield teammates before Pep. This might indicate the importance of the system/philosophy/dominance of the 2008-2012 team in allowing Xavi to reach his highest levels. I'm not sure Xavi was actually a much better player all of a sudden in 20018-2012 than he was, say, 2002-2007. But the environment had changed quite dramatically, playing in an amazing team, with a philosophy suited to him, in a revolutionary context where opposition haven't caught up and adapted yet to the new development in football.
All very good points. I don’t disagree that there’s more nuance to this beyond just saying Guardiola hasn’t won the CL without Xavi/Iniesta. For one thing, I suspect that it’s probably just a matter of time before Guardiola does win another CL. For another, as we both agree, the CL is pretty inherently random and he’s certainly had really good teams since then that just didn’t win the CL. And I do think you make a good point about teams adapting.to Guardiola’s style. Tactics can’t stay totally static, since managers do adapt counter-strategies, and Guardiola has had to adapt in response to those counters, so it’s not all exactly the same as before. All that is to say that I certainly agree about the existence of every nuance you’ve mentioned. And those nuances rightly make the point a bit less straightforward/clear-cut than I was initially acknowledging. Nevertheless, we are still talking about 9 post-Barcelona seasons for Guardiola, 7 or 8 post-Xavi seasons for Barcelona including 6 or 7 with Messi (giving a number range depending on if we count 2014-2015), and 4 major tournaments for Spain, all where very talented teams played a similar style without Xavi. The results have not been *bad.* After all, there’s a lot of league titles in there, Barcelona did win the 2014-2015 CL with Xavi only playing a relatively minor part, and Man City did make a CL finals and some semifinals. But, even granting the randomness of football results, there’s a large enough sample size of tournaments and competitions with multiple different undeniably talented teams that I think we can say with relative certainty that the results produced by that system without Xavi aren’t as good as they are with him. And I think we can also say that the match-to-match, minute-to-minute dominance of those teams has never reached the level of the teams that had Xavi. Honestly, you’re probably right that part of that difference is tactical adaptation. When one style wins the biggest tournament that exists for five straight years (Euro 2008, CL 2009, WC 2010, CL 2011, and Euro 2012), managers will certainly look to counter it. In that 2008-2012 era, the main tactic used to counter it was just parking the bus, being really defensively solid, and hoping for counterattack goals (see, for instance, Inter 2010). These days, there’s more nuances to that, with gegenpressing basically aiming to start those counterattacks further up the pitch. We can’t know for sure whether Xavi’s Barcelona or Spain would’ve been as dominant if faced with more modern counterstrategies. Having watched these various teams, though, I’m inclined to think that they’d still be meaningfully better and more dominant at the strategy than the other teams that have deployed it. That’s all a fair point as well, and while there’s a lot of text from me below, I think you’ll find we have a lot of agreement. Tactics definitely help maintain possession—with Guardiola’s Barcelona playing a narrower, lower-tempo, higher-defensive-line style tactically than other teams (including earlier Barcelona teams). This helps keep possession. Given that, I certainly wouldn’t say that Guardiola’s Barcelona would have failed to have high amounts of possession without Xavi. Indeed, the style has certainly been able to produce high possession without Xavi (for post-Barcelona Guardiola, post-Xavi Barcelona, and post-Xavi Spain). But I do think they’d have failed to be quite so effective with the possession game without Xavi. In terms of Xavi before Guardiola, I think you’re right that he largely had the skill but didn’t exert the same amount of influence earlier in his career. I think a lot of that was about the role he was given on the team though. He was not as much the focal point of the midfield as he became later—that focal point was generally Deco (who, we should remember, was considered one of the world’s top few players), with Xavi playing a more industrious role. Indeed, Rijkaard giving him that sort of more industrious, less-prominent role caused Xavi to strongly and vocally consider leaving the club in those years. Meanwhile, in earlier years, he was also often deployed as more of a defensive midfielder—closer to the Busquets role—than as a central midfielder. And beyond not being his team’s focal point and/or being played in a role that was harder to truly influence the game from, I also just think it’s fair to say that Xavi simply becomes more influential the more possession-based a system he’s in. Barcelona may have always emphasized possession to some degree, but the tactics did meaningfully change with Guardiola to emphasize it significantly more. Same with Spain. And Xavi’s influence and dominance instantly increased a lot when those tactical changes happened—even though the personnel around him didn’t entirely change. I don’t think this is really about the quality of the teammates around him—after all, those Spain and Barcelona teams didn’t instantly change a whole lot (and to the extent they did, it was mostly Barcelona dumping two great players—Ronaldinho and Deco). Nor do I think it’s about that system just being inherently really dominant (as discussed above). I think it is more about just being put in a role and system that suited him best. Any player becomes significantly more influential when that happens. Following on from that, I think it is certainly true that the system that most suits Xavi is one that requires talented teammates. You can’t do possession-focused football without technically good players across the board. I think it is also true that there are players that are more tactically versatile than Xavi (i.e. that they’d exert more influence than Xavi if both players are put in roles/systems that don’t suit them). Ultimately, though, that doesn’t affect my rating of Xavi as a player all that much because, the way football works, an all-time great player will almost certainly find themselves on a team with other great players and be given a role/tactical system that suits them (if anything, I think it was unlucky for Xavi not to get this earlier). And given the nature of football having top talent hoarded by the best teams, I think it is ideal to be most suited to a technically demanding style of play, because it makes you more of a ceiling raiser than a floor raiser and being a ceiling raiser is what wins big titles.