The Antic Treble? (Please no)

Interesting article explaining the fall of Barca and the follie of some of their signings.



http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,1563,887090,00.html

Radomir Antic, the man appointed to restore order at Barcelona after the sacking of Louis Van Gaal, has a unique hat-trick in his sights. He could become the first coach in Spain to steer three teams in a row to relegation.

In May 2000 he was fired by Atletico Madrid after sending them down to the second division. Ditto one year later with Real Oviedo. Since then no one had seen fit to give him a job until last week when Barcelona's calamity-prone president, Joan Gaspart, eyed the opportunity to turn a crisis into a catastrophe. Three points off the drop zone, having lost eight games out of 19 this season, Barça look nicely positioned to give Antic his rare place in history.

'It hurts me,' says Sergi Barjuán, the former Spain right-back who spent his best years at Barcelona. 'It hurts to see my club become the laughing stock of the whole country.'

Sergi's old coach, Sir Bobby Robson, liked to go on about what a great club Barcelona was. 'This is the biggest football club in the world - the biggest!' he would say, in that wide-eyed, marvelling way of his. Six years ago that sounded about right. Ronaldo and Figo were there, and at their absolute peak. The memory was still fresh of Maradona, Cruyff, Romario. As well as Lineker, Stoichkov and Schuster. Only the best for Barcelona.

Not any more. Any suggestion today that it remains the biggest club in the world could only be interpreted as a cruel attempt at humour. Barça is like a confused old dowager these days, a beauty who has lost her looks, and squandered her fortune. The decay set in when, following the first sacking of Van Gaal, Gaspart took over as president in the summer of 2000.

Antic is Barça's fourth coach in two-and-a-half trophyless seasons. In that time the club have spent €226million (£147m) on 16 new players, none of whom has made a significant impact on the club, most of whom have made no impact whatsoever. The best and most expensive of them, Marc Overmars, is usually out injured, but even when he is fit he spends much of his time on the bench. Javier Saviola, the young Argentine forward, is good in spurts but no one knows yet whether he is really going to make it in the big leagues. The one player in the team who looks the part, who possesses the old Barça pedigree, is Patrick Kluivert, signed by Van Gaal two years before the Gaspart era began.

The problem with Kluivert is that, blessed as he is with skill and balance, he is not a natural-born goal-scorer. In earlier times Barça would have resolved the problem by throwing a lot of money at it. But having blown as much on the likes of Rochemback, Christanval, Enke, Dani, Gerard and a host of other expensive failures as Real Madrid have on Figo, Zidane and Ronaldo, there is nothing left in the bank for the one big signing who could really make the difference.

Or who might at the very least inject a bit of enthusiasm into the crowds at the Camp Nou, a carcass of a stadium these days, soulless, eery, echoing to the solitary cries of the few fans still infused with enough energy to vent their rage. The problem, identified long ago by every football journalist and fan in Catalonia, is that there is no gran proyecto . No big idea. Real Madrid, for example, buy the world's top players, and only the very top, out of a clear strategy aimed at developing the club's brand name massively in the Far East, as well as everywhere else, and playing football with more extravagance and style than anybody else. If they also happen to win things, then so much the better.

As the Barca brand name loses its lustre, Gaspart and his board (half of whom have quit since the new year) just hurtle along from week to week, hoping for the best, making things up as they go along. They are consistent only in the sense that they always improvise.

Take the sacking of Van Gaal. There was no plan. No clear sense that getting rid of him would do any good. It was all in the lap of the gods. Had the team beaten or drawn with Celta Vigo last week instead of losing 2-0, Van Gaal would still be in his post today. Had they not beaten nine-man Real Mallorca 4-0 away three weeks away, he would have gone then.

Who takes these decisions? The press does, chiefly the Barcelona sporting press, to the accompaniment of the fluttering handker chiefs of the Camp Nou diehards. One of the senior members of Gaspart's board, a man with the unlikely name of Amador Bernabeu, admitted as much on Wednesday, the day after it was announced that Van Gaal was finally history. 'I was convinced that was not the solution and I continue believing it now,' Bernabeu said. 'But there are times when external pressures take the decisions for you.'

Evidence of how unpremeditated Van Gaal's sacking had been, was provided by the complete absence, once he had gone, of a Plan B. There was no new coach waiting in the wings. Gaspart approached Carles Rexach, the faithful old Barça retainer who coached the team, until he, too, was sacked with such abysmal lack of distinction last season. Rexach, wisely, did not want to know. Then Gaspart phoned Cesar Luis Menotti, who led Argentina to victory in the 1978 World Cup, but has done nothing of any note since. For 36 hours or so Menotti, fired from his last job as coach of Rosario Central in Argentina, was the clear front-runner. Gaspart's own favourite. Until, persuaded by people around him that Menotti was a superannuated bon viveur , he turned to the only marginally less superannuated Serb, Radomir Antic.

Like Menotti, like Van Gaal, Antic has had his moments of glory. He did lead Atletico Madrid to a league and cup double in 1996. Otherwise, though, his finest achievement in the 15 years he has spent in and out of Spanish football was to scrape a Uefa Cup place for Real Madrid in 1990. Less glorious was the last big decision he took before Real Oviedo's plunge to the second division: signing Stan Collymore.

Antic obtained the services of the troubled Englishman, whom he described as 'world class' at his presentation, in the teeth of opposition from the Oviedo board. He got his man only after threatening to resign if he did not. Collymore played a total of 80 minutes for the club. After six weeks he was gone.

Antic will be hoping to last a little longer at Barça. He has signed until the end of the season, enough time for him to seal what might yet turn out to be his life's destiny. It is not out of the question that he could pull off a truly historic treble.

 

Yeah I think you turned me on to their writing, and I have been hooked ever since.

Sometimes it is pure comedy!

Although in this case it is scary.

 

The Catalans are now three points off the relegation places, and face a resurgent and physical Athletic Bilbao at the weekend. If Antic could get Saviola and Kluivert back it might help, for Riquelme and Mendieta looked like lost souls last Saturday, like ships that pass in the night. They seemed curiously unaware of each other's existence, and with Overmars contributing his usual headless chicken display, Barça looked a sorry sight indeed.

That about sums it up, although I do hope that Medieta and Riquelme find their way together