Old Man Johan: Barca's cycle is over, Only people in chelsea district are happy about CL final

Former Barcelona legend Johan Cruyff says the Catalan club will see the end of a cycle when Pep Guardiola coaches them for the last time in the King's Cup final on Friday.

"With Guardiola, one cycle ends and another begins, and I don't mean it in a negative sense," the 65-year-old Cruyff said in an interview published on Thursday before Guardiola's side take on Athletic Bilbao.

"It would be nice if he could close the circle winning," Cruyff told the Barcelona-based El Periodico.

But Cruyff had little praise for Barcelona's existing management team, voted in by club members in 2010 and led by Sandro Rosell, who took over the presidency from former club boss Joan Laporta.

Guardiola, 41, announced on April 27 that he was quitting because he was exhausted after four years as coach. The club named his deputy, 42-year-old Tito Vilanova, as successor.

Asked if he understood Guardiola's exhaustion, Cruyff said: "Yes, of course. Terrible exhaustion. Previously he was surrounded by people with weight who disappeared. He was more alone," he said.

"Those who came in after the election had criticised the previous management so you think: 'Are those who were critical going to help me now?'," said Cruyff.

"If the same people who have to take charge have criticised all those who helped you, without wanting it that creates conflict," he added.

"From then on, the problem was all Pep's. He had to deal with other problems than football. It exhausts you much more than you can imagine because no-one likes that."

Cruyff declined to judge Guardiola's successor.

"You have to wait until he starts, until he does things and then decide if it's going well or not so well. But they are sowing doubts, as happened with Pep, though he had the blessing of people who could support him."

Asked about some calls for Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho to take charge, Cruyff said: "It's not only about winning," and he had some tough words for Chelsea's Champions League win by penalties over Bayern Munich.

"We have just seen the Champions League Final. The only people in the whole world who are happy are those who live in Chelsea. No-one else, only the people from the Chelsea district," he said.

"And it is absolutely not for lack of quality, if you look at what Chelsea did in the final minutes. Why didn't they do that from the start? Why do you have to wait to the end for what you should be doing from the start?"

A three-time European Footballer of the Year, Cruyff started his career as a teenager at Ajax before joining Barcelona, whom he then coached to the 1992 European Cup and four straight league titles between 1991 and 1994.

"We have just seen the Champions League Final. The only people in the whole world who are happy are those who live in Asia. No-one else, only the people from India," he said.

Otherwise I kinda agree with Johan.
However much you all hate him (and however contradictory it may be that I like him as a Madrid fan), he is still the original God.

Such a bitter old man. Still butthurt that Chelsea eliminated his precious Barca in the semi's I see...

Guiltybystander wrote:

"We have just seen the Champions League Final. The only people in the whole world who are happy are those who live in Asia. No-one else, only the people from India," he said.

Otherwise I kinda agree with Johan.
However much you all hate him (and however contradictory it may be that I like him as a Madrid fan), he is still the original God.

hey a lot of people condemn chelsea here too lol

I don't hate him though. I for the most part, enjoy what he writes as he usually makes sense. However, the whole "football lost" stuff is what I can't stand about him really.

I agree Doc, Johan is the only one of the big ones in the past who, despite his biases, doesn't talk utter nonsense. He still breathes football, and he is usually correct with what he says, especially when he talks about stuff that doesn't directly concern him (i.e. Barca or Ajax).

The football lost stuff is indeed annoying, but the man co-designed the beautiful football that we must admit Barcelona played, and he is a firm believer in the importance of display aside from just winning.

After the Netherlands NT showed such a disgraceful display in the WC final, he had criticism too. Look, he would be the first to say "do whatever you can to win" if a team simply lacks quality, but the Netherlands could have played their own game and would have had a shot at winning, same as Real Madrid clearly does against Barca and here he says the same: Chelsea is capable of playing a nice match. In that case he has criticism, because it shows cowardice in a way, and with that I ultimately have to agree with Cruyff. For Chelsea it worked out, and they fought hard to crunch the win, and that made it worthwile. However, the Netherlands both disgraced themselves and lost. It is better to lose with dignity, same goes for Madrid at times. The 5-0 is less of a painful memory for me than the defeats where we would kick and dive and had one or two shots on target. That is embarrassing if you have a 500 million team.

Mou ultimately has a different philosophy; winning comes before beauty. That doesn't mean his teams that his teams don't play beautiful football, but it isn't first priority. If I am honest, I am in camp Mou in this matter, especially if you are NEVER the underdog, like Real Madrid is.

Can't really complain too much when we won our last CL in a similar fashion.

Thing is, especially in the first half, the high pressure high movement passing that we were pulling off was far fresher and far more attractive than Barca's sideways passing game. Atm I consider the German team the most enjoyable to watch (unless we're playing against spain :S). In our WC qualifying campaign we had the highest amount of goal chances of all the qualifiers and Bayern played a similar game against Chelsea in the first half. It was after all the missed chances etc. and as the match wore on that our "laufbereitschaft" was sinking and relapsed into the sideways Barca style game which is just as defensive as Chelsea's and Mou's Inter because you just choose the safest passing option available to you out of fear of losing the ball because you're not confident in your defensive prowess off the ball.

"And it is absolutely not for lack of quality, if you look at what Chelsea did in the final minutes. Why didn't they do that from the start? Why do you have to wait to the end for what you should be doing from the start?"

Does he mean attack?

Yuri Yukuv wrote:Former Barcelona legend Johan Cruyff says the Catalan club will see the end of a cycle when Pep Guardiola coaches them for the last time in the King's Cup final on Friday.

"With Guardiola, one cycle ends and another begins, and I don't mean it in a negative sense," the 65-year-old Cruyff said in an interview published on Thursday before Guardiola's side take on Athletic Bilbao.

"It would be nice if he could close the circle winning," Cruyff told the Barcelona-based El Periodico.

But Cruyff had little praise for Barcelona's existing management team, voted in by club members in 2010 and led by Sandro Rosell, who took over the presidency from former club boss Joan Laporta.

Guardiola, 41, announced on April 27 that he was quitting because he was exhausted after four years as coach. The club named his deputy, 42-year-old Tito Vilanova, as successor.

Asked if he understood Guardiola's exhaustion, Cruyff said: "Yes, of course. Terrible exhaustion. Previously he was surrounded by people with weight who disappeared. He was more alone," he said.

"Those who came in after the election had criticised the previous management so you think: 'Are those who were critical going to help me now?'," said Cruyff.

"If the same people who have to take charge have criticised all those who helped you, without wanting it that creates conflict," he added.

"From then on, the problem was all Pep's. He had to deal with other problems than football. It exhausts you much more than you can imagine because no-one likes that."

Cruyff declined to judge Guardiola's successor.

"You have to wait until he starts, until he does things and then decide if it's going well or not so well. But they are sowing doubts, as happened with Pep, though he had the blessing of people who could support him."

Asked about some calls for Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho to take charge, Cruyff said: "It's not only about winning," and he had some tough words for Chelsea's Champions League win by penalties over Bayern Munich.

"We have just seen the Champions League Final. The only people in the whole world who are happy are those who live in Chelsea. No-one else, only the people from the Chelsea district," he said.

"And it is absolutely not for lack of quality, if you look at what Chelsea did in the final minutes. Why didn't they do that from the start? Why do you have to wait to the end for what you should be doing from the start?"
A three-time European Footballer of the Year, Cruyff started his career as a teenager at Ajax before joining Barcelona, whom he then coached to the 1992 European Cup and four straight league titles between 1991 and 1994.

Cause they would have gotten their asses handed to them.

Even while parking the bus for nearly 120 minutes, bayern still created all the scoring chances in the game. Imagine if Chelsea played an open game what would happen.

Sometimes I think football is the only sport where it's like this....whereby technically inferior teams can consistently get results and win big trophies.

He is right on the money and if anyone had followed what I had to say about Rosell you would know I have been saying this for about a year now.

Rosell is slowly killing this team, I know cycles end but I have been saying for a while he has tried to take credit for the fantastic job Laporta did in his rein in charge. It's almost like if it was Roman times Rosell would have ripped down all of Laportas statues and stuff he is a very petty and bitter man.

Right when he was appointed all he did was slam the debt were in and how much of a challenge he had ahead of him with out saying how great a job Laporta did.

I mean he was handed over a Ferrari and acts like it's a Pinto and does it all the time. IF you keep slamming the work Laporta and that team accomplished everyone feels it from the coach to the players and was just not needed.

Just compliment what the man achieved and start down your own path which by the way all he had to do was steady the ship. HE complains about debt yet he spends just as much as anyone else does.

Laporta was in a very similar situation when we didn't win much and needed to get rid of Ronnie, Deco, etc and make Messi the head of the team plus fire Rijkaard a CL winning etc.

Those are very hard moves to make and if they backfire you look like an idiot yet Laporta nailed everyone of them and then after Pep's first year he stepped back and let Pep pretty much do as he pleased because he proved he knew what he was doing.

Although Rosell constantly seeks credit for IMO nothing. Anything he won so far is thanks to Laporta and Pep who he has driven out like I have been saying forever he would do, he has made our shirts look like some Mexican league team with sponsors everywhere not to mention out last two kits have been hideous, he gave us horrible press through the Cesc saga etc etc.

All while screaming about debt because that's one of the things Laporta left behind that's negative but I guarantee his wont be much better when he leaves and is constantly moaning about something when he has the best collection of players and youth set up in a generation a machine just churning out the goods. Just don't mess around with it and it works just fine.

Not to mention he has let go of some very important people behind the scenes. He want's a trophy with his fingerprints all over it so he can say look what I did like a 10 year old.

There is no doubt if Laporta were still here Pep would be as well.

I hate Rosell and have been saying it for a longtime now, maybe people will start to pay attention to this fool.

I hate that parking the bus upsets people.

It's a strategy, FFS.

Sometimes, the best one.

animal.crackers wrote:I hate that parking the bus upsets people.

It's a strategy, FFS.

Sometimes, the best one.

Essentially, its a useful tool for sore losers. If your team loses/draws to a PTB team, you criticise and say how they are shameful, low life, etc. If you win using it, its the greatest tactic in the world

S32TABLANCA wrote:

animal.crackers wrote:I hate that parking the bus upsets people.

It's a strategy, FFS.

Sometimes, the best one.

Essentially, its a useful tool for sore losers. If your team loses/draws to a PTB team, you criticise and say how they are shameful, low life, etc. If you win using it, its the greatest tactic in the world

Spot on.

"What especially bothers me is that a football team can forget everything and still win." he also made this quote.

glad there's people like him speaking out. chelsea fans dont understand how screwed they would have been in they didnt win. no cl next year and a squad that needs a lot of rebuilding. and with financial fair play rules soon to be imposed they would've really suffered to build another good team. but what bothers me is some deluded chelsea fans who think they put on a masterclass defensive display when they really didn't shut bayern's attack down as well as barca's and relied on them missing chances after chances. some of them resemble chelsea to inter's triumphs in 2010 which is stupid because inter were actually a good team that won because they had quality. chelsea won mainly because of luck. it's sad that such a expensive squad has to play like this, but they're not good enough to attack so can't blame them. at the end chelsea deserve it because they did just enough and bayern and barca can only blame themselves. but chelsea fans should really shut up about all this "written in the stars" and "destiny" crap. they were very very lucky. that's all it was. people are stupid if they think playing total defence like that would usually pay off.

animal.crackers wrote:I hate that parking the bus upsets people.

It's a strategy, FFS.

Sometimes, the best one.

The thing I disagree with your statement is that "parking the bus" is generally a tactic teams use when they know there outclassed and can't stand up and go punch for punch with the other team.

I mean it's the only time all season they do it, right? When Chelsea or other teams who do it play the likes of wolverhampton or teams they are confident in beating they would never dream of playing like that, they would get boo'd out of there stadium.

And when you tell a fan of that team that they parked the bus, or got lucky, they freak out.

I agree use whatever tactic you want and wins you the game but then don't freak out when people say you were not the best team over the 90 minutes and got lucky to win, that was your whole strategy to begin with. Have a 20-3 shot ratio against you give up the possesion battle and have like 15 corners to 2 and be able to deflect that and score on a rare counter or a great play by one of your players.

It works sometimes but I never have understood why fans take offense to people saying you parked the bus or were lucky to win. The whole strategy is to get lucky to win and not conceed no matter what. If you lose in every statistical category but win the game then yes you may have been a little lucky.

I don't know why it's so hard to admit that. I mean when we played Madrid in the SuperCopa at the start of the year I was the first person to say wow they really out played us but we were lucky as hell Messi pulled us through.

I don't know why people have such a hard time to admit that.

Were they lucky to win, or were Bayern and Barcelona "lucky to lose"?

Think about it.

They were extremely lucky to pull it out over a three game stretch using that tactic against the talent they were playing.

The numbers just don't hold up to support playing like that over a long period of time against teams of that caliber.

If you give up possession, number of corners, and shots at such a huge margin over the course of the year you will lose out in the end. It's like BlackJack you can go on a run for a day or a week but don't bank on making a career out of it because the statistics bear out in the end.

Now you have to throw in there that Chelsea is still a really good team with players capable of beating anyone on there day but the parking the bus goes both ways as the system limits there talents as well.

In the end it worked and congrats they had probably the hardest path to win that trophy but if I were a chelsea fan I would much rather remember the game against Napoli where they needed to go out and play football to move on and they were wonderful then when they parked the bus, but that's just me.

I hate that people defend park-the-bus tactics.

Football is entertainment first and foremost. Unfortunately that has been lost on most people nowadays. It's only about trophies and winning.

_LMG_10_ wrote:I hate that people defend park-the-bus tactics.

Football is entertainment first and foremost. Unfortunately that has been lost on most people nowadays. It's only about trophies and winning.

To us it's entertainment, to the players it's actually a job with big benifits if you end up winning. Even if they're millionaries most of them, there's still nothing like winning.

I can understand park the bus tactics and I don't really have a problem with it.

Long gone are the days when football was a grassroots game for the sole purpose of entertainment.

Now it's about winning. Always.

Winning has become the entertainment.

dnmac4 wrote:

animal.crackers wrote:I hate that parking the bus upsets people.

It's a strategy, FFS.

Sometimes, the best one.

The thing I disagree with your statement is that "parking the bus" is generally a tactic teams use when they know there outclassed and can't stand up and go punch for punch with the other team.

I mean it's the only time all season they do it, right? When Chelsea or other teams who do it play the likes of wolverhampton or teams they are confident in beating they would never dream of playing like that, they would get boo'd out of there stadium.

And when you tell a fan of that team that they parked the bus, or got lucky, they freak out.

I agree use whatever tactic you want and wins you the game but then don't freak out when people say you were not the best team over the 90 minutes and got lucky to win, that was your whole strategy to begin with. Have a 20-3 shot ratio against you give up the possesion battle and have like 15 corners to 2 and be able to deflect that and score on a rare counter or a great play by one of your players.

It works sometimes but I never have understood why fans take offense to people saying you parked the bus or were lucky to win. The whole strategy is to get lucky to win and not conceed no matter what. If you lose in every statistical category but win the game then yes you may have been a little lucky.

I don't know why it's so hard to admit that. I mean when we played Madrid in the SuperCopa at the start of the year I was the first person to say wow they really out played us but we were lucky as hell Messi pulled us through.

I don't know why people have such a hard time to admit that.

Do I get to talk nonsense to you for talking about Chelsea? Shouldn't you be talking about Barca and Barca alone? Or isn't that the same logic you used last time?

Neutral wrote:"What especially bothers me is that a football team can forget everything and still win." he also made this quote.

glad there's people like him speaking out. chelsea fans dont understand how screwed they would have been in they didnt win. no cl next year and a squad that needs a lot of rebuilding. and with financial fair play rules soon to be imposed they would've really suffered to build another good team. but what bothers me is some deluded chelsea fans who think they put on a masterclass defensive display when they really didn't shut bayern's attack down as well as barca's and relied on them missing chances after chances. some of them resemble chelsea to inter's triumphs in 2010 which is stupid because inter were actually a good team that won because they had quality. chelsea won mainly because of luck. it's sad that such a expensive squad has to play like this, but they're not good enough to attack so can't blame them. at the end chelsea deserve it because they did just enough and bayern and barca can only blame themselves. but chelsea fans should really shut up about all this "written in the stars" and "destiny" crap. they were very very lucky. that's all it was. people are stupid if they think playing total defence like that would usually pay off.

BUT..........













WE WON!






Case closed. Not reading any more of your drivel.

dnmac4 wrote:They were extremely lucky to pull it out over a three game stretch using that tactic against the talent they were playing.

The numbers just don't hold up to support playing like that over a long period of time against teams of that caliber.

If you give up possession, number of corners, and shots at such a huge margin over the course of the year you will lose out in the end. It's like BlackJack you can go on a run for a day or a week but don't bank on making a career out of it because the statistics bear out in the end.

Now you have to throw in there that Chelsea is still a really good team with players capable of beating anyone on there day but the parking the bus goes both ways as the system limits there talents as well.

In the end it worked and congrats they had probably the hardest path to win that trophy but if I were a chelsea fan I would much rather remember the game against Napoli where they needed to go out and play football to move on and they were wonderful then when they parked the bus, but that's just me.

Yeah boo hoo! That's why you're NOT.

You can wipe your bottom now.

_LMG_10_ wrote:I hate that people defend park-the-bus tactics.

Football is entertainment first and foremost. Unfortunately that has been lost on most people nowadays. It's only about trophies and winning.

Go watch WWE.

Football is about winning not entertainment, where did you learn this garbage?.