In Conversation With Graham Hunter About Barca

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Graham Hunter is a Scottish journalist who has lived in, and covered Barcelona since 2001 for Sky Sports, the BBC and newspapers and magazines across the world. He's written a book, 'Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World', about Pep Guardiola's extraordinary team, and spoke to Football365 about the book, and the team.


The book is out on February 17 - why this book, and why now?
The material reason was, a couple of years ago the Sunday Herald in Scotland rang me on a Friday evening and said 'A huge feature has fallen through - have you got anything?' I said I have a particular bee in my bonnet about the Balon D'Or , which was happening that Monday. I'm absolutely clear that Leo Messi would win, but as a bit of a romantic I thought Xavi should win, and I said why. So we wrote the piece, a very long piece, they liked it and I felt good about it, then everything went quiet.

A few weeks later I got a call from the publishers of the book, who are two young lads who gave up their journalistic careers in the middle of a recession, simply because they believe sports books aren't done well enough, and they've taken a bet that if they bring what they feel to be quality to the sports book market people will enjoy it more. So they said 'We've read your article, we've scrapped all our plans for this year - can you do that in book form?' I used my normal caution and maturity, thought about it for 5.5 seconds and said yes.


Was there a sense of a 'story that needed to be told' as well?
I think as we sat down and thought about it, we all agreed that we thought we'd seen something special with this team. Also, I felt that everyone knew everything I knew about Barcelona - I've lived here ten years and I know the place well, I know a lot of the players and the evolution of the club. However, they convinced me that there was a lot of stuff that I treated as second nature because of my job, but that people didn't know.

So we went ahead with it firstly because we thought there was a place in the market for it, but also we all agreed we were seeing something we thought was, if not unique, but pretty damn close to it, because although there have been other eras when clubs have dominated, but we felt the combination of admiration and enjoyment of quality of football that we are watching in the Pep Guardiola era was extraordinary, and that if we can capture it and tell it well, people will enjoy it and be enthused by it. There are a generation of kids that want to play like this, and a generation of coaches that want to coach like this. Barcelona, as well as being a successful team, are a model that people will copy.


Barca are admired worldwide, but what about in Spain? Are they similarly admired, or are they disliked in the way that lots of big clubs are elsewhere?
I think we're on the cusp of that for sure - I've lived through a few eras of this, and when a club gets to this level of success there's a natural human instinct for people to say 'Let somebody else in.' That aside, the natural fact that there are a lot of Barcelona fans in Spain, augmented by the type of football, but also the success has been totally interlinked with the success of the Spanish national team.

The World Cup winning side had a Barca stamp on it, but so did the Euro 2008 winning side. So therefore there is a recognition that what Barcelona are doing well, in terms of winning trophies, they're also creating a winning mentality at the national level. The current Barcelona side, and through Pep Guardiola as a man, embody the blending of what we always knew Spain had, which was a high level of technical skill, with a modern maturity. Not 'win at all costs' but with a tougher mentality, and more physicality, more durable, hunger for victory rather than simply entertainment. There's a broader enjoyment of Barcelona in Spain than there would be towards another dominant club.


Do you think that kind of thing suggests that he would succeed elsewhere? Obviously lots of people have said 'Anyone could win the league with Messi, Xavi...' and so on
It's vital to understand that concept of 'Anyone can win with these players' is just wholly wrong. People who assess Pep for what's he's done and what he could do in the future often forget that he was hired in an emergency situation. They'd sacked Frank Rijkaard, a team which had been dominant in Spain and won the Champions League were atrocious. They were sloppy, training was poor, some players had grown fat, some were going out too much at night, and a very specific point is that Leo Messi's development was in jeopardy, because he was being led astray by Ronaldinho, Deco and to a lesser extent Motta.

He was a young man - only 37 - he needed to immediately arrest the decline, he needed to change the standards on the training pitch, he reinvented Messi's position, he gave the go-ahead to bring back Gerard Pique. All the senior players - Puyol, Xavi, to a lesser extent Iniesta - all say his impact was...life-changing. These phenomenal professionals had subconsciously slacked off. With everything that he's done, there are skills that are transferable, wherever he goes in the future - Arsenal, Manchester City, United, Chelsea, Inter Milan.

He's a coach that will bring high standards, inspirational man-management, utter dedication, an encyclopaedic knowledge of opponents, a brilliant media profile - the question needs to be 'what's missing?' What you will get is a version of what you've seen now, if he chooses his club well.


The other thing is that he seems to see things in players that others don't - like Pedro or Isaac Cuenca...
Absolutely. Pedro was ready to be loaned out, Sergio Busquets went from playing third division football to Champions League football with nothing in-between, and went on to win the World Cup the next season - I think he's promoted something like 26 players from the youth system in three-and-a-half years. If he did that in ten years it would be regarded as miraculous. And the ones that haven't made it have been sold for big money, and the ones that are there could be there for years to come.

He says that when he was a player, he was promoted because he understood the system, and therefore he promotes players who understand the Barca system. However, wherever he goes - let's say hypothetically he's at Manchester City next year - you won't get identical performance because they won't have embedded a system where a player is coached there from the ages of ten to 20, a coach can say 'I know you and you know the system, I'm promoting you.'

What you will get is an exceptional keen, clear eye that will make intelligent decisions. A recent example was a guy called Sergi Roberto, who looks like you could fit him in your pocket. They played him a couple of weeks ago in the cup at Osasuna, who are a very good, tough team. They scored a goal because Sergi Roberto dwells a second too long on the ball, got knocked off it and they scored. 99 out of 100 coaches would've hooked the boy, but he stayed on and scored the winning goal, because he's so full of confidence towards the end that he makes a forward run into the box and Messi, the best player in the world, instead of shooting himself or moving into the space, gives the ball to Roberto and he scores. That's what we're talking about. That's Pep. It says 'If you're good for the system, we'll back you irrespective of anything else.'


How long do you think there is left of this incredible Barcelona side? How long do you think this team can keep winning things?
I think that's a moot point. Obviously, age will wither. In the case of Xavi we're in the autumn of his career, and with Carles Puyol we're in the winter of his career. I think a lot depends on how long Pep Guardiola stays, because when he goes they'll lose a particular style of man management. But the hunger will remain, and many of the players have a good few years left in them. The era doesn't need to end. Also, the supply line is sensational - there are players in the youth setup that, at 16 or 17, are world class, and who will make the grade and keep the standards high.


'Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World' is out now in electronic form, which you can download here, and is released in phyiscal form on February 17. Order it through Back Page publishing here, or on Amazon here.