Source: Daily_Mail
JEFF POWELL: How Meester Tel began the rebirth of Barcelona
They did not call him El Tel. We, the British papers, called him that when the brightest
young head on the English coaching block went to Barcelona.
They called him ‘Meester’, a term of endearment for the Englishman in their midst. But not to begin with — they called Terry Venables several less flattering names than that when he first arrived at the Nou Camp.
‘You’ve got to laugh,’ he said at the time. Never was his renowned Cockney humour of greater value to him. More than a football club? FC Barcelona is the flagship for the Catalan people, the monument to their Civil War against oppression by Generalisimo Franco’s fascists, the symbol of their political opposition to Spanish rule from Madrid.
As such, they expect the commander of their football team to come garlanded in honours from the battle-fronts of the European game.
Venables came from QPR. Que?
Perversely it was a German, their imported galactico Bernd Schuster, who led the protests.
‘Where did we find this English tourist?’ he asked the local media. ‘Among the other drunken holidaymakers on a beach in Majorca?’ He should have asked me.
Cesar Luis Menotti had moved on to Barcelona after guiding Argentina to their first World Cup. Now El Flaco (The Skinny One) — as indeed they did call him — confided to this English friend that he needed to return home to Buenos Aires to be with his family, but would not be released until a replacement was found.
I recommended Venables and sent Menotti videotapes of his tactical triumphs. Later Bobby Robson and Aston Villa chairman Doug Ellis, English friends of the Barcelona board, were asked their opinions and positive references were instantly forthcoming.
The board were galvanised by Venables at his interview, though the team — not to mention the fans — took more convincing.
Barcelona’s players were accustomed to defending deep, thereby leaving wide-open spaces in midfield in which they could indulge their elaborate ball skills.
Venables had little more than a month in which to convert them to a pressing game: the now familiar system of pushing the back four up to the halfway line, forcing a one or two-touch build-up at high tempo, then exploiting the technique of elite players at the attacking edge.
The players were suspicious and the fans mystified, but respect was not to be long in coming.
The new Englishman began with the most daunting fixture possible for his first match of his first season in La Liga. Away to Real Madrid.
‘Believe,’ he told them in the dressing room. They gave him the benefit of the doubt, went out and played it his way. Result: Real 0, Barcelona 3.
On the ecstatic flight home Julio Alberto, their thinking man’s defender, stood up and said: ‘Meester. We think you are on to something.’
One by one the rest of them walked the length of the plane and shook his hand. Barcelona were on the way to their first Spanish championship for 11 unbearable years in 1985, Venables to adoration in Catalonia.
‘Meester... Meester,’ they roared. ‘Schuster... Schuster,’ also. The reluctant midfield meister had delivered some vital performances that season.
Yet, Venables still worried about his temperament on the biggest occasions. Sure enough, come the grandest of all stages, Schuster was to let him down.
The European Cup final a year later — virtually a home game in Seville against Steaua Bucharest — should have been the supreme moment for Venables, but Schuster froze, squandering the sitter from which he should have broken the deadlock before Barcelona astonishingly missed all their penalties, his among them.
Even so the love affair between Barca and her Meester — who that summer signed strikers Gary Lineker and Mark Hughes — survived, as it does a quarter of a century later. They feted him in the streets. They still do when he goes back.
‘Winning La Liga for Barcelona is the pinnacle of my career in club management,’
he says. ‘It was an incredible time there. I loved every minute.’
So when it comes to tonight’s Champions League final in Rome, Venables is torn between his affection for Barcelona and his admiration for Manchester United.
As an academy boy there, Barcelona’s newest coach, Pep Guardiola, was among the players who raised on their shoulders the Englishman who brought back the long-lost Liga trophy 25 years ago.
Venables recalls: ‘He was an exceptionally bright lad who developed into an intelligent player and it’s no surprise he’s cutting it as a manager.’
The same, by way of a warning to United, he deems to be true of the man who scored the late, great goal which sent Chelsea into an ugly frenzy of defeat in the semi-final.
Venables said: ‘Barca have a lot of big-name players but Andres Iniesta is the one, the one who has to be watched. Remember how brilliantly he played to help Spain win the Euro-pean Championship last summer.’
Nevertheless, he expects Sir Alex Ferguson’s United to shade a potentially high-scoring final: ‘The way Fergie keeps building great new teams is phenomenal and this one is at least as good as any of them.
'If it does come down to Messi against Ronaldo, well, Messi is one of the best players in the world, but give me Ronaldo. Messi is wonderful on the right but Ronaldo is terrific on the right, the left and through the middle as well. He also scores goals with his head, which Messi couldn’t do even if they put a top hat on him.
‘Yes, Barca can be beautiful going forward. But so can United and they are more solid at the back and that is likely to be the difference.’
