THE BARCELONA COMPLEX

Veteran soccer correspondent Kuper delivers an account over three decades of the fortunes of a leading European club.

Barcelona FC, Barça to its fans, was once an anomaly among professional soccer organizations; it is owned by citizens of the city, and it calls itself, in Catalan, més que un club, “more than a club.” Attached to it is an academy called the Masia, or “farmhouse,” where aspiring team members come to train, for many years under the tutelage of Johan Cruyff, whom Kuper calls “distinctly batty.” Cruyff certainly shrugged off the received rules and opinions, and as his colleague and fellow coach Pep Guardiola says, “he built the cathedral.” One of the players who came to the Masia was an Argentinian teenager named Lionel Messi, who adopted Cruyff’s doctrine of “total football,” which means “that every player attacked and everyone defended,” all while exercising a kind of sixth sense about where the ball was going to be three seconds in the future. No one had seen soccer of the sort that Barça played, or Messi’s on-field magic, and the team roared from backwater bit players to European champions. Alas, as Kuper chronicles in a narrative as swiftly moving as a tournament, Barcelona FC became victim of its own success: Messi was its star player for years, but as he aged and commanded a higher salary (thanks to his scheming father, who managed him), there was no money to hire players to support him. Meanwhile every other soccer club on the continent had incorporated Cruyff’s once-radical rulebook, with doctrinal points such as, “There is only one ball. If we have it, the other team can’t score.” It’s a fine cautionary lesson, and though this book is likely to appeal primarily to soccer fans, readers need not follow the sport to enjoy it. The opening cast of characters and “Barcelona Lexicon” are particularly helpful.

A smart, engaging look at soccer as both game and business.