Paco Seiru.lo Interview (former head of Barça Methodology Center): «At Barça, Johan put in our heads ‘go out and enjoy’ and there are no plans beyond passing the ball» (good, but long read to understand what is Barça’s DNA about)
by cebri1
Paco Seiru.lo Interview (former head of Barça Methodology Center): «At Barça, Johan put in our heads ‘go out and enjoy’ and there are no plans beyond passing the ball» (good, but long read to understand what is Barça’s DNA about)
by cebri1
4 comments
Sorry for the rough translation using Google Translate, but this guy is an absolute legend. Part of many football staffs from Cruyff to Luis Enrique.
A great read.
Shame that most will ignore it and instead will focus on one of the dozens fucking rumours from twitter that are uselessly being shared in this sub.
This is an amazing interview. I’ve unfortunately never heard of him but this man and his part in the club’s legacy, DNA, and philosophy is very important to remember
Some interesting ideas, but I hope fellow readers don’t take them too literally (even with the rough translation) and start thinking the exact same way Paco does. He is after all a 78 year old man, and you can’t expect his specific ideas to apply to the modern game.
He’s seeing this “Barca DNA” from an emotional and romanticized perspective, which is understandable — Barca were indeed doing something very special back in his days. But nowadays we’re not so unique, and hard science plays a bigger role than ever before. So it’d be arrogant and foolish to hold onto the idea that “the player must have come through La Masia”. I know he said exceptions existed, but who’s the player with the most “Barca DNA” right now? IMO, it’s Pedri, by far. Not a Masia product.
Football is a collective game, so it should be played collectively. The ball is the object of the game, so players should strive to have the ball not only for themselves, but also their team. What you do off the ball also influences what happens on the ball. These are things I agree with and will probably never change my mind about. But I found the Descartes/Hume paragraph about determinism shallow, they just brought up philosophy to sound much deeper than they actually were.
At the end of the day most fans’ opinions are shaped by them taking quotes and opinions a bit too literally. Even if maybe Paco made the “ball to feet” point literally and he’s averse to passes into space, taking this idea literally can only lead to stale positional football of the sort Setien and Van Gaal coached at times. It’s not the football of Cruyff, Pep or Lucho.
There should be no concept of a “Barca DNA” as long as we have a clear idea of how we want to play: and that is, IMO, as simple as “with the ball”. I think it’s absolutely fine if one manager wants to ping the wingers in line with the opposition defensive line in order to create space, or another manager likes his wingers a bit deeper in order to run at defenders and create situations where the fullback overlaps and then the winger can pass it there, or have a shot. As long as we have players that are good on the ball *and* have a good footballing mind, we’re good. Zero need to focus on an unquantifiable, vague, “Barca DNA”. They’re either the right fit or they’re not.
I mean, this “Barca DNA” BS made people believe Cesc was a perfect replacement for Xavi. Nobody can deny Cesc has it, but he simply wasn’t the right profile. So… I say we focus more on objective profiles and less on “Barca DNA”.