Gerardo Martino is Barcelona's new head coach

Personnel

Gerardo Martino's attacking tactics in Barcelona were heard from the other side of the world
Photo: Reuters

Yesterday, Barcelona announced the appointment of Argentinean Gerardo Martino as the team's head coach, replacing Tito Vilanova, who was unable to continue working with the Spanish champion due to a serious illness. The Catalans were forced to take a drastic step and invite a specialist who had never worked in Europe before not only by Martino’s stable success at the head of the Paraguayan Libertad and Cerro Porteno, the Argentine Newell’s Old Boys and the Paraguayan national team, but also by his ability to use his full potential older players. And there are plenty of performers in the current Barcelona lineup who have already passed the peak of their careers.

The fact that Argentinean Gerardo Martino will become the new head coach of Barcelona was reported on Monday evening on the website of the Spanish newspaper Marca. The Madrid edition made only one mistake. The Catalans signed a contract with the 50-year-old specialist for two years, not three, as Marca believed. The corresponding message appeared yesterday on the official website of the Catalan club.

The position of head coach of the Spanish giants became vacant after Tito Vilanova, who in the 2012/2013 season led the club to win the 22nd championship title in history, was forced to resign due to serious illness. During that triumphant championship, Vilanova, an ex-assistant and like-minded person of the previous Catalan coach Josep Guardiola, was forced to take a break from work due to a malignant tumor of the salivary gland. He was operated on, but surgery did not help. Thanking the specialist for his involvement in the club’s recent successes, last Friday in Barcelona they categorically emphasized: “The results of Vilanova’s tests are incompatible with coaching activities.”

Many coaches were candidates for the vacancy in one of the top clubs of our time. These included specialists involved in the history of Barcelona itself - Vilanova's assistant Jordi Roura and ex-Catalan captain Luis Enrique, who recently headed Celta. The names of those who recently left their teams were Jupp Heynckes (left Bayern), Guus Hiddink (Anzhi), Roberto Mancini (Manchester City), as well as the currently unemployed Marcelo Bielsa. But the management of Barcelona, led by club president Sandro Rossel, chose Gerardo Martino.

Describing the merits of the 50-year-old specialist in an accompanying article on the official website, Barcelona primarily focused on Martino’s inherent “love of attacking football.” “I am a supporter of possession of the ball, attacking actions and the presence of a large number of players in the opponent’s half of the field,” the Catalans quoted the Argentine himself. However, this description of the coach and his statements did not go well with the memories of the Paraguayan national team, which tightly “dug in” at its gates at the 2010 World Cup and during the 2011 America's Cup. For the Paraguayans, such tactics, however, brought success. At the world championship in South Africa, they reached the quarterfinal stage, where they lost with a score of 0:1 only to the eventual winners of the tournament, the Spaniards, due to a goal by David Villa in the 83rd minute. And quite uniquely, the Paraguayan team under the leadership of Martino competed at the continental championship in 2011. There, without winning a single match, having advanced to the play-offs in a penalty shootout against Brazil and Venezuela, it managed to reach the decisive match, where it lost to Uruguay - 0:3.

However, Martino simply did not have the opportunity to be remembered by European fans as anything other than “Paraguayan concrete”. He spent his entire coaching career, except for the period in the Paraguayan national team, in clubs in South America and was known as a skilled tactician on his continent. From 2002 to 2006, he won four Paraguayan championship titles: three with Libertad and one with Serro Porteno. At the same time, both Martino teams were distinguished by their ability to play in attack. The same thing happened in the Argentinean Newell's Old Boys, with whom the new head coach of Barcelona won the 2013 Clausura (the spring part of the national championship consisting of two separate championships). In it, Newell's Old Boys scored more than all other clubs - 40 goals in 19 matches. At the same time, Martino’s team reached the semi-final round of the Libertadores Cup, an analogue of the European Champions League. The club from Santa Fe, having won the first meeting against the Brazilian Atletico Mineiro with a score of 2:0, did not make it to the final only because of an accurate shot by the former Dynamo Kyiv Guilherme in the fifth minute of stoppage time for the second half, as well as the penalty kick converted by the famous Ronaldinho in the penalty shootout .

Barcelona leader Lionel Messi spoke positively about Gerardo Martino yesterday. “I like him. In the Clausura he demonstrated that he is a great coach, and Newell's Old Boys were at the top only thanks to his coaching moves,” said the four-time Ballon d'Or winner.

In general, the Newell's Old Boys club of the first half of 2013 was very reminiscent of Barcelona itself in its tactical design. The team actually did not have a distinct forward - Ignacio Scocco, like Messi among the Catalans, preferred to attack from the depths of the field. At the same time, Scocco felt constant support from the flanks and from the central midfielders.

But the main thing for today's Barcelona is that Gerardo Martino at the Argentine club demonstrated the ability to make the most of the potential of venerable veterans. At Newell's Old Boys, he had 35-year-old Gabriel Heinze, who once played for Manchester United and Real, successfully operate in the center of defense, and Maxi Rodriguez, who is now 32 years old, played on the attacking flank. The Spanish superclub also has enough players of age and approaching critical age: Carles Puyol is 35 years old, Xavi is 33, Dani Alves is 30, Andres Iniesta and Javier Mascherano are both 29. Barcelona, it seems, does not intend to part with them. But the club also doesn’t want a repeat of last season’s Champions League semi-final, in which the Catalans were defeated by Bayern Munich - 0:3 and 0:4.

Sergey Melnik

Newspaper "Kommersant Ukraine" No. 122 dated July 24, 2013, p. 8

Authors:

Sergey Melnik

Themes:

Football

Lace in Argentinean style