Més que un club

Football Club Barcelona is one of the biggest clubs in the world. Some of the most talented and skillful footballers of various generations have graced the club with their dazzling performances. Names such as Johan Cruyff, Diego Maradona, Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi are just a few of the glittering array of stars who have been part of memorable Barcelona teams. At a similar level of importance attached to winning, the club has always focussed to entertain, playing football not as a dour defensive tactical battle to grind the opposition down to a one nil victory, but rather choosing an open attacking style. Watching Barca in full flow is like watching a graceful ballet dance, listening to a marvellous symphony and all that symbolizes freedom and upliftment of the human spirit.

Apart from the football, Barcelona is also the symbol of the leftist-rebel Catalan region and culture of Spain, as opposed to the ruling Castille province, upholders of a centralized republic and home to their arch-rivals Real Madrid. Various political machinations over the years such as persecution of Barca fans and presidents by authoritarian regimes based out of Madrid, have served to strengthen these perceptions. On a different note; in this global age when sports is being run by corporations as business enterprises, Barca is still, primarily a non profit association whose fans can also become members of the club and can take part in decision making processes, such as electing the president. It is the only major football club in the world that does not print a sponsor's logo in their football jersey, chosing instead, to showcase the logo of UNICEF, whom they have been donating close to two million US dollars annually since 2006.

Because of all these reasons and more, the motto of Barca, which appears as the title of this story, means 'More than a club'.

However the club has been in trouble lately. Two consecutive trophyless seasons (2006-07, 2007-08) have been marked by infighting and inept performances from the famed superstars of the club. Amongst the men most berated by the press and the fans, none are more beleaguered than their star player Ronaldinho and their coach Frank Rijkaard. Yet one has to go only a couple of years in the past to see a completely different picture. Rijkaard had taken over the helms of Barcelona in 2003, when they were not faring well and having signed Ronaldinho, proceeded to build a team and system around him that dominated Spain and Europe from 2004-2006. In fact, Rijkaard is the only Barca manager to have defeated Real Madrid more than once at the Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid's own home turf, the second of which being a 3-0 drubbing, a match in which Ronaldinho was in such imperious form that even the diehard Madrid faithful was compelled to rise up and applaud him.

And yet hardly a year had passed when complaints were being made about Ronaldinho's fitness, weight and more importantly his committment and professionalism. Doubts were being cast about the efficacies of Rijkaard's tactics as Barcelona bumbled from one match to another. The debacles of one season might have been forgotten and forgiven but the failures of 2006-07 have continued in 2007-08. These two seasons have simulataneously seen the resurgence of Real Madrid to the top of the Spanish football Liga and this has certainly not helped the cause of either the coach or the player.

Two distinct sets of views are being expressed in the papers and online forums. One is a feeling of indignation that Rijkaard and Ronaldinho are useless and need to be cast aside. The other is a feeling of indignation that people are short sighted and have forgotten the past glories of the duo which would surely be recreated by them if everyone would patiently wait.

As in life, anything is possible in football. The failure of an individual does not necessarily mean that his talents are in the decline. But often a sweet story of success turns bitter, the conqueror becomes a victim of his own achievements and the burden of raised expectations that they entail, the well-oiled system turns rusty and the mechanic must choose a different avenue to exercise his talents. I believe that Rijkaard is still a very good coach but his working relationship with the Barcelona management and its players has touched rock bottom. He could struggle to restore order within the club but it is difficult to gain control once you have lost it over a period of two years. More so for a soft spoken gentleman like Rijkaard. He will certainly take valuable lessons from this episode and emerge stronger in a new club that he would eventually manage by avoiding mistakes from the very beginning.

The same goes for Ronaldinho - the buck toothed, gummy grinning magician of football. Hollywood is full of movies of celebrities who start as being nobodies, struggle their way up by virtue of talent and determination, reach dizzying heights in their profession, enamour the entire world in the process, then lose their focus in the glare of fame and adulation, fall from grace, spend years in derision and depression and finally when people have forgotten about them and written them off, they rediscover the original qualities that had escalated them to fame in the first place and come back stronger than ever. The same will happen with him.

Around the time that I wrote this piece, Barcelona finally parted ways with Frank Rijkaard. Sad that it had to end in a tragic way. But I am sure that posterity will remember his Barcelona days for the success that he had bought to the club and also that he would go on to achieve the same level of success with other clubs.

The City of Sherlock Holmes

In the summer of 2007, by a combination of some expected and certain fortuitous circumstances, I found myself in the great city of London.

I was in the city for two and a half days. For the first time visitor, there is a wide array of historical, cultural and entertainment related experiences that London offers. I certainly tried to soak up the majority of them such as trips to Buckingham Palace, Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square and so on. However for me, the most thrilling aspect of London was the feeling that I was in the very same city where the great master Sherlock Holmes had lived and worked.

Early on my second day, I walked to Baker Street with an air of exhilaration that was near approaching dizziness. When I spotted the building 221B which now hosts a museum in his name, I stood outside for a few seconds in silence, trying to assimilate the fact that I was finally face to face with something that I had read and re-read, countless number of times, ever since I was in fifth standard. The annals of Holmes had formed a part of my growing up, a very important part and now all the magical lines of Dr. Watson, that have been imprinted in my mind to the point that I could quote most of them verbatim, seemed to spring out of the books and take a concrete shape in form of the building that was in front of me.

I spent a good amount of time in the museum. They say that when you experience the reality of something that you have only read about, you end up in disappointment. Fortunately for me, that was not the case. I felt genuinely satisfied after seeing the museum. One reason was the meticulous attention to detail. All the quirks of Holmes such as keeping the tobacco in the Persian slipper, transfixing his unanswered correspondence in the mantelpiece with his knife were to be seen there. The museum nicely recreated the sitting room, the starting point of so many singular adventures and the bedrooms, study tables and papers of Holmes and Watson. On the topmost floor there was a long compilation of letters from all over the world that had been addressed to that house. Many of them were from ardent fans, some of whom expressed an earnest desire to be inducted under Holmes' tutelage, some of them with information about spottings of various criminals masterminds such as Prof. Moriarty, some of them were bills made out to Holmes or Watson. It was all very wonderful.

On the same day, I also visited the Sherlock Holmes Pub in Northumberland Street, Westminster. It is extensively decorated with Holmesian relics, posters and the ambiance was authentic. The menu listed food items such as 'Hound of Baskervilles', 'A Scandal in Bohemia', 'Dr. Watson's favourite', 'Mrs. Hudson's pie' and so on. As I sat there having a common British meal of fish and chips and sipping a traditional English ale, I fell into a reverie thinking about the life back in the Victorian times.

I thought that I had seen all about Holmes that London had to offer, but one final revelation still awaited me. The next day, I had to catch a train to Glasgow in the afternoon and so decided to take a short trip to the British Museum in the morning. I got down at Russell Square and having studied the map, was walking in the general direction of the museum. However, after a while I was unsure whether I was heading in the right direction and slackened my pace. I looked all around with the intention of asking someone for directions, when all of a sudden, I saw the neat, little street sign ahead.

It was called Montague Street.

"When I had first come to London, I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner of the British Museum."

Holmes had told this to Watson while recounting the case of the Musgrave Ritual. It flashed in my mind instantly and a broad smile played across my lips. Not even once, while reading the Musgrave Ritual, had I ever imagined that those words would have any other significance to me, other than being a part of the story. Now they solved my direction problems. I knew that the Museum must be close and soon managed to locate it.

That small incident gave me equal or probably more joy than the long visit to the elaborate Baker Street museum and the Westminster pub.