Barca by Jimmy Burns

Author:Jimmy Burns
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2009-12-19T16:00:00+00:00

In his first season at Barcelona, Herrera was confronted by a Real Madrid – still with an impressive cast of players such as Di Stefano, Gento, Puskas, Kopa and Marquitos – that was doggedly resistant to surrendering its status as Spain’s best club. The whites won two matches against their old rival at the Bernabéu. The results in isolation could have brought about Herrera’s premature downfall, led by those with their knives out from the day of his arrival, had Barça not played so brilliantly elsewhere. It had convincingly beaten Real Madrid 4–0 in the Camp Nou earlier in the season – ‘a wonderful day played at a devilish speed which Real Madrid hates because it obliges them to defend themselves, something that champions never like to do’, Herrera later commented. He also brought about some spectacular victories against other Spanish teams, including two 3–0 wins over Espanyol and Athletic Bilbao. Barça went on not only to win the League championship, breaking a new record on points achieved, with 96 goals scored and only 26 conceded, but to clinch the double, overpowering Granada in the Bernabéu stadium by 4–1 in the Generalissimo’s Cup. The League championship meant that Barça was back in Europe.

In a celebratory supper in Barcelona before over 1,000 carefully selected guests, club president Miró-Sans promised that Barça would behave as champions and dedicated the League Cup to Franco.

Under Herrera, Barça went on to win its second consecutive League title, this time with the traditional ‘duel’ between it and Real Madrid going to the line. Both teams ended equal on points and goal average, but with Barça showing a higher total of home and away goals. Within two days of the final match of the League championship, the rivals again faced each other, this time in the semi-finals of the European Cup. To reach it, Herrera’s team had convincingly beaten CDNA of Bulgaria, Inter Milan and Wolverhampton Wanderers, proving to most foreign commentators that it was once again among the best in Europe.

On the eve of the first leg, to be played at the Bernabéu, Herrera announced that he was backing a bonus-payment claim by his players, arguing that there was a risk that the much better terms being offered by Real Madrid would demoralise his team. But the claim was strongly criticised by Herrera’s opponents within the club as a symptom of the financial mismanagement that had overtaken Barça under the Miró-Sans presidency. When Barça lost 3–1 at the Bernabéu, and then 3–1 at the Camp Nou, Miró-Sans hesitated not an instant in sacking Herrera, claiming that by so doing his management was showing itself to be financially sound. Before he left for Italy to manage Inter Milan to national and European glory, Herrera was paraded up the Rambla on the shoulders of his adoring cules. Days later, Barça won the European Fairs Cup. Within a year of his departure, Barça had lost the League and the Spanish Cup – and its president Miró-Sans.

Herrera seemed to have cast his magician’s spell on his postscript, a vengeful curse, such was Barça’s bad fortune.

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