On violins and drums — Barcelona by Cruyff

13 Aug, 2026

• Hypotaxis and parataxis — A conversation with Grok, bis

(22 November 2025)

Barça returned to Camp Nou today, which is still undergoing renovations. The club anthem was played without the orchestral accompaniment.

I liked the Camp Nou the way it was in the early nineties, and I’ve never liked it more than that way.

(Romario’s goal in three touches: first touch, dribble and finish)¹

As for the arrangement of the anthem, I imagine they wanted to give it a renewed and solemn feel by leaving the vocals isolated. It was not bad, but I liked that anthem the way I had always heard it, and I think it loses almost all its charm without the orchestra, especially the lines of the lower wind instruments that enhance the piece, like the cello in Handel’s arias.

(The version without instruments was only used that day. The one currently played at regular matches does have orchestration, but it is not the same as the original.²)

(23 November 2025)

The sight of Romario’s goal floods my mind with memories.

I remember Carles Rexach publicly confessing that they had signed him because he resembled Butragueño. I remember how Johan Cruyff had indeed always been obsessed with Butragueño, and how all of that led me to search for videos of this player who, at that time, was far from his best, despite still being very young (in fact, at the age when footballers usually reach their peak). I ended up buying a tribute VHS tape and taking it to one of the then-new shops at the Bernabéu stadium so the player could sign the cover. I felt him giving me the stink eye, in contrast with the favourable look he gave my mother.

Alkorta would explain that Romario had got past him that way because he wasn’t at his finest that day and lacked concentration, that it wouldn’t have happened under normal circumstances, and that it could never happen again.

I watched the second leg from my seat in the south end of the newly built upper tier, and how Romario once again beat Alkorta with the same dribble in the same area of ​​the pitch, the difference being that this time the Brazilian received a kick that prevented (just as the defender had warned…) a repeat of the outcome.

The referee blew his whistle for the foul. It was the same spot from which Ronald Koeman had scored the second goal (after Romario’s) from a direct free kick in the first leg (the one that had ended 5–0). This time, Koeman shot to Paco Buyo’s right. Buyo flew incredibly towards the ball, which crashed above his hand, striking the crossbar with a deafening roar that still echoes today.

By then, Cruyff was no longer bringing Michael Laudrup on, not even for a minute, not even as a substitute. Guillermo Amor played in his place, wearing the Dane’s usual number 9, and scored the only goal of the match, in what would be Cruyff’s first and last victory for Barça at the Bernabéu, against a Real Madrid side managed by Vicente del Bosque.

The following season, Jorge Valdano would return to Madrid to give back (as manager) what he had taken from them (in Tenerife). Laudrup was signed and played for the team wearing number 10. He participated in Real Madrid’s 5-0 victory over Cruyff’s Barcelona. Luis Enrique scored the fourth goal after Iván Zamorano’s shot hit the post from a pass by Martín Vázquez, who had beaten Abelardo by drawing a dream self-pass, according to José María del Toro in his live television commentary — pronounced while I was watching it all from the brand new blue seat in the south end, on a very, very cold Saturday, 7 January 1995.

(24 November 2025)

We need to make some corrections.

‘I watched the second leg from my seat in the south end of the newly built upper tier.’

This refers to the match on 7th May 1994 (season 1993/94), and I actually was in the south end, but down below, standing (where the Ultras were, yes). My season ticket in the new tier began the following season (1994/95).

As to my recollection of the Koeman–Buyo and Romario–Alkorta plays, it turned out to be accurate, only that Koeman’s free kick had occurred at the beginning of the match (minute 4:31 of the video attached below), whereas Romario’s move (his second cow’s tail on Alkorta) would occur more than half an hour later (minute 37:47).

(La Liga 1993/94 • Real Madrid vs. FC Barcelona | Saturday, 7th May 1994) | Full Match.)³

(25 November 2025)

My dedication to football, like my time in nursery school before it, was a powerful means of revealing certain general truths about life. I not only enjoyed watching, for instance, Cruyff’s Barcelona play, but I also learnt a great deal: from watching it, and from listening to the perspectives of other people watching the same thing.

The match of 7th May 1994 is worth watching in general (for everything that match contains and everything surrounding it), even with image quality as poor as the video I shared yesterday. In particular, it is worth it because that Barcelona team, with all its well-known problems, remains, by far, the most brilliant and beautiful ensemble — the most sophisticated in the best sense of the word — that I have ever seen, both on television and, above all, in person: from the stands.

I even felt a little sad while witnessing (along with my brother, filled with a jubilation I couldn’t fully share) as eleven days later Capello’s Milan demolished them forever in Athens.

Of course, it was perfectly reasonable that some people wanted them to lose. What was alarming, and instructive, was seeing how many people — both rival fans and many of their own supporters — were completely oblivious, and therefore would not truly enjoy what was happening there. One example of this would be Adolfo Aldana as commentator in the aforementioned video, who sneered at the phenomenon by referring to it as piggy in the middle:

‘Los ronditos.’

(14 December 2025)

Traditionally, all teams in the world, especially the biggest ones, have tended to crumble and mysteriously drop in performance when playing at the Bernabéu stadium. The only exception — traditionally, and in general — had been the red-and-white neighbours: only Atlético de Madrid have played with that unparalleled hatred, contempt, lack of respect, such imperious need to defeat Real Madrid by desecrating their own turf. And more than once, they achieved good results at Chamartín in this way — sometimes with resounding victories, sometimes with teams far inferior to those Real Madrid fielded.

Barça, for their part, and beyond the 0-5 with Cruyff as player, had always represented the confirmation of the general rule at the Bernabéu, the opposite phenomenon — suffering defeats even with teams far superior to Real Madrid.

The match on 2 May 2009 ⁴ arrived shrouded in the high probability that it would happen again, and indeed, Real Madrid scored first.

I then glanced at a friend — the host from A week in Dartmouth, Devon, and a sworn enemy and admirer of Real Madrid — who was standing to my left in the bar, watching Higuaín’s joy. He shook his head and said quietly, with foreseen resignation:

‘El Madrid.’

Until that day, Barcelona’s play in Guardiola’s first season as coach had obviously been superior to that of the rest of the teams of their time, but surrounded — in my opinion — by exaggerated praise from most of the media, even the Madrid media — even Real Madrid-supporting journalists. I recall, for instance, an article by Alfredo Relaño postulating that Barça were beauty, taste, delicacy, the violins, while Real Madrid would represent something like dryness of the Castilian plain, virility, balls, epic, the drums of war, and this journalist implied that such a dichotomy was not circumstantial but constitutive of these clubs — their ‘DNA’, said with a word in fashion from then on.

For me, I repeat, the aesthetic appeal of that Barcelona was being greatly overrated, and it was not until their first visit to the Bernabéu that they earned my recognition: although, all the same, at no point did that Barça with Xavi, Iniesta and Messi cease to seem to me — nothing more and nothing less than — an industrial version, more prosaic, efficient and sensible, of the imperfect, crazy and poetic Barcelona of Cruyff — with Guardiola as player.

I recently said that the Barça of the first half of the nineties remained the most brilliant, beautiful and sophisticated football ensemble I had ever seen. Naturally, I said that without forgetting Guardiola and Messi’s Barcelona, ​​whose most perfect and meritorious performance can be seen in the video shared above.

During the first few minutes of that broadcast, faced with an unusual repetition of long passes from the Barcelona defence directly to the forwards, Michael Robinson interprets that they do not signify a failure or betrayal of Guardiola’s philosophy on building the game, but rather a very respectable, refreshing and dangerous response to the opponent’s pressure — the long ball would not merely be the quickest and easiest way of escaping the pressure (and perhaps even scoring…), but also, at the very least, a psychological manoeuvre designed to relieve the excessive pressure from the Madrid players, which was coming from positions too far forward.

Robinson didn’t mention what follows, but such a particular tactic was something that Koeman and Stoichkov had used countless times: and both that specific move and the presence — in general — of Koeman and Stoichkov are reasons why I prefer Cruyff’s Barça to Guardiola’s.

Laudrup alone would be reason enough, as would Romario (during the year of the fourth and last consecutive league title). And we could add to this list of reasons the presence of another unique player like Bakero, always with the number 6 on his back, always feinting to control a teammate’s pass in the centre circle, only to suddenly let the ball pass between his legs, through him, to another teammate,

in the same way as is told in the Annunciation of Mary, where the sunbeam of the angel announcing the birth of Jesus passed through Mary’s body like the sunbeam through glass without breaking it or staining it.

(Fernando Sánchez Dragó on José Tomás.)⁵

(17 December 2025)

Incidentally, and although the issue is complex and could be debated endlessly, I’d like to bring up a couple of events that contradict the supposed ‘DNA’ of ‘violins’ and ‘drums’ inherent to Barça and Real Madrid, respectively.

FC Barcelona, ​​like no other club (except perhaps Ajax), has never had a footballing philosophy, ideology or a style guide. There have been certain inertias or patterns in the way certain teams played, but even those have been gone for years. The British used to be fast, direct and garbled; the Italians tended to defend a lot, well, and with many players, and they liked — as did the Argentinians or the ‘continental’ Dirty Leeds — rough play and dishonourable tactics; Atlético de Madrid often played on the counter-attack and signed South American players (which is why their fans started being called Indians); Real Madrid often played attacking football and signed foreign players of Nordic origin or appearance (which is why Madrid fans started being called Vikings)... But none of these things ever amounted to more than a more or less widespread, more or less intense, and more or less lasting trend. There is no football club or national team that has ever played or tried to play according to the same style, through an ‘identity’ — and least of all, FC Barcelona.

Cruyff’s Barça didn’t exist before Cruyff’s Barça: everyone does know that, but some — Barça fans and non-fans alike — seem to interpret Cruyff’s arrival as coach as if it were some kind of Hegelian revelation of the essence of FC Barcelona: as if FC Barcelona, ​​in some way, had always been the one by Cruyff.

And that is false.

Cruyff’s eccentricities, temerity and daring moves were, in fact, not well received by the board, the fans, or the media outlets sympathetic to the club — I encourage anyone who has doubts to listen to the broadcasts of those matches before the Dream Team won their first league title. Cruyff spent his first two years as manager on the verge of being sacked in the morning.

It was not Barça, on the other hand, but precisely Real Madrid, the first and only football club that dismissed the manager of a team that was leading the league championship at the time, for the sole reason that the team was not playing beautifully: like its rival was (Barcelona by Cruyff), and like just the very own team just a short time ago.

(The surprising dismissal of Antic at Real Madrid when he was a leader)⁶

By mentioning eccentricities, temerity and daring moves, I did not mean to imply that Cruyff was a popinjay. These were genuinely serious eccentricities, serious temerity, and really daring moves.

Take, for example, his decision to play without a centre forward, or with a pure centre forward such as Gary Lineker or Julio Salinas positioned as a winger, hugging the touchline.

And take, above all, those defensive lines composed of only three men, who were often — to top it all off — a defensive trio like:

Eusebio–Koeman–Goikoetxea

displayed with complete confidence and composure since, according to Johan Cruyff’s plan, if the team conceded four goals with such a vulnerable backline, it wouldn’t be a major problem, as they would simply have to score five.

I cannot imagine how this phenomenon could fit into the dichotomy of violins and drums as opposite natures. Because if such a plan on the part of Cruyff doesn’t involve — besides the pursuit of a beautiful ‘violinistic’ play — having balls the size of a cathedral, then, frankly, I don’t know what words like epic or courage even mean.