Interview with former FC Barcelona player and FCB Escola coach Josep Moratalla

The FC Barcelona style of play is the one that is known world over, but was not taught in India until now. FC Barcelona have started a football camp in association with Conscient Football. It is here in Delhi that we, from Sportskeeda team, managed to catch up with former FC Barcelona player and FCB Escola coach Josep Moratalla, where he talks about FC Barcelona, Indian youth and their plans for the country.

Josep Moratalla in his playing days.

In India, for a long time, there has been a long ball style of play. How long will it take to change that?

We have detected that there are other ideas, and there is another way of playing football. Long passing is preferred. They are all valid ideas, but we apply our ideas and our ethos which is passing with great speed, but basically along the ground and that is what we are trying to apply over here. When you ask me about the time it would take, one week is not enough time for them to know about the ideas of our way and both Conscient Football and FC Barcelona know this very clearly. We plan to have these camps in different cities during the course of this one year, and later on there may be an establishment of Barcelona which will have continuity in the work. We will be able to see the yield in a time period of three years.

You talked about training the coaches, so how important are those people for keeping up the “Barca style of play?”

It is very important. Two days before we started working on the field, we were working with the coaches so that they know our methodology and the idea of the future when we create the school for this. One director will come for the establishment of the school which will be in association with Conscient, and he will stay over here and the rest of the coaches will be from here (India).

When Barcelona plays, they pass it around very swiftly and smoothly. Even in the box, they play fancy, but when the time comes, they are able to score. In India, there isn’t much of that “killer punch” in front of the goal. So is it something that can be taught or it comes naturally?

Of course it can be taught. It is the conclusion of our play, and we cannot forget it. In our swift play, we cannot forget our objective to score goals.

You talk about wanting to implement the short passing style of play, and you want to see India play the Barca way.

We don’t only have short passes, we also combine short passes with the long ball. There has to be a combination of both.

All this is good, but the conditions of the playing surfaces in India isn’t very good. So it doesn’t really allow that much of short passing.

The playing field always helps better football. I was a professional footballer in the 80′s and I have played with FC Barcelona for a long time, and in my time, the grounds were of mud, very irregular and bouncy. Now in Catalan, all the fields are of artificial turf so the training becomes better and better.

Finally, FCB has an academy in Korea (South), so can you compare the Indian kids in this camp to the Korean ones?

No. We cannot, because this school has been there for a few years and they have been studying the way of playing. It is not the same thing, the only thing they have done is attach the FC Barcelona name to their academy and that their director is from FC Barcelona.

Thank you Josep for taking the time out and giving us the interview.

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