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Today, FC Barcelona is a global brand, and much of its popularity is due to the fact that the club’s most successful years and that of club legend Lionel Messi - 2006 to 2015 - coincided with the rise in the usage of social media.
We are living in the midst of the social media revolution, an age where online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and more recently Instagram have enabled FC Barcelona to cash in on its success. The returns have been tremendous in terms of fanfare and popularity. We must also never underestimate the power of HD television, and the value it adds to a televisual product such as competitive football.
However, Barcelona have not always been this successful. Throughout their long, 121-year history, the club has seen success hard to come by. Much of it was also due to the Spanish Civil War, the rising fascism in Spain during the 1930s and the power wielded by the fascist dictator Francisco Franco who died in 1975.
The dictator ensured that Barcelona remained mediocre not only in terms of its football, but also by imposing Castilian Spanish on the people of Catalonia, usurping the local Catalan language.
Barcelona have historically been a mediocre club
The bitter reality is that although FC Barcelona were founded in 1899, it took the club 93 years, until 1992, to win its first European Cup. This is in stark contrast to clubs such as Manchester United, who beat the then European heavyweights from Portugal, SL Benfica, 4-1 in the 1968 final.
Barcelona’s great rivals Real Madrid had won the competition a record five times on the trot, doing so from 1955 to 1960, thanks to the exploits of the legendary Alfredo di Stefano.
We can also take the example of Nottingham Forest. It is a club that is struggling in the second tier of English football today, but Forest in 1979 were the toast of European club football. The English side continued their dominance in Europe the next year by successfully defending their title.
In fact, if truth be told, Ajax had won the European Cup thrice before Barcelona could lay their hands on it for the first time. Several other less successful clubs also managed to win the European Cup before Barcelona. Aston Villa won the competition in 1982; Feyenoord in 1970 and Red Star Belgrade in 1991.
Barcelona fans must understand, and it may also be difficult to accept, that there was a time in history when Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Ajax were considered to be bigger clubs than them.
Of course, the Champions League is not, and should not be the only yardstick with which a club’s success ought to be measured. Domestic leagues should also be taken into consideration. But even here, the Blaugrana present a sorry picture.
Barcelona went without winning the La Liga title for over a decade from 1973-74 to 1984-85. What is even more surprising is that out of the club’s 26 La Liga titles, 10 of them came in the 21st century; more specifically, within a span of just 14 years when a certain Lionel Messi has been a part of the club.
So, Barcelona had just won 16 Spanish La Liga titles in the 101 years before the onset of the 21st century.
The Blaugrana have won the Champions League five times so far, and here too Lionel Messi has been a part of four of those victorious campaigns. In 2006, the six-time Ballon d’Or winner was just earning a regular spot in the first team when Barcelona won their first European Cup of the 21st century.
It came after a staggering 14-year wait since the time Johann Cruyff delivered the Catalan giants’ first ever title in the competition in 1992. The three other Champions League titles for Barcelona have come in 2009, 2011 and 2015, where Lionel Messi played a pivotal role in each campaign.
Therefore, we learn two very important things about Barcelona from the above instances.
Firstly, Barcelona have historically been a moderately successful club, with most of their domestic and continental success coming in the 21st century.
Secondly, Lionel Messi is undoubtedly the club’s single most important player. In many ways, Lionel Messi is the Alfredo di Stefano of Barcelona. What Real Madrid had already achieved in the 1960s, Barcelona are only achieving in more recent times.
Lionel Messi's contribution to FC Barcelona goes beyond numbers
It will be readily agreed that domestic league and Champions League are the two most important trophies for a club in terms of competition earnings and prestige.
If we add Barcelona’s 26 Spanish La Liga titles and five UEFA Champions League trophies, we have 31 pieces of major silverware that the Blaugrana have won. Lionel Messi has won 10 La Liga titles and four Champions League titles; with these 14 trophies consituting the most important pieces of silverware in his illustrious club career.
Therefore, in the history of FC Barcelona, Lionel Messi has helped the club win 14 of 31 major trophies. That is an astonishing 45.16% of all major silverware won by the club. Let that sink in for a moment.
In other words or in mathematical parlance, if the success of FC Barcelona is 100%, then Lionel Messi has a meaty contribution of 45.16% in it. The remaining 54.84% of the credit goes to the Kubalas and the Koemans, the other historically significant players for Barcelona.
Of course, it is unfair to credit only Lionel Messi for Barcelona's major trophies, especially when other greats such as Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta or even Carles Puyol have played along side the Argentine. Yet, the staunchest fan of Xavi or Iniesta will agree that even when the Spaniards were at the peak of their powers, Lionel Messi was still a notch or two above them.
However, to add, subtract and find percentages is to appreciate the genius of Lionel Messi in a highly pedantic manner. In many ways, doing this would actually be a massive disservice to the Barcelona legend.
For, how can one put a number to the wide range of solutions he provides for the club, from goal-scoring to assisting? How can one quantify Lionel Messi's an out-of-the-world lobbed-through pass or a sly dribble past two hapless defenders?
The essence of Lionel Messi is that he demands you to simply watch him play. It is almost obnoxious to use statistics to justify and quantify his efficacy or contribution to the team.
Every time Lionel Messi touches the ball, we feel a twinge of excitement. There is almost always an expectation from us viewers to see him do something completely outrageous with the ball. No other player in the world can make us feel that level of excitement and happiness.
Why then are Barcelona under so much pressure to win trophies?
Today, FC Barcelona are in a situation where one year without a Champions League or the Spanish League is considered catastrophic.
The club is under pressure to win trophies by the boatload today in order to continue its recent trend of success. The Catalan giants have always found success in short intermittent bursts, even if they have always tried their best to retain their consistency over the years.
For example, Barcelona reached the 1986 European Cup final but lost to Steaua București, a Romanian club who are nowhere near the top level of European football today. Six years later in 1992, Barcelona again reached the final, this time beating Sampdoria 1-0 in extra time. However, two years later, despite reaching the final again, Barcelona were whipped 4-0 by Italian giants AC Milan.
With the arrival of Pep Guardiola in 2008, Barcelona found success very quickly and consistently. They won both the Champions League finals they reached under him, and were domestic champions throughout his tenure barring one season. Perhaps no other manager has transformed the fortunes of a football club so completely in such short notice as Guardiola.
Since then, successive Barcelona managers have only tweaked and made slight adjustments, but the core of Pep Guardiola’s team remained until 2015. Many of his chosen players feature for Barcelona even today. Sergio Busquets and Gerard Pique, both of whom Guardiola brought in, are still key players for FC Barcelona.
In the cold, hard competitive world of football, it is important to continue winning in order to remain relevant. We only have to look at Arsenal. Once a powerhouse of English football, and even in European football, the club’s stature has fallen massively over the last decade.
The decline of AC Milan and Manchester United are even more worrisome. This is primarily because of all these big clubs’ inability to win the two most important trophies in football – the domestic league and the Champions League.
Therefore, in order to land lucrative sponsorship deals and to delve into newer markets, a club such as FC Barcelona must continue winning and aiming for the top prizes in the sport. It is a matter of business, perhaps even more so than football. A club needs money to run, and to run well it needs more money still.
This is why Lionel Messi is angry, for he knows that Barcelona do not have the adequate quality to win the Champions League this August. In truth, Lionel Messi knew that ever since the departure of Neymar, and with the underwhelming signings the club has made since, winning the European Cup has always been out of the question.
Lionel Messi and Barcelona's success are synonymous with each other
Lionel Messi may be the maker of the modern Barcelona, but he can only do so much.
Even at 33 years of age, his individual prowess is still the difference between Barcelona's success and defeat on the field. The rise of Lionel Messi and FC Barcelona has been even more potent because their most triumphant years have coincided with the rise of social media and HD television.
This is another reason why FC Barcelona should never hurt or disrespect Lionel Messi, because no other player or employee has been so instrumental to a football club or an institution’s success than Argentine has for the Catalan giants.
Lionel Messi has always been the Blaugrana's talisman. Barcelona may call themselves ‘more than a club’. But it is Lionel Messi who has been 'més que un jugador', which in English translates to 'more than just a player'.
