Tito Vilanova: Player, Coach, Survivor - An ode to FC Barcelona's former coach

“Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that”

Bill Shankly , former Liverpool FC manager

Bill Shankly said this in an interview once, half jokingly. Football, for the everyday fan, is as simple as a sport. Die-hard fans though will agree with this quote readily, because for them, it is everything.

Life and death. A phrase used in many movies and novels alike, as is mentioned above; it’s quite the dialogue enhancer, isn’t it? Life and death. This article, I hope, will help you understand that when life does come into the question, football and everything becomes secondary. And a major statement regarding this topic to the media will be – transfer news and management appointments are included in those secondary aspects!

Football, like any other sport, is full of ups and downs. Victory and defeat come hand in hand, the victory cherished and the defeat painfully remembered. Football is all about creating chances and taking them well, and putting the ball into the net; winning your team the match is the best thing that can happen to a player.

Teams often ride on the chances created by their mid-fielders and the chances taken by their strikers. Strikers are often the poster boys of their respective teams and sometimes, mid-fielders are the most famous. Defenders are great, yet most of the times they aren’t remembered just as fondly.

There is one more important entity. This entity is one which guides and nurtures the team, like a captain steering a ship through a sea full of obstacles – the manager. A manager is like the north star- a symbol, a model of guidance and hope. Managers often have it the hardest in a football team. They are expected to win every match, make sure players get enough time on the pitch, keep the owners happy and finally answer to the fans in times of defeat.

Being a manager isn’t a simple task; it is a thankless job. Respect is paid to men who have achieved many great things over long periods of time, consistently. ‘Regular’ men, as they say, are those who have achieved only small things. But whether they achieve anything or not, football managers are not ‘regular’ men, they are not your average Tom, Dick and Harry.

These are men who deserve every accolade they can get, because day in and day out, they are the ones administering the team, training the team, and travelling everywhere with the team. They are the ones who live and breathe for the team, they are the greatest fans. I pay my respect to a similar man in this article, a man whom I admire and respect. He goes by the name of Francesc “Tito” Vilanova i Bayó. Or simply, Tito Vilanova.

Tito grew up in the Spanish town of Girona, in Catalonia. He started out as a youth player at FC Barcelona in the early 1980s, as a central mid-fielder. Unable to break through the first team, he joined various Spanish teams over the course of a 13-year long career – netting a total of 26 goals in 302 matches.

After a career as a mildly successful player, he decided to set foot in the managerial world. His first stint as a manager was in the year 2002, when he took over tercera division team FC Palafrugell. After that he started working as a technical director at Terrassa FC. He was later appointed assistant manager at FC Barcelona B, under manager Pep Guardiola, with the club in the fourth level. His time with Guardiola, both with Barcelona B and Barcelona, will forever be remembered.

In the summer of 2008, after helping Barcelona B gain promotion to the second division, he was appointed as the assistant manager to Pep Guardiola (the manager) of FC Barcelona. They replaced the Dutch duo Frank Rijkaard and Johan Neeskens in their respective posts.

What followed later were four of the most successful years for Barcelona as they achieved glory, both domestic and in Europe – winning a total of 14 trophies. However, Pep Guardiola quit at the end of his 4-year tenure at the club in 2012, and rightfully replacing him was his partner in crime – Tito Vilanova.

When Pep Guardiola left last season, it was at the end of a period of heartbreak — two matches that crushed the team’s Champions League hopes, along with one that crushed its La Liga hopes. That is life, sadly. After an extended period of such unfettered joy, the announcement came like a bang.

Some wept at the news of Guardiola’s exit. Others wondered what was next. But tears had become such a part of this club’s recent history that even as people wept, it seemed part of the status quo; the fans were used to it.

We forget that before that was a staggering, extraordinary, beautiful match at home against Getafe, that found the club playing a kind of football that had been rarely seen that season. Triumph and pain, together.

Success was achieved, hearts won over, history made. Guardiola was the architect, Vilanova the assistant.

Tito Vilanova, ‘the man succeeding Guardiola’. That is a phrase I will never forget. When the news of his appointment came, many fans didn’t know what to expect; whether he would win or not was one aspect of that thought, but another was whether he was ready, whether his body could take the rigours. There had been news of the previous surgery on his salivary glands, and when questioned, the club said his health was at a 100%, without which he wouldn’t have taken the job.

His appointment was criticized, and the decision of the club questioned. He answered it in style. His team started the La Liga like a team possessed. They dominated – hammering and devastating every team that came their way, and they didn’t drop points, going undefeated till half of the campaign had elapsed. Then came the news of his cancer relapse, and like Abidal’s, his was growing quickly and needed immediate attention.

For me, it feels as if life was saying that nothing can bring us that much joy and not be leavened with pain. That is the balance. That is how it is Supposed To Be. But I don’t buy that. Why can’t life bring you chocolates and ice cream, and then gift you a Ferrari, without a few blows to go with it?

When Abidal was diagnosed, I though I would readily give everything back — the trophies, the accolades, the reams of spittle produced by the catastrophic gibbering of the world’s press — if Abidal could be home with his family, safe and sound and free of the grim spectre that stalked him. I make the same wish for Tito Vilanova.

It’s safe to say that even the most die-hard hater of this club feels some compassion, some empathy at the body blows that keep hitting this group. Karim Benzema dedicated his French Footballer of the Year trophy to Abidal. Real Madrid almost immediately posted well wishes for Tito Vilanova. Some would call these classy gestures, but I don’t. We forget sometimes, in our frenzy of dislike that at the end of it all, we are all human beings, all destined for the same fate.

Along the path, we search for things that will bring us joy, and stave off darkness. But we are all human, and that humanity finds its ultimate voice in the instant cessation of all hostilities when life comes calling. We are human, so we do what humans do when life does what it does, which is comfort and seek comfort. It is, after all, the most ‘humane thing’ to do.

Then word came down from team doctors that Eric Abidal got the okay to start training with the team again, with an aim at playing with the club again by the end of the year. He won. We could look at Life and say “Nice try. You aren’t getting this one, he’s a fighter, he’s a winner.” And then came the sad news about Vilanova.

No one can ever doubt his love for football, his club, and his players. And now, unwillingly, he has to stop doing what he loves and take a step away from whom he loves and concentrate on his treatment. Coaching at the highest level and cancer treatment do not get along well. Football demands a lot; demands that can consume all your resources, and those resources are needed by your body to win a monumental battle against cancer.

Instead of thinking about how his replacement will do, or how it will affect the future of the players, respect and solidarity should be shown to this man, who is only 44 years old, but has had to deal with the burden of fighting a malignant cancer, a cancer he thought he had dominated earlier.

Messages of support arrived from all over the world. Real Madrid almost instantaneously tweeted their regards. Respects were paid, friends made. The fact that the whole football fraternity came together in support over this sad news was commendable.

Forget about the future, for now a life is at stake. As I said earlier, when it comes to life, football and everything else is secondary.

At least for now, all that we can do, which isn’t much even as it is everything, is send positive thoughts the way of Vilanova and the club, and hope. Because sometimes, hope is all that we have.

Let’s think of him as a winner, a fighter, an individual who will win this battle. Sorrow and despair are demoralizing, but not everlasting.

Anims Tito, buena suerte y adiós (goodbye Tito and good luck).