Barca and Bobby

It is tes­ta­ment to his achieve­ments in his career that sad­ness at the death of Bobby Rob­son will reach far beyond the bound­aries of his beloved North-East or even the shores of Great Britain. Robson’s skills as a player and man­ager as well as his gen­tle and wel­com­ing man­ner, meant he was respected and much loved across the foot­balling world.

This is def­i­nitely the case with Barcelona, with whom Rob­son had a suc­cess­ful two year spell in the mid 1990s. Before mov­ing to Cat­alo­nia Rob­son was man­ager of FC Porto where, with a cer­tain Jose Mour­inho as his right hand man, he won a Por­tuguese Cup and suc­ces­sive league titles.

Then in the sum­mer of 1996 a phone call from Barca vice-president Joan Gas­part regard­ing Luis Figo led to Rob­son mov­ing to the Nou Camp with Mour­inho again as his assis­tant. He was suc­ceed­ing Johan Cruyff, a true Barca leg­end, who had guided the Barca ‘dream team’ to Euro­pean Cup suc­cess in 1992. The pres­sure was on Robson.

Hav­ing been told by Black­burn that Alan Shearer wasn’t for sale one of Robson’s first actions at Barcelona was to per­suade pres­i­dent Josep Luis Nunez to part with upward of $20 mil­lion to sign 20-year-old Brazil­ian striker Ronaldo from his for­mer club PSV Eindhoven.

It was a huge gam­ble by Rob­son and one that put his rep­u­ta­tion on the line. But one of Robson’s skills was get­ting the max­i­mum out of his play­ers. His man-management was sec­ond to none and his gam­ble on Ronaldo proved to be a mas­ter­stroke as the striker upset the Span­ish foot­ball odds and went on to grab 45 goals in 48 starts dur­ing the 1996–97 season.

Not that Robson’s skill was restricted to young play­ers. He knew that big name play­ers needed to be care­fully man­aged. In an inter­view while at New­cas­tle United Rob­son recalled his time at Barca:

“To have man­aged big play­ers like Ronaldo, Guardi­ola, De La Pena and Figo you have to have tremen­dous knowl­edge, courage, guile and self-confidence. If you don’t they will find you out.”

That year Barca beat Atletico Madrid to lift the Span­ish Super Cup and defeated Real Betis 3–2 to lift the Copa Del Rey. Rob­son added a third tro­phy to the cab­i­net when Barca beat Paris St-Germain 1–0 to lift the Euro­pean Cup Win­ners’ Cup.

But despite the suc­cess Rob­son was always seen as an interim coach while the club waited for Louis Van Gaal to become avail­able. When the Dutch­man moved to Barca in the sum­mer of 1997 Bobby Rob­son moved upstairs to become tech­ni­cal director.

Fur­ther suc­cess would fol­low in 1997–98 as they won the Span­ish League and Cup dou­ble. But in the sum­mer of 1998 the lure of Robson’s for­mer club PSV proved too much to resist and he returned to Holland.

Despite his short tenure in Spain the Barca fans quickly took Rob­son to their hearts, in par­tic­u­lar because of the way he guided and nur­tured a young Ronaldo to such heights. We can only won­der what he would have achieved had he stayed on for longer.

But  for now I am sure Barca fans will join the rest of the foot­balling world in mourn­ing the pass­ing of a true foot­balling leg­end, whether he played for or man­aged a side you sup­port or not.

R.I.P. Bobby, foot­ball is much the poorer with­out you.