Comparing the abilities and impact of players from different eras is notoriously, maybe impossibly, difficult, though that hasn’t stopped thousands of journalists, pundits and barroom thinkers having a go. The speed and athleticism of the modern game would leave many past greats puffing and blowing long before half-time, while some modern players would wilt under the physical challenge of previous eras. The equipment, character and even some of the rules of the game have changed.
The current Barca line-up is arguably the greatest ever club side assembled and one of their great achievements is that, while there are undoubtedly wonderful individual talents, they are above all a team, a fluid machine that is more than the sum of its parts. Getting your FC Barcelona ticket to see this current team in action would be a treat for any soccer fan.
There’s something more though to wearing the blue and red of Barcelona, colours which, depending on who you believe, may celebrate the French revolution, the founder’s Swiss team, or an English public school.
To play for Barca is to represent not just a club, but also a city, a region and a would-be nation – many clubs may claim it, but Barca’s, ‘mes que un club’ motto really means something.
Here then is an attempt to weigh skill, influence, charisma, heroism and achievement to do the impossible: name Barcelona’s top 10 players. Let the arguments begin.
1 – Joan Gamper
A Swiss amateur who played only 48 times for Barcelona – although notching an impressive 100 plus goals in a game that was very different from today’s – is here for more than his playing power.
Without Joan Gamper, there would be no FC Barcelona. He was born Hans-Max Gamper in Switzerland and from a young age showed a love of sports that was to make him a serial football club founder.
He was also an open-minded internationalist, when in France he joined in with the locals, playing rugby union for Lyon’s side. When family business took him to Catalonia, he fell in love with Barcelona – he learned the language and changed his name to its Catalan form – and was soon playing football, an unfamiliar sport to the locals, with local expats.
He also helped run a sporting magazine, Los Deportes, and on October 22, 1899 took out an ad looking for fellow football enthusiasts to form a club. A month later, FC Barcelona was formed from a motley collection of British, Swiss and local footballers, with Gamper the club captain and member of the board.
For the first five years, he turned out as a player, helping his new side win their first trophy, the 1900-01 Copa Mayaca (essentially, the Catalan championship) and make it to their first national final, 1902’s Copa del Rey loss to Club Vizcaya.
Gamper’s service to Barca didn’t end when he hung up his boots though. In 1908, with the young club on the verge of bankruptcy, he stepped in as president and helped drum up enough cash from local businesses to keep them going. He ended up serving five separate stints in the chair, a total of 25 years leading the club he founded.
Gamper helped the club put down roots. He found Barca their first stadium, the 6,000 capacity Carrer Industria, then Les Corts, which would eventually flower to a 60,000 seater. He recruited more members, better players and a first English manager, Jack Greenwell, who brought new success as Barca enjoyed its first golden age.
Gamper’s presidencies and life ended in tragedy. The club’s association with Catalan nationalism was already strong, and when, in 1925, fans booed the Spanish national anthem and cheered the British one, Spanish dictator Primo de Rivera had an excuse to clamp down on the club, closing the ground for six months. Personal and financial problems of his own added to Gamper’s misery and he took his own life on July 30, 1930.
It is to this extraordinary man that we owe Barca. He also co-founded FC Zürich and was an important figure in the birth of FC Basel. A street in Barcelona bears his name and a pre-season trophy in his honour celebrates his club legacy.
Many other players in Barca’s history have been better than Gamper, none has been more important.
2 – Paulino Alcántara Riestrá
Internationalism runs alongside proud Catalan nationalism in Barca’s blue and red blood, English, Swiss, Brazilians and Dutch players have been accepted into the Barca nation and returned the love. Gary Lineker and Johan Cruyff both named sons after the Catalan national saint, George, or Jordi.
But Paulino Alcantara was even more of a pioneer, the first from his country, the Philippines, and the first from Asia to represent a European side. But he’s on the list for far more than just tokenism: he remains the club’s youngest ever player and scorer and the record goalscorer in Barca’s history with 369 goals in his 357 games.
Alcántara was born in the Philippines, then a Spanish colony, to an army officer and a local mother. Just as Joan Gamper was starting a new local football club, Alcántara’s family arrived in the Catalan capital.
Our number one player actually discovered our number two, plucking him from under the wing of local rivals, FC Galeno. It was a smart move that paid swift dividends. Alcántara made his debut aged just 15 years, 4 months and 18 days on February 25, 1912. He scored a hattrick in a 9-0 win.
The next year, he won his first championship and Copa del Rey, adding a second Campionat de Catalunya in 1916.
However, this fledgling star was still a young man, and when his parents returned to the Philippines, young Paulino went with them. He studied to become a doctor, but still had time to win two national titles with Bohemian Sporting Club and rack up some international caps too.
Barca had struggled in their star’s absence, but it took a serious illness to bring him back to Spain against the wishes of his parents. Alcántara, rather drastically, refused to take his malaria medication until he was allowed back and, in the end, got his way.
His new manager, Jack Greenwell, decided to switch him to the defence, but it didn’t work out and Los Socios showed the first stirrings of fan power with their successful campaign to get him back into the forward line.
Playing Alcántara upfront with Emilio Sagi Liñán proved a deadly combination that helped usher in Barca’s first golden age. Their hands were rarely pried off the Catalan championship trophy and they won the Copa del Rey in 1920, 1922, 1925 and 1926 too.
When he retired, in 1927, to work as a doctor – an occasion marked with a Barca v Spain testimonial – Alcantara could boast 10 championships and five Copa del Reys won with Barcelona.
He earned the nickname “El Rompe Redes” or “Trencaxarxes”, which means ‘the net breaker’ for his powerful shot, which once propelled a badly positioned police officer into the net along with the ball. His scoring record looks safe, at least for now.
3 – César Rodríguez
Usually known just as Cesar, or rather unkindly El Pelucas or Wigman because of his bald head, this all-round striker’s astounding scoring record was broken just last year by Leo Messi.
Cesar’s 223 goals from 353 games sees him still sitting at number five in the all time La Liga top scorer’s chart. He was particularly renowned for the power of his heading.
Born in 1920 in Leon, Cesar’s early career was hampered by World War II. He signed for Barca in 1939 but was loaned out while on military service.
He was a success, even in military fatigues, and returned to Barca with a good scoring pedigree in the lower league. And, once back in red and blue, he started as he meant to go on, scoring 24 goals in 15 games on the way to his first La Liga title.
His great skill was timing. Scoring from corners with late runs was a speciality and in his time with the club he was superbly consistent, netting more than 10 goals in 11 seasons and topping 20 in three as he topped the club scoring charts for seven seasons from 1944-1951.
He was a mainstay of one of Barca’s golden ages. The team of five trophies as they were known, rose above the troubles of their country, to take the La Liga title, the Copa del Generalissimo (now the Copa del Rey), the Copa Latina, the Copa Eva Duarte, and the Copa Martini Rossi. Cesar netted in the Spanish cup final and the Latin Cup win over Nice.
He was 35 when he left Barca and 40 when he finally retired, a much-loved hero of the fans.
“Cesar is the most modest of players, but a maestro – the most complete player and a real one off,” one journalist wrote.
A coaching career couldn’t match the heights of his playing days, and his short spell at the Nou Camp was unhappy, in an unhappy era for the club.
It’s as the bald master of the penalty area that Barca fans will remember their Cesar.
4 – Carles Rexach i Cerdà
Rexach played for Barcelona in three decades, and is representative of the club’s commitment to bringing up players in the right way that started with Johan Cruyff’s arrival in 1973.
A Catalan by birth, Charly – as he was called – was signed up by Barca by the time was 12.
The 1960s weren’t a great time for Barca, but Rexach’s dedication and loyalty saw him through the bad times and into the golden age. He made his debut in 1965 and won the Fairs cup in 1966.
He wasn’t to win a domestic trophy though until 1968, when Barca beat Real in the Copa del Generalissimo. That win was all the sweeter for being staged in the Bernabeu, with General Franco in the crowd and Barca under the guidance of a former Civil War Republican pilot, Salvador Artigas.
By 1971, Rexach was scoring enough goals to top the league charts, with 17 from 29 starts.
But it was the arrival of Johan Cruyff that sparked Rexach and the team into life and the trophies started to arrive again.
A successful partner for Cruyff, who provided all the assists in his famous European Cup hat trick against Feyenoord, fans loved his dribbling and vision, but sometimes criticised his laid-back style.
He played 656 times in the red and blue, retiring in 1981 with 197 goals to his name.
After hanging up his boots, he continued to serve his local club. He was Cruyff’s assistant during the Dream Team years, stepping up twice as caretaker manager.
His playing career alone should guarantee him a place in Barca history, but he still had more to give. This is the man who discovered Lionel Messi.
5 – Johan Cruyff
If Gamper founded FC Barcelona, then Cruyff created the modern giant in his image, serving the club as both inspirational player and manager and as a guiding philosopher whose vision came to wonderful fruition under Pep Guardiola.
A constant in the ‘best ever’ lists, the Dutchman won three Ballon d’Ors as Europe’s best player, a record until Leo Messi took his fourth in 2012.
Cruyff was a product of Ajax of Amsterdam and their coach Rinus Michels, who perfected the fluid ‘total football’ that made his side masters of the continent with three consecutive European cups and his country, so nearly, masters of the world.
He started in a struggling Ajax side, making his debut in 1964, but by the time he left for the Nou Camp in 1973, he had won six league titles, four national cups and those three European crowns.
Barca were in the doldrums, with no La Liga title since 1960, but the Dutch maestro sparked them into life. The last two of his three Ballon D’Ors were won in the red and blue in 1973 and 1974.
He won the title in his first season. Nicknamed The Flack by his adoring fans, his intelligence, speed and technical skill lit up the Spanish league, not least in the famous 0-5 victory over Real in the Bernabeu on February 17, 1974.
Another high point in his time on the pitch for Barca was the ‘ghost goal’ or ‘impossible goal’. Sadly, there is little high quality footage of the mythical moment when Cruyff seemed to float at the far post while back heeling the ball past Athletico Madrid’s baffled keeper.
He left the club in 1978, with one La Liga title and one Copa del Rey.
And, if Barca loved Cruyff, the sometimes-fiery Dutchman loved them right back, forging a relationship with the club and Catalonia that went well beyond the field of play. His son Jordi is named after the Catalan national saint and he’s gone on to manage the Catalan national team. Telling the fans that he’d turned down Real Madrid because of their association with Franco when he joined for a world record fee didn’t hurt either.
But it was in his playing afterlife that he made arguably his greatest contribution at the Nou Camp.
A decade after he left for a lucrative stint in American football and a final Dutch hoorah, he came back as manager. He stayed at the Nou Camp until 1996, winning a then record 11 trophies including four La Ligas, and, finally, the European cup.
Perhaps more importantly, Cruyff, a deep thinker on the game, turned total football into tiki-taka and nurtured the talents of one Pep Guardiola, sowing the seeds of future success.
6 – Hristo Stoichkov
One of the stars of Cruyff’s ‘Dream Team’ was the outrageously gifted and sometimes outrageously behaved Bulgarian, Hristo Stoichkov.
Sometimes charismatic can be shorthand for pain in the neck, and with Stoichkov it was a close run thing, if he hadn’t had the talent to dominate and win games he would have been a short-lived liability.
At his previous club CSKA Sofia, he’d been banned for life after an on pitch fight. Thankfully, an appeal reduced it to just a month out. Perhaps the Bulgarian authorities knew what a great player they had on their hands; he would go on to lead his country to unimagined levels of international success.
He announced his arrival in the Spanish league by earning a two-month ban for stamping on a referee’s foot. Despite the enforced rest, he still ended the season with 14 goals in the league and six in the Cup Winners Cup.
Stoichkov couldn’t have been any more different from his immediate predecessor in the front line, mild-mannered model pro Gary Lineker, but the fans took to both because both took to the club so completely.
As the Barcelona website puts it with somewhat diplomatic understatement
He was a charismatic person both on and off the pitch, and sincerely felt the Barcelona colours, which he was always ready to bravely and intensely defend.
On the pitch, he was a speedy left-winger with an unrivalled eye for goal who was never afraid to try the unpredictable. He loved committing keepers before smashing home the ball. His Spanish fans dubbed him El Pistolero, the gunslinger.
With Cruyff at the helm and Stoichkov and Romario supplying the goals, the Dream Team was garlanded with honours. Hristo left the Nou Camp with the good wishes of his fans ringing in his ears and five league titles, a Copa del Rey, European Super Cup and European Cup medals amongst his haul.
He blossomed under the rule of the Dutchman, who came from a footballing culture that’s famous for cherishing the individuality and opinions of its players. Whilst a Barca player he was also a Ballon D’Or winner and a World Cup golden boot.
In his time at Barca he seldom dropped below the 20 goal-a-season mark and was genuinely one of the best players in the world of his era.
Middle age hasn’t calmed that temper though; he was in the news last year for allegedly assaulting a journalist. Stoichkov was a player opponents hated and fans loved with the same passion he showed for his team.
7 – Andoni Zubizarreta
All great teams are built on solid foundations, and Cruyff’s Dream Team was no exception. For the unpredictable flair of the likes of Stoichkov to flourish there needed to be a strong backbone.
Zubizarreta provided that solidity from 1986 to 1994, playing 490 times for the club he joined after a successful spell with Athletic Bilbao. Zubi’s 622 top-flight appearances in Spain remain a record, and his record of 126 international caps has only recently been overhauled by another keeper, Iker Casillas.
Zubi is a Basque, born in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Álava, where he started his playing career with Deportivo Alavés, before the regional giants Athletic Bilbao, spotted him and picked him up.
He was only 19 when he first appeared between the sticks in La Liga but was soon an established first team choice. His calm presence was part of Bilbao’s greatest ever side, winning them two consecutive Spanish titles, one of them a double.
Soon Zubi was the Spanish team’s first choice keeper too, and when Barca moved to pick up the outstanding Spanish keeper of his era, they had to lay out a record fee of around €1.7 million.
The step up didn’t phase the 6 foot 2 keeper and he was soon a fixture with his new side as they charged on to win four La Ligas on the trot. Zubi missed only four games in those incredible four seasons.
It’s harder to sing the praises of keepers; their work is so often measured in mistakes. Zubizarreta though was renowned for his level-headedness and seemingly innate sense of positioning.
He was one of the heroes of the 1992 European Cup final win over Sampdoria. Ronald Koeman may have smashed the spectacular winner, but his side wouldn’t have made it to extra time without the big Basque, one save from Lombardo in particular won praise from pundits. “A series of miraculous, decisive interventions,” as the Barca website puts it.
His calm made him a natural as club captain and after leaving Barca for Valencia Zubi came home again. He has been the technical director of professional football at the Nou Camp since 2010 and is often seen representing his club with the same calm assurance that has put him in this list.
8 – Ronaldinho
In some ways, Ronaldinho was the runners up prize, but what a prize. Joan Laporta had promised to sign David Beckham, but the Englishman left Old Trafford for hated rivals Real Madrid and so Ronaldinho came to the top of the shopping list.
Five years later he left with more than 200 Barca appearances, 94 goals, two La Liga titles, a couple of Supercopas and, crucially, a Champions League, the first of the team’s fantastic modern run in the competition.
The modern Barca is all about producing players who seem to have the Brazilian knack of playing wonderful, skilful, joyful football naturally.
Ronaldinho was the real thing, learning his skills on the beaches of Brazil and in games of the mini game Futsal and using football as a way to escape family poverty.
His first title came in his second season, along with the FIFA World Player of the Year award. He added a second consecutive FIFA individual crown in 2005, along with the European Ballon D’Or.
Ronaldinho is a superstar of the cash crazy era of modern football, his second contract with Barca included an £85million release fee.
Above all, though, he was an entertainer. The love of the red and blue fans might be taken for granted, but to receive a standing ovation from the home fans in the Bernabeu, while scoring twice against their team is something special.
But while Barca could compete on the domestic front, and were starting to match the Galactico spending of Real, Los Blancos were undoubtedly kings on the European stage. In 2006, Ronaldinho helped challenge that dominance when his side – with Deco and Eto’o also starring – beat Arsenal in the Champions League final in Paris. It completed a double with the La Liga title, and the Brazilian playmaker weighed in with 26 goals in all competitions and the season’s Champions League player of the year award.
Take a trip to YouTube to catch some of Ronaldinho’s greatest hits (and there are lots), but his own personal favourite goal was an overhead kick against Villarreal in 2006.
He shone in varying degrees for all his clubs, he couldn’t help but do so, but took the trouble to write to Barca fans calling his five years at the Nou Camp as his best. He even took out Spanish citizenship.
9 – Carles Puyol
His unruly hair is a reassuring sight at the back for Barca fans, and with more than 500 appearances already in the bag, his contract has just been extended to 2016. He is the soul of the modern Barcelona revolution.
Puyol has captained the side through their greatest era and notched up 18 winners medals. As an international, he has a European Championships and World Cup winner’s medal.
He was never destined for this, not according to his parents at least, who encouraged him to stick to his school work. But, Carles had other ideas, and when a shoulder injury stopped him playing in goal, he switched to striker before the experts at Barca’s youth factory, La Masia, turned him first into a defensive midfielder and finally a right back.
He made his first team debut in 1999 under Louis van Gaal, who decided to switch him to the position with which he’s most associated, centre back.
Puyol stepped up to the captaincy in 2004, the start of the modern golden age. In the glorious 2005-6 season when the club won both La Liga and the Champions League, he played 52 games, leading from the back all the way through.
The milestones start to come thick and fast after that. His 400th appearance was in 228, his 500th in 2010. His unbeaten run of 56 appearances in that period was also a record.
When Barca turned the away leg of 2008-09’s El Classico into a humiliating lesson in football for Real, who should pop up with a rare goal? Carles.
He may not be the most technically gifted player, but he bleeds blue and red.
This is how Carles puts it: “the team who every Catalan child wants to play for… I am living the dream playing football for Barça and it is my dream to retire playing here.”
10 – Xavi
Faced with a team filled with so many gifted individuals how do you choose just one or two? It was a decision in the inaugural Fifa Ballon D’Or when three Barca players occupied the top three places, Andres Iniesta won that vote over Xavi Hernandez by less than 1%.
Xavi wins out over his midfield twin this time though.
Another product of La Masia Xavi was signed up as an 11-year-old and was only 18 when he was deemed old enough to play in the first team. Louis van Gaal soon realised what he had on his hands and made Xavi a regular in the 1999 title winning side. Outsiders agreed too, naming him the La Liga Breakthrough Player of the Year.
By 2004-05 he was the club vice captain in another title winning side. In 2005, he was the league’s Spanish Player of the Year.
Amid the blizzard of trophies that was to follow, Xavi was at the heart of it all. Playing with his head up, always alert to possibilities and with a wonderful eye for a pass, he is tiki-taka personified. When Barca humiliated Real at home, Xavi created four of the six goals.
Here’s what one journalist makes of him:
Quite simply the best midfielder of modern era. World class for several years now, it is the past three seasons in particular where the 30-year-old has been untouchable. Xavi’s passing is up there with Michel Platini, he creates countless goals with genius through balls while virtually never relinquishing possession.
It’s all down to vision and space and Xavi seems to have a natural gift for it. His inspiration is Paul Scholes of Manchester United, whose honours he has long since eclipsed.
He is still contracted to Barca until 2014 and will undoubtedly retire as one of the all time greats with few peers and few who will ever match his medals haul.
11 – Lionel Messi
This choice was easy. Leo Messi is one of the greatest players of all time, and frighteningly, he’s won four consecutive FIFA Ballons d’Or five La Ligas, two Copas del Rey, five Supercopas de España, three Champions Leagues, two Super Cups and two Club World Cups and he’s only 26.
So dominant is Messi that any fixture against his team is discussed in terms of how to stop the diminutive Argentinean striker.
It’s actually his lack of stature that brought him to Barcelona. As you would imagine, he was climbing up the youth ranks with great success in his home country, but his local side River Plate weren’t willing to stump up for growth hormone treatment and in stepped Carles Rexach with a contract on a napkin.
Few footballers have fulfilled their potential so completely and so uncontroversially as Messi has. His great rival from Real, Cristiano Ronaldo wins enormous praise for his playing abilities, but has as many detractors as he has fans. No-one seems to have a bad word to say about Messi.
He comes from humble stock, his father was a steel worker and his mother a cleaner, with Italian roots, and now there is a release cause in his new Barca contract for £210million.
Perhaps the secret of maintaining his popularity despite such envy-inducing wealth is this:
I have changed nothing, my style of play is still that of a child. I know that above all it is my job and that I should approach it in another way, but one must not lose sight of the fact that football is a game. It is imperative one plays to amuse oneself, to be happy. That is what children do and I do the same thing.
And, this is what his former manager, Pep Guardiola said:
Put in the superlatives yourselves, I’m running out. It’s already been a while now that he has been outstanding. He’s more than decisive in every way. That he’s capable of doing everything that he does at his age is something impressive, that doesn’t make any sense.
Messi will remain the first name on this list for generations to come, it is quite possible he will never been matched.