This is a translation from Spanish of an article written by Joan Domènech & Marcos López for El Periodico – Barcelona – Saturday Nov 18 2017
The Rondo, the language of Barça
This is presented for educational purposes only
José Mari Bakero and Guillermo Amor have contemplated the birth and the implementation of the rondo as a sign of Barcelona’s identity. Exdisciples of Johan Cruyff and members of the original Dream Team in 1988, The ones now most responsable for the Cantera, 30 years later, the validity of the idea that they started to practice.
Bakero: For me, the rondo represents a change in the way to train football. I came from Real Sociedad, where we only did it as entertainment, for fun. And here, the rondo was the primary tool of training in the age and mentality of Johan
Amor: in the youth categories we were always doing rondos. And with Charly (Rexach) in the “juvenils”, you have to imagine the quantity of the rondos that we were doing. Every day. The guys in the Amateurs were saying: look at the juvenils, there are always doing those little rondos.
Bakero: In the initial stage, thanks to the rondos, we were able to play 20 to 25 minutes with an unmatched intensity level, but when we did not have the ball, we were suffering more than anyone. But because of the characteristics of the players and the team, not because of our physical conditioning
Amor: There were different types of rondos depending on the day: the rondo for after the game, for recuperation, to have a laugh when you have won, or the rondo before the game to find your rhythm, spark, and intensity… When I was in Australia, I tried to spend a few minutes on it every day, because what a player likes most is to start a training session with the ball, with rhythm, with good vibes. Depending on the emphasis you give it, you can work on a lot of things in a rondo.
Bakero: Except shooting on goal!
Amor: Sometimes there would be a shot, but at a body. (Smiles) You’d get smacked with it.
Bakero: Johan and Charly knew what they were doing by instinct, but they were not consciously developing an applicable methodology, the way we explain and rationalize it today. Johan wanted rhythm of the ball and a rondo gave that. He wanted concentration and the rondo gave that, Speed of decision, quality of the pass… These were concepts that translated onto the pitch later.
Amor: one thing is the rondo that we carried out for many years. And from there we have gone to the positional games, which are not the same exercise. In a positional game there are added difficulties: more space, more opposition placing seven players against four, nine against five….
Bakero: Movement is important. In 80% of the teams, the players stand still when passing. The coach needs to make you understand that when one action ends, another one begins immediately, and you have to be prepared to receive the next pass.
Amor: In a rondo you work on everything: Body positioning, the use of both feet, the reading of the game, movement.
Bakero: I remember tthose rondos. You didn’t want to go inside. No joke. After 20 touches there would be applause, and you liked to humiliate whoever was inside, bursting with fatigue. And to be clear: whoever was in the middle defended with a brutal intensity in order to get out, and if you were on the outside, you tried to not fail and enter the middle. What concept is embedded in this? Competition. We wanted to get twenty touches. It was just like scoring a goal in a game. And the winning team, after making the first, looked for the second, and the third, the fourth….
Amor: There were the rondos of the veterans, the weighty individuals, and the others of the young ones. You only had to watch the one Johan was in.
Bakero: The rondo starts with the young ones inside. It’s a way to respect the veterans a little.
Amor: the best part about starting a rondo inside was that the people were cold and you could cut of the ball. But if you go in the center when the others are warmed up, it was more difficult
Bakero: In the end it is about movement and competition. Clearly it requires technique, positioning, concentration… you learn or you don’t.
Amor: Johan played in the rondos, the small games…. And Charly too.
Bakero: At first, Johan was playing in all of them. Until he had the heart attack. In the positional games they played as neutrals, or free men, and never stopped. That’s why they are smiling in the photos and we are angry.
Amor: It was fun and was done with one idea: Play one more line. Johan said so that we did not give the ball to the one next to you, but to the two or three farther away. “No corners, no corners!” he would call, to prevent the receiver of the ball from being cornered.
Bakero: In the Champions league we could not repeat the same pace twice, We had to be short-short-long to break the pressure. It was an added difficulty: It forced you to think, which was very important too. On the field, the player decides: if he passes with the right or the left, to one team mate or the other….
Amor: When asking for one line more, he wanted you to see, without looking, the team mate who was farthest away.
Bakero: All these concepts are now explained, and these advance the formative process. Before, the smartest learned it the fastest and the others struggled more.
Amor: There was no book, but the truth was that it could be done.
Bakero: In soccer you can copy others, or you can copy meaningfully, trying to rectify and develop what you are copying. Here is the hand of the coach, in looking for improvement, for progress. We won the European Cup in the fourth year. The first two were very hard. Now we knew why we were doing what we were doing and why we do what we do. The rondo contains a total philosophy of football.
Amor: It’s one thing, for example, to do a rondo in a bull ring with ten guys outside and two inside. It’s another thing to do it in half the space, six against two.
Bakero: The rondo is the basis, but it is linked by the selection of the players and the coaches. Why are the Barcelona players so small? Because generally the most talented are smaller and less physical. The Dream Team was very positional, static, with triangles and a clearly drawn rhombus. Guardiola’s team was totally the opposite: liquid, with constant mobility and occupation of spaces.
Amor: The idea is the same. The essence of the game is the same. With nuances, but the philosophy is identical.
Bakero: The quality of the players determines everything. More than the systems, what’s important is to develop the concept, make it evolve.
Amor: The children now do rondos as soon as they arrive. Jose Maria and I Had left the club to coach. We were not accustomed to it. Here you work with children who do positional games since they are eight years old. After so long, they do it by memory.
Bakero: Johan and Charly changed the idea. They prioritized talent and quality over the physical. Look at the Spanish National Team. What were they called? The Fury. Look now. I like to watch them play. In reality, in Spanish football, the culture to play well has been installed. To bring the ball out under control. There are very few kick and run teams. If you go to other countries, they still live in that model.
Amor: The key is the youth. The U16 of Spain plays that way. The U19 or the U21: the same. Everything starts from the bottom. In this country, the Academies work very well. We do it well. Very well. But there are other teams that also do it well.
Bakero: The origin is in these years. I was a professional player since 1980 and the greatest evolution that I have seen in football was in the era of Johan. Look, I played with Real Sociedad in a semifinal of the European Cup against Hamburg. They used a 4-4-2, with very large and powerful fullbacks and Hrubesch, a two meter tall giant who finished everything that dropped in the penalty box. Look at the players Germany has now, the ones that play for Bayern and Borussia. That’s what they brought Pep there.
Amor: England is also going in this direction. They also want to play good soccer. Holland has always done it. They were Barcelona‘s mirror, their idea. And now, without doubt, it’s the reverse. Barça is the mirror that the Netherlands wants to look at, since they’ve been left out of both the Euros and the World Cup.
Bakero: The problem with Holland is that the players leave very soon. They pay 11 or 12 million euros for a young player and they take them. This breaks the natural selection, destroys the path that young players must follow. It is not the same to study English at 6 or 7 years old as if you start now. There is an enormous difference between assimilating and learning. In Poland there are teams that do not touch the ball until Thursday. From Monday to Wednesday they don’t touch the ball. And with a top coach!
Amor: The rondo goes you touch. That’s the most Important for me. Touch and sensibility when you strike the ball. Touch is primordial. Essential. What force do you give the ball in each moment so that it can arrive to your team mate adequately? How do you do it? You measure the space, time, speed. And the rondo gives that. Why? Because you can smash the ball at your team mate. You have to have sensibility to give more force or to slow it down. In reality, everything depends on your touch if you want to give and advantage to your team mate. With the right, with the left, close, far….The pass to the center always ahead, to avoid a first touch… to let the ball arrive fast…..
Bakero: In this, the master was Koeman. I have never seen anybody pass the ball with this precision into space and at the pace at which you arrived, because it was not the same to pass to Txiki as to Guillermo, or to Hristo. Or to me. He would put the ball three meters ahead to you, and you would have the sensation that it was waiting for you. He was capable of visualizing you speed and the time that you needed. He had a supernatural intelligence.
Amor: But it was because he could strike the ball…. What a strike!
Bakero: He had a gift. I have said that Ronald was a very important player. A lot of times we were winning because we had a lot of good players. But if Ronald was functioning, the blackboard did too. That was also the rondo, although it was not seen.
Hatrik Soccer 