Cruyff returns to Barça

JOrdi Cruyff has been an advisor to the presidency in the sports area since August 1. Although the official organization chart is not yet fully established -the club is planning to make a presentation with great fanfare to specify the position of all the people in the football department-, Joan Laporta's idea is count on Johan's son as a court advisor, who will mark the sporting line that his father would have chosen and thus not deviate from the project and philosophy that was born a little more than thirty years ago from Johan's mind.

Jordi's official premiere in his new position will be next Wednesday, taking advantage of the fact that the team plays the fourth game of the preseason. The new executive will travel to Salzburg where the entire FC Barcelona delegation will be waiting for him, playing against the Austrian RB Salzburg.

Jordi, who will collaborate directly with the two visible heads of the sports area, the sports vice-president, Rafa Yuste, and the football director, Mateu Alemany, will have an intense month ahead of him and marathon hours, since the club is in a situation of absolute paralysis due to the demands of LaLiga in the reduction of the salary mass of the current staff and the few movements that have occurred so far in the market.

In any case, for Johan's son it will not be a new experience, Since, since he hung up his boots, after playing three years at Barcelona (1993/96) and two at Manchester United (1996/98), among the most prominent, he conveyed his professional future to the benches and to sports management. In fact, in this last aspect he has worked in clubs such as the Cypriot AEK Larnaca and the Israeli Maccabbi Tel Aviv.

But his role as a coach – he has directed AEK Larnaca and the Chinese clubs of Chongqing and Shenzhen, with a brief stay as Ecuador coach – has not gone unnoticed by Laporta, who came to define him as a “wild card”, hinting at the possibility of replacing Ronald Koeman if things go wrong during the preseason. An option in any case that Jordi himself totally discarded, first because of the friendship that unites him with the current coach and second because in no case during the conversations with the president was the possibility of sitting on the bench addressed.

Be that as it may, the only reality is that the name Cruyff has returned home, where it never had to leave. Whether as a footballer, coach, honorary president or sports advisor, this mythical surname has been associated with FC Barcelona for almost 50 years, to the point that it has become an indissoluble pairing, no matter how much more than one might think. .