The Inner Dress Code: A Relic of the Past

In 2008, Pep Guardiola decided to create an internal code to bring order and concert to the total lack of control that had been experienced in the last season of Frank Rijkaard in front of the team. Not only did he throw two of the 'culprits' of the chaos in the locker room, Ronaldinho and DecoInstead, he urged the club to formalize an internal code of behavior. The then technical secretary, Txiki Begiristain, and the CEO, Anna Xicoy, were responsible for translating this code of discipline into a document, which was subsequently delivered to all players. It was about clearly explaining the rules by which a player had to be governed, both inside and outside the club's facilities, also imposing an elaborate system of sanctions and fines. Players had to be home before 1 a.m., they could not leave 48 hours before a game, the practice of risk sports was prohibited, including any extra-sport activity involving minimal risk, they had to arrive one hour before training and thus a long etcetera of rules and obligations.

This internal code has been maintained until today, but with many nuances and gaps in its content.. Guardiola's departure left a gap in this regard, making waters directly with Tata Martino. It wasn't until the arrival of Luis Enrique, that this internal code was recovered again in its entirety, also imposing a much stricter system of fines than that of Guardiola. To give an example, the players had to sign on paper when they arrived at the Ciutat Esportiva, this role was picked up by the delegate an hour before the session began, who was not on the paper went directly to the sanctions list, with a initial fine of 200 euros. The problem was that if you repeated the calculation it was exponential and not arithmetic, so more than one player paid a substantial part of his salary in fines. The record, of course, went to Gerard Piqué. In fact, the amounts collected by the sanctions came to have such volume that it went from using them to celebrate staff meals to allocating them to NGO solidarity projects.

With the arrival of Ernesto Valverde, the rigidity of the fines gave way to common sense. The Extremadura coach was more in favor of dialogue to punishment, but if the formula worked the first two seasons, in the last he gave clear symptoms of exhaustion, with Arthur's 'escape' to Andorra and Dembélé's absence from training without warning as main and striking grievances.

With Quique Setién, the internal code continues to show no signs of life. An event such as the one that the Catalan central defender carried out a few days ago, arriving at the match against Espanyol on an electric bicycle and without a helmet, would have been punished in an exemplary manner within the club: he not only used a means of transport expressly prohibited by the code internal, but also did it on the streets of Barcelona and on a game day, assuming an intolerable risk of a possible incident that would have made it impossible to play the football match. The degree of bewilderment experienced in the locker room was confirmed with the latest images of Piqué wakesurfing in the Sau swamp, who posted himself on social networks. And it is that these new sports modalities are not even included in the code – elaborated as we have already commented twelve years ago -, but it is understood that they are totally inadvisable,

There is no doubt that the internal code is a fundamental weapon that the coach has to control his men. Right now this resource is totally out of date and in the trunk of memories. Only two coaches have taken it to the last consequences -Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique-, and curiously the two managed to touch the sky sporty speaking in their first year of implantation, conquering two triplets. We will see who will be able to remove the dressing room again to return to the path of sporting triumphs.