Why Gundogan joining Xavi’s Barcelona makes so much sense

Whatever occurs subsequent for Ilkay Gundogan and nonetheless he performs after attaining supremacy with Manchester City, Barcelona know they’ve acquired an elite footballer who actually yearned to affix them.

And a participant who would possibly properly be the bridge from the place they’re (fledgling) to the place they desperately should be: grown-up, harder and smarter.

Had he needed to, the 32-year-old may simply have multiplied his new wage by 10 due to the Saudia Arabia Public Investment Fund splurge. He selected to not.

Like his outdated Borussia Dortmund teammate Robert Lewandowski, whose targets successfully turned Barcelona right into a title-winning workforce final season, Gundogan was seduced by the persuasive effervescence of coach Xavi Hernandez, by the attractive life within the metropolis the place his new membership is predicated and by the romantic concept of revitalising a footballing identification that is still pale and jaded.

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Unlike Lewandowski, who’ll virtually actually rating extra targets and look way more comfy with Gundogan supplying him, Barcelona’s latest recruit already felt real affection and affiliation to the membership — or no less than his teenage impression of it.

When I used to be on the City’s Etihad Campus within the week of the current Champions League remaining, interviewing Erling Haaland, I ran into Gundogan — just for sufficient time to congratulate him on a scintillating season and want him success in opposition to Inter in Istanbul.

Before his earlier Champions League remaining (the defeat to Chelsea two seasons in the past), nonetheless, I spent an hour in Gundogan’s firm.

It was then, probing for anecdotes to raised perceive him, that he shared among the emotions which have since motivated him to show down a contract extension with the treble winners and to reject the concept of transferring — with Cristiano Ronaldo, with Karim Benzema, with N’Golo Kante — to play in Jeddah or Riyadh.

Gundogan advised me: “When I was a teenager … I admired Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side so much for how they would play.

“Not simply the success and lifting all these trophies, the way in which they have been taking part in. When Pep was answerable for Barca, my greatest dream ever was simply to play in that facet.

“It was so far away, but it was incredible to watch. I just loved it so, so much.

“When Pep got here to the Bundesliga, it was thrilling, and it was so, so troublesome to play in opposition to his [Bayern] facet. They at all times had a plan, and their plan was at all times higher than your plan.”

Guardiola, at Man City, became such a guru for Gundogan, such a messianic figure, that it’s pretty natural to want to play for a man of similar (if not identical) ideas — an evangelical disciple of the brand of football Gundogan loves.

That man is Xavi. It has become interesting, across that LaLiga-winning season, to hear the Barcelona manager and a handful of his new players talk about one another.

In the case of Lewandowski, Andreas Christensen and Jules Kounde, Xavi has referred to each of them with the phrase: He was a specific player I wanted.

Meaning that the process wasn’t him identifying a type of footballer then settling for whoever the club found was most available. Xavi targeted specific footballers. And got them.

Then, when Lewandowski, Christensen, Kounde, Raphinha and Franck Kessie have spoken about their reasons for joining, sometimes an uncomfortable decision while they waited, sweating, to see when or indeed whether they could be registered to play because of Barcelona’s horrible financial fair play situation, every single one of them has said: When Xavi spoke to me, I was convinced.

So it had been with Gundogan.

Barcelona, in the shape of football directors Jordi Cruyff and Mateu Alemany, were working on the mechanics of this move for many months. But it’s the immediate mutual feeling between the two diminutive midfielders, the 43-year-old Catalan treble winner and the 32-year-old German treble winner, that properly sealed the deal.

Gundogan plays, and thinks, the way that Xavi desperately needs if he is to convert the pragmatic, often defence-oriented, prosaic football that won him Spain’s title in his first full season into a brand of soccer that can, at least, make Barcelona competitive with Europe’s elite. Which their recent ties with Bayern Munich, Internazionale, Eintracht Frankfurt, Manchester United, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain have shown that, categorically, they are not.

Again, there’s a passage from my interview with the likeable, articulate and deeply impressive Gundogan that I think (notwithstanding his brilliance for City) sheds light on what he, as a man, brings to this stage of Barcelona’s evolution. He talked to me about how much he adored and lusted after the Champions League trophy but pointed out that his beginnings in the tournament were brutally rough.

Coached by a subsequent Champions League winner (Jurgen Klopp), playing with the man who would score the winner in a World Cup final (Mario Gotze) and playing with another future treble winner (Lewandowski) among many other fine footballers, Gundogan tasted defeat in his first two Champions League matches, against Marseille and Olympiakos. Then he was dropped.

Read his words extremely closely then try telling me they don’t remind you of the naive, fragile way Barcelona have played in recent UEFA competitions.

“I bear in mind my first season within the Champions League with a proficient Dortmund facet,” he said. “Everyone was anticipating us to go far.

“It just hit us like a bus. It was so difficult to anticipate how to deal with it. We did really badly in that first season in the UCL with Dortmund.

“No blame. No remorse. We have been simply not prepared. Sometimes that is the case.

“Sometimes you need experience, to smell, to feel, how it is. To be on the pitch, flying away, staying over a couple of nights, playing in the evening in front of crowds which are incredible and stadiums which are full of emotions. We had to adapt and go through that frustration.”

That describes Barcelona’s previous three calamitous European campaigns completely.

Gundogan tailored and performed with such magical, elusive distinction that he went to the Champions League remaining with Dortmund, with Man City two years in the past, gained the treble this season (the place he performed an vital function in Rodri’s successful aim) and would have been a World Cup winner with Germany in 2014 however for a horrendous again harm.

His function, now, is so as to add brains, expertise, know-how, method, ability and seniority to a Barcelona midfield that, even earlier than Sergio Busquets left, merely doesn’t use the ball successfully sufficient nor display screen the defence sufficiently properly.

Additionally, one among Gundogan’s many values now’s to play sufficiently usually in left midfield that Xavi, in actual fact the entire Barcelona facet, is not so fatally depending on Pedri that he performs and performs and performs and performs till he’s injured then misses months.

Gundogan is multilingual, terrifically vibrant, well mannered, attention-grabbing and humble … however don’t, at any value, mistake him for somebody who is not tungsten powerful. He will make it his job so as to add the psychological and emotional metal that Frenkie de Jong, a proficient participant, desperately lacks.

Gundogan will educate by phrase, by deed and by coaching efficiency. He will likely be Xavi’s lieutenant on the pitch. Watch out for Gundogan lambasting gamers who make unhealthy selections, who give the ball away, who’re naive positionally.

His view is: “Adversity develops you as a person not just a footballer. The whole journey itself which comes with this career, my general and social life — I appreciate it.

“The unhappy bits and the setbacks and the troublesome moments. I had loads: defeats, accidents. But at all times I used to be in a position to react, to return again properly.

“Every time it gave me satisfaction that I was strong enough to come back well and be again on top of my game. I think that’s the challenge of life in general, not just football.

“Always you do your finest; generally it isn’t sufficient … you lose, you fail. But then it is about standing up once more and attempting to proceed once more.”

If you watched Barcelona play final season, do not these sentiments appear to be simply what Xavi is attempting, and partially succeeding, to inculcate?

You’ve watched Gundogan star for membership and nation. You want little or no reminder of his agility, his technical excellence, his motion, his more and more assured ending or his will to win and win and win.

But maybe these phrases of his give some perception into who he’s, what he believes and the way he capabilities in addition to some understanding of why Xavi needed to signal him with the identical intense willpower as Guardiola as soon as did, nudging him within the tunnel earlier than a Bayern vs. Dortmund match and warning him that, in the future, they’d work collectively. They did, they usually made lovely music collectively.

This activity, in a Barcelona facet that’s uneven, youthful, dislodged from its Camp Nou house and dealing with a considerably extra harmful problem from Real Madrid, appears tougher and extra demanding. But Gundogan is particular, as a person and a footballer. He is perhaps exactly what Spain’s champions want.

And, at any price, he’ll be rattling good enjoyable to observe.