I was just watching clips of Ronaldinho there and it got me thinking.......
Does anybody think that Rijkaard's impact and influence on the club/team has been almost forgotten by the footballing world since Pep's success? I know Pep inherited a mess but it was a mess with a very solid foundation.
People talk about Pep's team being the best of all time but I remember watching Rijkaard's Barca and thinking that this team could go on to be the best of all time. For two years they played some of the best football I've ever seen and those few months when Messi first broke into the team with Ronaldinho, Eto'o and Deco all at their very best were magical.
While Pep did make some big changes the fundamentals were the same in both teams; possession based football with intense pressing. He inherited a team with world class talent that just needed to get back to working hard and doing the basics right Obviously the legacy will not be the same due to the relatively short period of success and the way it began to fall apart towards the end.
I think it is possible to view Pep's team as a continuation of Rijkaard's team rather than a completely separate entity. I'm not trying to understate what Pep did but just acknowledge how important Rijkaard was during his spell at the club and how great his influence was on things to come.
Going back to Ronaldinho....it's so sad how his career went downhill. That's probably Rijkaard's biggest failure; letting him slack off like that. Obviously it's Ronnie himself to blame and not Rijkaard but there should have been more discipline. By the time Pep came in it was too late to save him. You've got wonder if somebody like Pep was in charge while Ronaldinho was at his peak if he would have allowed that decline to happen. It would have been incredible to get a few more years of Messi/Ronaldinho together. Ronaldinho leaving did allow Messi to become the start of the team and maybe he wouldn't have developed to be quite as good as he is now but it would have been damn special to see those two for longer.
