I'm just saying people make it seem like we play like Chelsea (who play better football these days, ironically) under Lucho and have completely abandoned our previous style of play. Yes, Lucho and Pep aren't identical but there is plenty of ideas about the game that they share. Lucho wouldn't have been here in the first place nor would he have had the success he's had without that commonality.
We play more or less the same way for 20-30 years (I don't know how we played in 80's, but in 70s we also played a similar style of football).
So, it isn't as if Pep started to play this way and that Lucho only changed it a little.
We always played like this. During Cruijff as a coach, during Van Gaal, even during early 00s, especially during Rijkaard etc.
I remember when I was a teen in 90s and when I watched Barca, my first thought was: woow, look how well they are passing and keeping the ball. The opponents can't do anything or take the ball away, it's awesome... This will be "my favorite team".
I would add an analogy with Xavi.
Xavi was always Xavi. Durinhg Van Gaal, early 00s and Rijkaard.
And then Pep turned that Xavi into an even better version of himself.
But Pep didn't "created" Xavi as the great passer and mastermind. He was always that guy. Pep only raised him to an even higher level.
The same is with the way how we always played.
Barca always played like Barca.
Pep only raised it to an extreme level of possession and perfection.
Only things which I personally remember that were different in 90s, early 00s or under Rijkaard, compared to Pep:
1. we tried to play faster, and we tried to shoot whenever possible
While during Pep it turned into an extreme: keep the possession no matter what and shoot only when you are alone with a keeper
2. also, we didn't have Messipendencia back then and all attacking players (3 forwards and an attacking midfielder) were shooting like crazy, whenever they were close to an opponent's goal, while today they hesitate a lot, and either wait for a perfect opportunity, or they pass to Messi all the time
3. also, back then we had more crosses and counters compared to today, everything was slightly faster.
About crosses, someone may ask: wait what, did we played like English team then?
Well no, it was more like a Tiki-Taka in Bayern's style (Pep's era) or like a German's NT team, where you play both possession football on the ground, but you also have a lot of crosses since we had much taller players then (for example Rivaldo 186 cm and Kluivert 188 cm), so we could create both shortpassing chances (like we do mostly today), and goals after crosses.
Anyway, for example, I remember watching this game in a 1999/2000 season, and we totally demolished Chelsea.
It was a Champions league quarterfinals. We lost 3:1 on a Stamford bridge, and we needed a 2:0 or higher win at home to progress into semis.
(Van Gaal was a coach. We had Rivaldo, Figo, Kluivert, Luis Enrique, Guardiola, tons of Dutch players).
This is a classic example of a good old Barca. We always attacked, we had possession all the time. Opponents looked like idiots compared to our guys.
The only difference compared with Pep's and post Pep's era is that we didn't need 30 or 50 passes to create a chance, we didn't hesitate to shoot, we didn't look for Messi all the time, and we used crosses way more (which we can't today since we have all short players from Pep's era):
Look at the level of classic Barca's possession, attacking all the time, domination, being 2 levels better than majority of opponents, classic beautiful actions/passes/dribbles as always.
** Plus, lol, you can see Mourinho on our bench as a part of Van Gaal's team (celebrating Barca's goal against Chelsea, lol the irony)
