Pep sold nowhere near the amount you're asking for. Buying half a starting eleven in one go has never been a success, it's not realistic either.
Yeah.
Another thing is Pep had Xaviesta entering their prime years, a young Messi ready to take on a bigger role and two unknown (for fans), not overhyped by the media but talented (and even more so hardworking) kids he trusted from his time at Barça B in Busquets and Pedro.
Not let's use a hypotethical scenario where a 38 yo Pep (so not someone with 10 years of coaching experience at the top level who thinks a bit different now though his overall philosophy didn't change; it's stupid and unrealistic to think about today's Pep because he would never return, mostly because of the reasons I'll write about) would take over our current team and would need to do a similar rebuild he did in 2008. Who could he build his team around? Frenkie? Sure. Arthur? He's his type of midfielder so probably too. They wouldn't be anywhere close to the prime Xaviesta level but still pretty good. It's a solid start but we would still be far away.
Who would take over a young Messi role to take over from an old Messi (yes, he's still great but won't be here forever)? There is no individual player who can ever replace him and hopefully we won't look for that player as we would ruin any player (especially a young one) career if we'll ever expect someone to take over Messi.
(Not really a point of my post but just a thought I had: Because of La Liga rules it's not possible to permanently retire numbers but I think it would be probably for the best if we'd at least temporarily (for 3-5 years) "retire" a #10 after Messi leaves. Personally I'm not a big believer in importance of jersey numbers but many people are setting their expectations of the players also based on a shirt number they get. #6 and #8 have a pretty big weight here but #10 will be a totally different story after Messi who has re-written almost all football history books. So good luck to whichever player will get Barça's #10 the first (and second, third, tenth) after him.)
Further, who would be Pep's Busquets and Pedro nowadays? Puig and Fati (not meaning their exact positions but La Masia kids who could get important first team minutes soon and become future longterm starters)? Maybe but it's not a given they'll really succeed the same way Busi and Pedro did. None of them exactly fits coming out of nowhere/breakthrough player criteria but this is mostly because of a social media era we're living in when it's a lot harder to keep players (especially at big clubs) flying under the radar than 10 years ago though Fati somehow did this with his unexpected "promotion" to the first team before even making a Barça B debut.
Now, if we assume everything would go right so far with the players already here (which most likely wouldn't just for a simple fact we won't have a young Messi) we'd come to second part of our rebuild. Who would we bring from the outside to replace aging starters and/or improve other parts of the team.
Let's go back to Pep's transfers in 2008.
- Alves: 35,5m
- Hleb: 17m
- Caceres: 16,5m
- Keita: 14m
- Henrique: 8m
- Pique: 5m
- Pinto: free
- Busquets: promoted
So that's 96m spend. Using inflation on the market we could say this would be 250-300m today (there was a 200% inflation on the market since Neymar's transfer to PSG so I don't think 250-300% inflation in 10 years is really too exagerrated; If someone doesn't believe just think about how how much a prime Alves would cost today if he would even be availlable). Three of the players we've bought that year were a total waste of money but we won't hit on every player we'll buy now too so this is pretty realistic.
(For people complaining about our recent transfers we either hit a home run or strike out - to use baseball analogy - too during Pep's tenure, even more so than today. We rarely hit a single and buy a "so-so" players who were somewhere in the middle - solid squad players for a few years - and they were mostly brought for cheap like Maxwell or Adriano. Every other big money transfer was either a big success or a total flop. But what we don't have now and won't have in a forseeable future and possibly never again to save us from our failed signings is a golden generation of La Masia.)
Anyway, back to our imaginary rebuild. So we would have 300m to get a new CB or two, a striker (keep in mind he'd need to fit Pep's profile so Haaland for 20m probably wouldn't be an option; he wanted Ibra back then so who knows though) or someone we could use as a false 9, maybe another CM who would fit Pep's system and possibly another winger (we don't know if Pep would be able to prevent Dembele's injury problems like he did earlier in Messi's career and develop his untapped potential). We would probably also need a younger LB and possibly a new RB as well.
So quite a lot of needs and "just" 300m to spend (in reality we have less because of what we've spend in recent years and our inability to sell and whoever our coach would be can't change those facts). And we also have to keep in mind we'll probably only hit on half of our transfers so if we'll buy 5-6 players two or three of them better be a big home runs like Alves/Pique and not just singles like Maxwell/Adriano. Other 2-3 players most likely won't stay for more than a season or two and then be loaned or sold with a loss and replaced by other players who would hopefully have more success.
It's easy to say we should do what Pep did in 2008 (and as I've mentioned in my previous post what lead to that revolution were two consecutive trophy-less seasons which we didn't have since then) but reality is different. Circumstances have changed both inside the club (which is our responsibility) and on the market (not totally our fault though we undoubtely helped to heat up the market).
Considering all this how much chances would a young Pep have to replicate what he did in 2008 or at least come close to that kind of success in 2019/20? Not too big I'd say. Yes, he has clearly developed into a great manager (he was developing, learning and growing together with his team) but he was also "lucky" to be in the right place at the right time. And we benefited from that "luck".
But at the same time we are still paying price for all that success nowadays because we failed to replace Busi and Pique (well, we still don't have a replacement for him
) for too long and Xavi, Alves, Iniesta.. before them (luckily they've decided to move on or else they would still be here because we wouldn't "throw them out of the club", most likely as starters so our problems would be even bigger
) and nowadays they are old and unmotivated. While Messi is still playing on a GOAT level most of the times his motivation is understandably not the same as 8-10 years ago and physical regression is also visible. So our current situation is also his responsibility mostly because he was/is so good he masked a lot of weaknesses we've had over the years which we would probably address (or at least try to address whether successfull or not is another question) sooner if not for him and on the other hand because he lost his hunger for titles and is nowadays happy having a comfortable life with his familly and being surrounded by his friends inside the team (Bartomeu&Co. don't want to upset Messi so they are keeping them around).
I don't see our future as bleak as BBZ but a lot of things will need to be done right and we'll also need some (or a lot of) luck over the next 18 months so we could look more optimistic on post-Messi era.