Jordi Cruyff explains his Barcelona departure – and what’s next

Jordi Cruyff is Barcelona’s sporting director until the end of this month, after which he has decided to step aside.

The Athletic caught up with him to find out why in his first interview since the change was announced.

Why are you leaving Barcelona?

Barcelona called me when the club was in a very difficult situation. I was always going to answer that call, there is a special feeling for this club. But I’d been coaching and enjoying being a coach for five years before Barcelona. I was in China, then I took the Ecuador job. Then Covid-19 hit, so there were no games. Then I went back to China. Everything was fine but I decided to answer Barcelona’s call and did that for two years.

Now, I want to return to being a coach, which is where I was before Barcelona. Barcelona offered me a longer deal last year, but I chose a shorter one because I felt I would go back to being a coach. It wasn’t a decision I made quickly, it was something I thought about for months. This is what I feel like doing now. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to work as a sporting director anymore, I am prepared for both roles, but right now I prefer to return to coaching. I have been analysing different options and it is about picking what feels right for me.

How would you judge your time as Barcelona’s sporting director?

We came from a difficult moment, with financial fair play issues and players leaving. We not only survived that, but we also won the league. Now, when you look at the squad, we have one of the youngest teams in Europe. The present has been good and I think the future will be.

I’ve enjoyed my two years at Barcelona working with Mateu (Alemany, director of football) and Xavi (Hernandez, head coach), with whom I was very close and very comfortable. We agreed, we disagreed, we all worked well as a group and I’m grateful for that.

Football is a table with many chairs, and I’ve sat at three of them. I’ve been a player and experienced the highs and lows. I know how a player can feel, be it when they are injured or on form, because I’ve been there. (I know) How a squad player feels. I’ve been a sports director, which gives me another dimension because you have to think short, medium and long term with the planning of the team. And I’ve been a coach, with the pressures that come with that, such as from the media. I’ve always been able to separate the job descriptions and respect the others.

Cruyff in 2020, during his time as Ecuador manager (Photo: Rodrigo Buendia/AFP via Getty Images)

So you’re comfortable being a coach or a sports director?

Yes. The main thing is to respect the club and each others’ area. You don’t mix or jump on anyone’s chair. Then it can be a benefit to all. The coach is responsible for the line-up, the training, and the dressing room is his place. He’s the leader, but there’s also a club philosophy which needs to be followed. We support the coach, we don’t go against him. It’s a modern way of thinking by dividing the power a little bit.

If we don’t do this then we see what can happen at other clubs. A manager will bring his own players in but you could get to November and things haven’t gone the way you’ve hoped. You have a new manager with new ideas. Before you know it, you’ve bought a lot of new players in January because that’s what the manager wants, and you have twice as many players as you need.

With a sporting director, you’re a strategist. There might be a really good right-back in the youth system but at the same time your coach might want a right-back (signed). You might tell him that the youth right-back will be ready for the first team in one year and work a plan out, rather than spend a lot of money on a new right-back who blocks the young player.

Not every sporting director goes to every training session and match, as you did at Barca…

That’s my way of working. I had a very good relationship with all the coaches I’ve worked with: trust, openness, communication. If you’re not watching players during the week, how can you give an opinion at the end of the season if you haven’t watched everything and seen their attitude every day? If you can help the coach, the coach wins. And if the coach wins, everyone wins.

Barcelona has a DNA, the way of playing, the way of working with an important youth structure. We had to maintain that while acknowledging that football is changing, where so much of the game is about transitions and national stereotypes of football are changing.

Last season I saw so many players in Barcelona’s first team, players who are not close to their peak and yet are already league champions. That was the nicest thing for me: Gavi, Pedri, (Alejandro) Balde, Ansu (Fati), Eric (Garcia), Ferran (Torres). Mostly boys who’ve come through the youth system. And boys who appeared at the moment the club needed them most, because the club had to look on the inside for players with all the financial fair play issues.

There’s a real team at Barcelona. The structure is there for a bright future and the great thing is that Barca is an end station. It’s not a ‘trampoline’ club. Players who make the first team at Barcelona want to stay there and not move on.

Cruyff, far right, after Barcelona signed Raphinha from Leeds in 2022 (Photo: Pau Barrena/AFP via Getty Images)

And sporting directors?

I want to coach now; I like to coach. Playing is best. You play or train, you go home to spend time with your family. The banter in the dressing room is enjoyable.

When you’re a coach, it’s 24 hours. You go to sleep with doubts about the line-up and wake up with them. You bring your job home, but this is what I want to do. I have good, qualified staff who supported me when I coached. I had offers to coach, including from MLS, when I was at Barcelona. But I could not say yes.

There are not many coaches in the position of Pep (Guardiola), who can draw his own path. That’s well deserved, but he can choose what type of clubs he wants to work for with his philosophy. That’s not the reality for most coaches. You can’t join a club in November because they’ve changed their manager and results haven’t been good, then ask super-difficult things of your players. You have to simplify, get the confidence back.

My thing is that I’m flexible. I’ve been at different types of clubs in different types of leagues. It’s more difficult to be outside of Europe working in an environment where the sporting culture and mentality are different. I’ve been at teams who have played to win and others who’ve tried to avoid relegation. Your philosophy depends on the necessity of the moment and being flexible enough to implement that, to be able to coach multi-systems.

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Which coaches influenced you?

All, even the ones I thought were wrong when I was 20 years old (a reference to Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson). In time, you come to see that they were right. I’ve worked under man-management specialists, rotation specialists, technical specialists…

And your father, Johan, was a coach too…

He didn’t just help me with football, he helped me in life. He once said to me that “a six wants to surround himself by fives, but a seven wants to surround himself by eights”. He wasn’t talking about (footballing) positions, but people who can bring you to a higher level. When he looked at his staff, he’d look at his strong points and then bring in others who were better than him in areas where he wasn’t strong. You need to do that to cover all the angles in modern football.

And you have your coaching staff sorted out?

Absolutely. You need a high-level team who can make players better. There’s a lot of work and pressure on a coach, you need help, a mix of different people.

Is there anywhere in particular you want to work?

I’m open-minded to coach in different situations, I speak different languages. In China, I went to Chongqing and Shenzhen at difficult times, when they were fighting to avoid relegation, and in both cases, we managed to save the team the first year and have a very good second season, promoting young players and playing well. In Chongqing, we improved players that we then sold to improve the financial situation of the club. And in Shenzhen, we were in contention for the Asian Champions League, having the club’s best season since 2004. In fact, they asked me not to take the staff with me when I left to go to Barca.

I also had offers to work at Primera Division teams in Spain when I was in China. I was under contract and respected my contract. Timing can be everything in football. Offers from the United States while at Barcelona. Now, I’ll see what offers come, how I feel, and go for it.

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Were you surprised Lionel Messi chose to go to Inter Miami?

Barcelona wanted him back and there was interest from Saudi Arabia, but you have to respect his decision, just as you did when David Beckham made the decision to go to the United States many years ago. It’s another type of football, another type of life. Beckham did a lot for MLS and I think Lionel Messi will do the same. He will give a boom to MLS. Messi is a winner; he’s won all his life. And there was someone else who went to the United States: my father. He was 32 and he never regretted it.

(Top photo: Jordi Cruyff talks to Robert Lewandowski after a La Liga match last month; David Ramos via Getty Images)