For some, watching Barcelona play football these days is akin to reading a book hard to put down. So much is working well that many fans do not want the season to finish and yet cannot wait to see what will happen in the end.At the heart of the plot is Coach Josep Guardiola i Sala, often called Pep and whose only experience guiding a team was one season with Barcelona’s third division squad. When he was chosen to replace Frank Rijkaard, making him the Primera Liga's youngest head coach at 37, many were hard pressed to see the rationale. The team scored only one goal in Guardiola’s first two games in charge. But then, his cure for the team’s ailments seemed to kick in: Barcelona won 15 of their next 16 league games, scoring 48 goals. They are on pace to surpass the season-high 107 goals set by Real Madrid in 1989-90. The team enter the winter break with 41 points, leaving second-place Sevilla 10 points behind and Madrid 12 points back. “This team has the possibility of being one of the best in history, ranking with the best of Cruyff,” said Carles Rexach, a former assistant to Johan Cruyff. Cruyff led Barcelona from 1988 to 1996, when along with four league titles, they won their first European Cup and erased the stigma of playing second fiddle to Real Madrid. The first order of business for Guardiola was to ship out two of the team’s stars — Ronaldinho and Deco. “I’m going to try to seduce my players because I believe in the power of the word,” Guardiola said in June. “They’ll have to learn that they’re not worth much alone.”He has taken on less-heralded players, like Brazilian Dani Alves and Mali’s Seydou Keita from Sevilla, and the former Barcelona youth team player Gerard Piqué from Manchester United. He brought in 20-year-old Sergi Busquets, who played for Guardiola in the third division, demonstrating the vitality of the team's farm system, which begins shaping players as young as 10. Eleven of Barcelona's 25-member squad come from that programme.Almost three-quarters of the goals have been scored by Samuel Eto’o (15), Lionel Messi (10) and Thierry Henry (8). “We needed discipline and his style of football, the Barcelona way,” said Henry. Guardiola's success is not so much a revolution as a return to the team's roots.
