Since it’s fun, and since I feel like it, here goes.
8 TV Shows I Watch
Don’t watch TV regularly, but these if and when time permits:
1. The news (it’s a ’show’ in a way)
2. The Daily Show
3. Bang e Dara
4. TED (what, it’s television!)
5. Reruns of Malcolm in the Middle/Everybody Hates Chris/Friends (=mindless entertainment)
6. Old PTV productions on Youtube (currently, Sunehray Din)
7. ESPN Sportsnet (I used to…sigh!)
8. That’s it, really.
8 Favorite places to Eat
Note: Classifying in no particular order, and this list is not primarily based on perceptions of food quality
1. Home, wherever that may be.
2. Baba Habbas (!!) (Tubaishi), Al Mahar (near Sheraton Dammam), Al Gondol – for the broast and shawarmas and falafel
3. In fast food: Burger King (Tubaishi), Subway (NIPA), Dunkin Donuts (Disco, obviously), KFC (Disco), Lahore Chatkharay (Y-Block!) Pizza Next (Millennium Mall)
4. Arizona Grill (Zamzama), Roasters (both Zamzama and Sindhi Muslim) – for great food all-round and memories
6. Disco Bakery, One Ten, Bovi Chic, various places near Boat Basin and Haidery and Zainab Market – for nothing but memories
7. Da Silva Town Karhai, Al-Makkah Restaurant (Superhighway), Al Asif Square, Delhi Muslim Kabab House (Haidery)
8. Mahmood Sweets (Main Water Pump), Marblestones (near Lalik Chowk LHR), Gelato Affair (Karsaz), Baloch Ice Cream (Saddar and Haidery), Agha Juice
8 Things I look Forward To
1. Peace at home
2. Meeting lost friends again
3. Getting into university for graduate studies
4. Doing something big, something to be proud of
5. Playing Winning Eleven again!
6. Settling down
7. Being able to speak four different languages fluently, cook a full meal, and having an understanding of Islam
8. Publishing a few books
8 Things That Happened Yesterday Last Week
(Let’s make it last week, for it to be more interesting)
1. Had an interview for an internship and found out at the end that I was being interviewed by the CEO,when she handed me her card (this after saying I’m not doing an MBA because being a CEO is not a big enough achievement…i got the position though!)
2. First ever lunch at completely vegetarian place (Brar Sweets) – the closest thing to meat there was milk!
3. Joining the Association for Develop Pakistan Marketing Outreach team
4. Almost burnt the house down after setting a towel on fire inside a microwave oven (really!)
5. Got kicked off a bus because the police had followed me…for jaywalking. Almost got fined $200! (Well, actually, it was an honest mistake, I entered the bus stop from the wrong end.)
6. Featured on the WordPress.com front page and achieved over 1500 hits in a single day. (Normality has since resumed.)
7. More thought streams, more books
8. Gave the graduation speech at my ‘graduation’ at the Newcomers Centre of Peel!
8 Things I love About Winters
1. Not having to shower sweat off
2. Comfortable sleep
3. Sweaters
That’s about it, really..I vastly prefer summers!
8 Things On My Wishlist
1. TIME!!!
2. ESP (or at least an improved ability to understand others)
3. Health and happiness for family and friends (preferably immortality too 
)
4. Not having to compromise too much
5. Better understanding of Islam (forgiveness and piety principal benefits)
6. Camera
7. Smartphone, preferably open-source!
8. O-S-H
8 Things I’m Passionate About
1. Thought processes
2. Family
3. Food
4. Dreams
5. Meaning
6. Sports
7. People
8. Understanding
8 Words or Phrases I Use Often
1. jee
2. poori baat suno
3. relatively
4. parhe likhe
5. jaahil
6. change
7. perhaps
8. what, who, where, when, how
8 Things I Learnt from the Past
1. To trust myself
2. To be careful
3. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is
4. Hard work over the long term yields results
5. Nothing is easy
6. Most of the time, all everyone wants is love
7. Shift happens
8. Too much of anything is bad
8 Places I Would Love to Go,Visit or See
1. The inner workings of people’s minds
2. Heaven
3. Hunza
4. Barcelona
5. Where I grew up
6. Lord’s
7. Venice
8. Amazon
(I had to force the last 3 out – couldn’t think of any more places that I wanted to go…)
8 Things I Currently Need/Want
1. More hope, more opportunities
2. Smartphone
3. DSLR
4. TIME!!!
5. Sleep
6. Understanding (of and from things and others)
7. Patience!
8. Security
And I need to tag 8 bloggers…
(I’ll tag people on Facebook!)
Shazia
Omar Khan
Saad Halim
Ali Wasti
Saad Khaleel
Sheeza
…and I give up. If anyone reading this is interested, go for it!
Quick question for everyone:
Who do you think Pakistanis look up to? Which Pakistani public figure is truly respected and popular amongst the majority (>50%) of Pakistanis? Abdul Sattar Edhi? Mustafa Kamal? Shahbaz Sharif? Imran Khan? Zaid Hamid? Atif Aslam? Shahid Afridi?
Please post answers in the comments.
Thanks!
From this tremendous, and always inspiring, TEDTalk by John Wooden:
THE ROAD AHEAD OR THE ROAD BEHIND
George Moriarty
Sometimes I think the fates must grin as we
denounce them and insist,
The only reason we can’t win is the fates
themselves have missed.
Yet, there lives on the ancient claim–
We win or lose within ourselves,
The shining trophies on our shelves can
Never win tomorrow’s game.
So you and I know deeper down there is a
chance to win the crown,
But when we fail to give our best, we
simply haven’t met the test
Of giving all and saving none until the
game is really won.
Of showing what is meant by grit, of
fighting on when others quit,
Of playing through not letting up, it’s
bearing down that wins the cup.
Of taking it and taking more until we
gain the winning score,
Of dreaming there’s a goal ahead, of
hoping when our dreams are dead,
Of praying when our hopes have fled.
Yet, losing, not afraid to fall,
If bravely we have given all, for who
can ask more of a man
Thus giving all, it seems to me, is not
so far from — VICTORY.
And so the fates are seldom wrong, no
matter how they twist and wind,
It’s you and I who make our fates, we
open up or close the gates,
On the ROAD AHEAD or the ROAD BEHIND.
A few days ago I shared the story of how Tucker Patterson, a terminally ill toddler, achieved his wish of skating and playing ice hockey with his family. Although he ended up in the Air Canada Centre and got to meet several Maple Leaf superstars, it was only because his family’s initial request to use the local facility in Flamborough, near Hamilton, was denied. According to the Star:
On Jan. 17, his mother, Kari Patterson, called up a Flamborough ice rink to ask if they were able to accommodate Tucker and his wheelchair during their afternoon public skate. They were told “No.”
“I was angry,” Kari told the Hamilton Spectator. “It’s something we can do as a family … we’re limited in what we can do together.”
The city’s recreation manager later said that the employee who’d refused the Pattersons misunderstood the facility’s policy.
Just like Kari, you might be feeling angry. My initial emotion was also indignation – why would anyone deny a dying child?
Of course, the explanation is probably not that the employee was particularly stone-hearted or vicious. It’s probably not like the person who refused Kari’s request was an inherently bad person.
The official explanation is interesting, and worth repeating here:
‘The city’s recreation manager later said that the employeee who’d refused the Pattersons misunderstood the facility policy.’
So the official stance is that it was employee incompetence.
An easy enough explanation. I have a different theory, though. I believe that this blunder was a failure of the system; a fundamentally flawed system that relies not on human wisdom but on the appropriate execution of rules.
Let me explain this system before discussing my theory regarding the Patterson denial.
So we’re all familiar with this system – in every workplace, there’s things we can do, and things we cannot. A security guard is not allowed to let strangers into an office building. A volunteer at a hospital is not allowed to give advice to patients sitting in the waiting area. Potentially, a stranger asking to enter a private office at 9pm could be a miscreant capable of almost anything – stealing confidential information, sabotaging work, and the list goes on. Similarly, a volunteer at a public hospital might tell a patient with H1N1 that she just has the common cold and does not need medical attention. Both would be disasters.
But what is the probability of such disasters, especially when the security guard and volunteer both possess and exercise common sense – or as Aristotle put it, practical wisdom?
Barry Schwartz delivered a brilliant, brilliant lecture at TED last year on the loss of practical wisdom in modern civilization. (Video embedded at the end of the post.) He talked about how rules cripple individual decision making and effectively make people less HUMAN and more ROBOTIC. When people do not have the freedom to exercise common sense, they will make choices that may seem stupid in hindsight. We must, however, always remember the context of one’s actions in order to judge them, and the modern day context is this:
Times are tough. Things aren’t getting any cheaper, but jobs are increasingly harder to hold on to in modern day Civilization. In order to get and keep a job, you have to do your work well, and you can usually only prove that through quantifying it. The System understands this and thus has a set of rules whereby if you abide by each Rule, you get to have numbers backing you up everywhere. You have the Book, and as long as you play by the Book, you almost never get fired, because you didn’t break any Rule.
Now, why do we have these Rules? Well, because ‘common sense is not so common’! Because people’s judgment cannot be trusted, because people often make mistakes, because – perish the thought – they are HUMANS! Since humans have proven to be infinitely fallible in the past, and since human error accounts for so much grief and misery and death and destruction, Civilization has decided to take them out of the equation. There is no need for humans to think, because thinking can be dangerous!
Let’s return to Flamborough. You’re working a lowly job as a customer service associate at the community centre and you receive a call from a lady who’s asking if her little son, who is on a wheelchair, can skate with the public sometime soon. Now the rules you have are very specific: nothing but skates are allowed on the rink. The rules are quite simple:
Family Skate: Adults 18 years + and children up to a limit of 5 children per adult can enjoy skating at your local arena. No additional equipment permitted.
Now, given the information you have, knowing that this is a public skate program and that there will be other people participating in the activity this weekend, knowing also that this child is on a wheelchair which could potentially harm others or himself, knowing that you have no power to grant special, ‘out of the box’ privileges…do you take the risk and say yes?
It might seem obvious to us after the media hullabaloo and after knowing the specifics of Tucker’s situation – but perhaps back then things weren’t so clear. And it’s perfectly possible that the employee did not want to risk his/her job. I think the employee just took the ’safety-first’ option, which is what we’re all trained and instructed to do. However, ’safety-first’ does not always mean it is the best option. As Barry Schwartz puts it: rules prevent disaster, but they also assure mediocrity.
There’s an idiom in Urdu that aptly describes this situation: lakeer ke fakeer. Literally, "beggars of the line." What it translates to, and what it means, is "at mercy of the rules". I should add that it’s a derogatory term – someone who is a ‘lakeer ka fakeer’ usually lacks good judgment and is either stupid or incompetent. That’s not how the System is here, but by and large, people are constricted by rules and procedures.
Practical wisdom, as Aristotle defined it, is the combination of moral will, and moral skill. It is knowing when and how to make the exception of every rule-and it requires a) time, b) permission, and c) authority.
By and large, employees here are expected and almost forced to follow specific instructions when carrying out their work. No one likes it, but it spares one from thinking and simplifies matters in the effort to reduce risk. Unfortunately it also simplifies the mind and makes people dumber, I believe. Anyone who’s talked to customer service knows what I’m talking about.
"Why was I charged $5 for making a call if weekends are free?"
"Sir, the rule is that…."
I had the same experience interacting with universities – ask admissions counselors for advice, and in return you get the FAQs copy pasted in the reply. That is literally what happens. A student calls an art college to find out the admission requirements and whether she’s eligible, and she’s told to go to the website because ‘it has more information.’ What the person on the other end, advising a web visit, does not seem to realize is that the student probably obtained the number THROUGH the website and has probably ALREADY gone through a poorly designed but visually appealing information dump that helps only cookie-cutter cases.
We don’t live in a world of cookie-cutter solutions. We live in the world of context. Generalizations are 20th century – case-by-case,focused, personalized service is the way to go now. Mass production was replaced by mass customization years ago. Diversity today is not what diversity was in the ’60s. The old thinking paradigm must change – predefined systems are by definition outdated in most areas of implementation.
Let’s put the thinking caps back on.
Here’s a scenario to chew on. Please post responses in the comments.
James is a janitor at an office building. One night, he gets a visitor who says that he works in the building and has forgotten an important file in his office. He has a meeting in another city tomorrow morning and the last flight departs in one hour. What do you think James should do?
The answers I receive will be the basis for a future blog post; I already have received some rather interesting feedback. Please add your own!
(Additional request: please add your ethnic background.)
As promised, here’s Barry Schwarz on the loss of practical wisdom. I cannot recommend this talk enough. The lemonade story should, in particular, be extremely interesting.
This is in response to Tazeen’s latest blogpost: The disease of docility and deference. I began typing a comment but it just kept growing until I thought I should make it a blog post – self centered as I am, I would like to share my views with a wider audience (and would love to see the responses).
She talks about how the labor class in Pakistan suffers from an “inbred servility”, citing personal experience that recalled a protagonist in a book who had the desire to be a servant “hammered into his skull, nail by nail.” Her servant, upon hearing of Shazia Masih’s murder case, objected not to the physical abuse meted out to the servant, but to the carelessness of Shazia’s uncle who should have chosen a better employer. Tazeen refers to this as a disease of docility and deference.
My two cents are that it is a disease of docility, perhaps, but not of deference necessarily. What is inbred is not a desire to serve, at least not in my experience – I have interacted fairly widely with many from the labor class. Most of them have accepted their fate in life and carry on without complaining. Faisal Qureshi often makes the point that many Pakistanis are so inherently docile and accepting, that they rarely act to improve their lives. And for me this thinking is fatalistic and directly connected to the widespread misinterpretation of religion in the country. The poor thank Allah (swt) for whatever they have, consider themselves fortunate, and go to sleep praying for the best. They’ve been told that their destiny has been decided in advance already, so they can’t change much anyway. They have no powers, and the all-powerful Allah (swt) must have decided to make them suffer, so they suffer, mostly in silence.
In a way, it is wonderful to see the goodness of our people.
But everyone has limits, and once people are pushed far enough, they lose control. They riot on the streets when there’s no electricity, they burn tires when they hear of injustice meted out to ‘Muslim’ brethren in Palestine (many Christians are also suffering in Palestine), they swipe the gold bangles when they are left unattended. Cracking under the strain of constant struggle and oppression is understandable. Those who have been deprived of basic human rights all their lives will do everything to grab their share (often with deadly consequences) when they can.
That’s my most important point – when they CAN.
As Shehzad Roy noted in his excellent Laga Re video, only those deprived of opportunities (to be truly bad) are truly good. In Pakistan, many in the upper and middle-upper class systematically exploit those underneath and take advantage of their powerlessness. The same people who get slapped around by their employers can one day, if empowered, take vicious revenge. If not on the employer, then on someone else who represents ‘sahib’. This anger also fuels extremism and violence, I think, because the injustice provides a powerful catalyst to action that is redirected by power brokers (usually so-called religious leaders promoting extremism) who play the blame game, often suggesting that the root of evil is in other social classes, civilizations, cultures, and religions.
So two things that can be changed:
1) More people need to have the belief that with sustained and focused efforts, things can and will improve. They have to stop thinking that they are powerless, that they cannot change the status quo. Their self-belief will drive them to a better life, if only they HAD that self-belief to begin with. “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade” is indeed good advice, but not in the context of those who were given too little. Qismet Apne Haath Mein, indeed.
2) It is the elite class in Pakistan that needs to be thankful for what they have. It is the rich (like me and most probably the reader too) who should regularly thank Allah (swt) and try to splurge a little less. It is not the poverty-stricken who need to be afraid of being too greedy, but the already-stuffed filthy rich.
—
Disclaimer:
I am not knocking on Islam and the principle of being grateful for what Allah (swt) has blessed us with. Not at all. Islam does not promote the acceptance of injustice, it does not encourage fatalism at all. In fact, this article states:
“taqdir as used in the Qur’an stands for the latent possibilities Allah has invested in the nature of things; and it does not imply denying human beings the freedom of will or action.”
Read More: Marmaduke Pickthall’s 1927 lecture entitled The Charge of Fatalism.
Steve Jobs reveals the iPad-via Gdgt
I will neither join the fanboys nor bash Apple’s latest creation.
It clearly has more features stuffed into it than anything else on the market – and for a great price. Check out the specs, and if you’re sufficiently wowed and have the budget (yes to the former and no to the latter for me), go ahead, be one of the cool kids on the block!
It’s a typical thing of beauty, this iPad.
The design and accessories were always going to be sexy as hell, but the tremendous integration with maps and multimedia does leave one gobsmacked
And it has a HORRIBLE name. EPIC fail.
I mean, iTampon is trending like wildfire right now-and for good reason,too. Everyone is having a field day already.
Anyway. If you missed the show, check out the following liveblogs:
At least in Canada, anyway. And if you don’t count the tragedy in Haiti, because quite frankly, that’s not playing fair, no contest!
Yes, I was going to blog about how Pakistanis must donate to Haiti (and I will within the next 24 hours) but this story caught the eye and, well…welled it up.
Photo Credit: RON SCHEFFLER/THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR
So here you have Tucker Patterson, who has not yet reached his third birthday but is terminally ill with the rare Leigh disease.
He and his family are big hockey fans – so much so that he is himself named after Canadian (and former Leaf) Darcy Tucker.
He can’t play, though, for his motor functions have been devastated and he can neither walk, talk, or eat. His father’s dream of being a hockey dad seemed destined to remain simply a dream.
Especially when the family’s request to take Tucker onto the rink in their hometown of Hamilton was denied.
Enter the Maple Leafs, and hey presto, this morning was an emotional and joyous moment for the family as Tucker was rolled around the Air Canada Centre by his twin sister and beamed in delight as he was surrounded by superstar after superstar.
Watch the video here. (CBC – the CTV clip, the one I found better, is linked to below.)
Call me sappy, but there’s just something about a dying kid who gets his last wish fulfilled that makes me both incredibly happy and sad.
Look at this video by CTV. He’s smiling, and there’s the mother talking about how incredible this is for her because ‘I will never be able to walk him to school.’ She can’t stop her tears from shining in her eyes. The dad can’t stop smiling. Tucker can’t stop smiling. It’s a great story, and it’s a brilliant example of little acts of kindness that light up one’s day. Big businesses are not necessarily bad; in fact, to their credit, the Maple Leafs franchise hasn’t tried to pull any positive publicity and goodwill out of this. Nothing on their website. Just like Sylvia and Up; just a ray of sunshine.
Well done, Maple Leafs. And thank you.
I’m a little late with this blog, overtaken by various events and a deluge of emails. Nothing, however, compares with the deluge of grief and destruction currently overflowing in Haiti following the catastrophic magnitude 7.0 M earthquake nearly two weeks ago. Although many good efforts are underway to stem the tide of suffering, they are already beginning to slow down. The question now being asked on CNN: ‘Is Haiti just a passing fad?’ Donations at the American Red Cross are down by 50% already.
The onus is now on the media and celebrities, many of whom combined to raise over $58 million in the big Hope for Haiti telethon, to maintain public interest in Haiti. (Interestingly, some weren’t so eager to walk the talk and loosen purse strings.) It won’t be long before Haiti disappears from the news shows and people think the problem is resolved – they will be mistaken.
With over 3,000,000 people in Haiti affected (that’s more than the entire population of Toronto, for perspective) and 150,000 confirmed buried already, the scale of the problem is immense. Nearly $3 billion could be needed just for the relief efforts, and so far we’re just out of the emergency phase, says UN.
I’m highlighting two of the finest relief efforts underway in Haiti – both drawing from lessons in the Kashmir earthquake in 2005. The first of these is Medecins Sans Frontiers.
Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders)
A few days ago, Medecins Sans Frontiers contacted me with some information about their efforts in Pakistan and Haiti. They have been working tirelessly in Pakistan in assistance of the IDPs fleeing the conflict in Swat and Waziristan, and recently initiated a fresh effort to combat measles in Lower Dir.
One of the most powerful tools used by MSF in 2005 was the 1000-sq-ft inflatable hospital. These structures host two operating theaters and 100 beds, and are critically important in Haiti because the vast majority of building structures and medical facilities have been destroyed by the shockwaves. In these videos, you can see how the tents first used in Mansehra were then used in Gaza, Sri Lanka, and now in Haiti – a great use of technology indeed!
Video – Inflatable hospital used in Northern Areas of Pakistan
Video – Inflatable hospitals being used in Kashmir, Gaza, Sri Lanka
Inflatable hospital being used in Mansehra, Pakistan:
The same hospital being set up in Haiti:
The first inflatable hospital set up in Port au Prince:
The official MSF news update offers the following information:
Every functional operating theatre is used night and day, while logisticians are racing to set up new ones or rehabilitate damaged ones. MSF surgical teams have been carrying out an average of 130 operations per day for the last few days and this is increasing as new surgical teams start work. There are now 10 operating theatres, 7 in Port-au-Prince hospitals (Choscal, Trinité, Carrefour and Chancerelle hospitals) and 3 in towns in the west of the capital (Leogane and Jacmel). In addition, minor surgical procedures like cleaning and removing dead tissue from wounds are taking place in small operating theatres in Trinité and Pacot hospitals.
Watch the video of the hospital setup:
(Videos and images provided courtesy Pascale Zintzen, MSF Communications Advisor)
———-
How to Help
You can contribute to my personal fundraising effort for the Canadian Red Cross by going to this page and using your credit card or PayPal to donate whatever amount you can afford. Even a penny helps.
http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=807594&LangPref=en-CA
In my next post, I’m going to highlight why Pakistanis in particular should help Haiti and the effort so far.
Last week, David Eaves gave a thought-provoking (and yes, inspiring) lecture on how the Canadian government should change in the age of social media; how the Internet has created new:
1) Ways of organizing
2) Expectations
3) Structures
He moved onto a discussion of the long tail of public policy: the gist being that the intrinsic knowledge, skills, and experience in the silo-structured government is less than the collective extrinsic knowledge, skills, and experience of the citizenry. One of the examples used was Mozilla, presented as a citizen-led response to a regulatory crisis. Internet Explorer was a buggy, painful experience monopolizing the market until it was Firefoxed away from that perch – driven largely by frustrated developers and open source.
Credit: David Eaves
A Pakistani example immediately came to my mind: the state of ambulances in Karachi, where the vast majority of service is provided not by the government, but by NGOs such as Edhi Foundation and Chhipa Welfare Association. The best part: these NGOs are established, funded, and managed solely by Karachiites. They are both a source of income for hundreds of wonderful local citizens but also a source of relief to a nation that is continually ignored by its elected leaders. Completely citizen-created, completely citizen-driven. The long tail whipping into action out of unfortunate necessity. The leaders are busier writing about reform than actually enacting any of it, you see.
The exception is the Khidmat-e-Khalq foundation run by the MQM; it used to be in operation even before the MQM took over the (official) administration of the city.
In a city where ten years ago, most Karachiites did not (or could not) even use ambulances, many are now provided with dozens of services without any obligation to pay (donors bear the costs). The everyday heroes here live in brick homes but risk their lives to save injured others – and that is why my second inspiration for 2010 is the community of welfare workers in underprivileged areas, led by men such as Abdul Sattar Edhi and Ramzan Chhipa in Karachi.
These brilliant philanthropists are, however, almost celebrities in Pakistan now; the class I would like to highlight is exemplified by Mehboob, an Edhi ambulance driver who leads a life that is enriched by his contributions to humanity and purified by its very simplicity.
Credit to Dawn News for producing this package; I say again, they’re doing a great job.
See Also: Part I
Usually, after the final of an international football tournament, YouTube clips and highlight reels on mass media focus on goals scored, post-match celebrations, and star players. But after the Club World Cup final in Abu Dhabi a few weeks ago, the cameras and Spanish media were focused on a balding man sobbing uncontrollably in his palms.
It was Joseph ‘Pep’ Guardiola, the boy from Santpedor who grew up as a ball boy at the Camp Nou, then joined the Barcelona football academy at La Masia, became the fulcrum and captain of Johann Cruyff’s Dream Team in the 1990s (the precursor to modern-day Xavi) and went on to coach FC Barcelona to…no less than SIX titles in a single calendar year. It is a world record that will probably not be broken in our lifetimes – an achievement unsurpassed by any team before in football’s long and distinguished history.
That game against Estudiantes provides a perfect example of the many reasons behind the Blaugrana’s extraordinary success last year: champions are made of grit, talent, luck, organization, and inspiration, and this team is no exception. It had everything in spades, and as the year continued, pieces of the jigsaw kept falling into place.
Grit
A key characteristic differentiating Frank Rijkaard’s 2008 outfit and Pep Guardiola’s 2009 team is that the latter has an incredible aura of self belief and a will to win that has triumphed over many a stubborn parked bus. Although the Blaugrana are at their best when they score an early goal, they have conceded goals at crucial times often enough, but even more crucially, they have fought back with immense determination every single time. It was Andres Iniesta’s injury time screamer that enabled Barcelona to stride past Chelsea into the Champions League Final in April, and in December, Pedro Gonzalez and Lionel Messi were on hand to score the equalizer and winner, respectively. Reportedly, Guardiola told assistant coach Tito Vilanova that the team would win La Liga almost exactly one year ago, in a 3-2 win forgotten in the mists of Pamplona. The 6-1 drubbings Barcelona handed out last year only confirmed their…
Talent
The best player in the world, Messi. The best central midfield pairing in the world, Xavi and Iniesta. A Highbury legend, Thierry Henry. One of the best fullbacks in the world, Daniel Alves. This team of champions was made up of, quite literally, individual champions. To take one example, Seydou Keita, who is not even an automatic starter in the side, was captain of French giants Lens for two years before moving to La Liga. It was an almost obscene collection of attacking talent, but as Real Madrid’s failed Los Galacticos era proved, teams are not collections of extravagantly gifted players, but well organized groups that have synergy.
Organization
The tremendous individual skills of every single squad member enables Barcelona to play a uniquely attacking style which revolves around pass-and-move triangles and always, always lines up as 4-3-3. The roles are clearly defined too: for example, there is a left wing outlet (usually Henry), a defensive midfielder (man-mountain Yaya Toure) and a deep-lying playmaker (Xavi, arguably the world’s finest). Within that constrained system, players are given a freedom of expression that elevated football into a Catalan art form last season. Almost every player could play multiple roles and frequently did so; one of the most fervent debates in fan clubs was whether Iniesta should play on the left wing or center midfield. It didn’t matter much as far as the team was concerned, because each player knew his job intimately well. Xavi was quoted saying that many times, he made passes without looking, knowing that the position would be covered by someone. Those passes often went to either Dani Alves or Lionel Messi, who provided the spark.
Inspiration
Every great team has at least one great player; Barcelona was lucky to have many. Against teams resolutely prepared only to defend and not interested in playing football, it took magic to turn the tide; a shoulder-shake by Messi, an outrageous piece of control by Samuel Eto’o, goals fashioned out of five consecutive one-touch passes, a diving header by Keita where he seemingly forgot that goalposts exist and almost hit steel instead of ball – but he was too busy celebrating the goal. Even benched veterans got into the act; the Copa Del Rey victory’s key was a Jose Manuel Pinto penalty save where he indicated to the confused striker where he would dive.
Luck
Of course, though, there are times when beauty alone could not win the day; there are times when Lady Luck’s smile swung matches: balls bouncing to Blaugrana feet instead of the opposition, referees missing slight offsides, the infamous penalties at Stamford Bridge, and a few more. However, as Ernest Hemingway has said, one makes their own luck. Fortune did not place those titles in the Camp Nou trophy cabinet; it was a combination of the elements detailed above that led to success.
That combination was effected by none other than Pep Guardiola, initially doubted for his inexperience but later hailed for his ability to connect with superstars and transform them. Lionel Messi was always destined to be a legend, but it was Guardiola who paired him with Alves throughout the season and then, in a tactical masterstroke, moved him to a faux-center forward position in the two most important games of the year to leave the opponent’s plans in disarray. It was Guardiola who repeatedly warned against complacency and disciplined the team so tightly that players were fined for arriving to practice only five minutes late. And finally, it was Pep’s pep talk before the CWC final that enabled his men to win the only trophy they had never won before:
“Gentlemen, if you lose today you will continue to be the best in the world – but if you win today you will be eternal.”
