Beautiful football earns new fans for clubs

Barcelona won legions of new admirers with their breathtaking football last season, but they were not the only European team to set tongues wagging about the quality of their play.

Expansive, attacking football garnered plaudits and trophies across the continent, with Barcelona’s 2-0 victory over defending champions Manchester United in the Champions League final the crowning moment of a season in which beauty frequently triumphed over brawn.

Barca, steered by 38-year-old former captain Pep Guardiola in his debut season as a coach, were the standard-bearers, winning an unprecedented haul of Spanish league, King’s Cup and Champions League.

A brand of football based on aggressive pressing in the opposition half and quick, incisive passing saw them eviscerate teams from Munich to Mallorca, but Guardiola revealed that their high-octane style had as much to do with their shortcomings as their strengths.

“Without the ball we are a horrible team,” he said. “We need the ball, so we pressed high up the pitch to win the ball back early.”

The results were astonishing.

In all competitions they amassed a total of 158 goals, with their feted front three of France forward Thierry Henry, Cameroon hitman Samuel Eto’o and dazzling Argentine winger Lionel Messi scoring more goals between them (97) than any team in any of Europe’s major leagues.

Barca’s stellar success spelled misery for their fierce rivals Real Madrid, but even the Spanish league’s runners-up notched an eye-catching 83 league goals after embarking on an 18-game unbeaten run in mid-season that almost upset the Barcelona trophy procession.

Atletico Madrid, meanwhile, secured fourth place and Champions League qualification with a run of eight wins in their last nine games that owed much to the league-high 32 goals of Uruguayan international Diego Forlan.

It was not only in Spain, however, that attacking football was given free rein.

In Germany, Felix Magath’s Wolfsburg roared to a first Bundesliga title in their history thanks to an attacking formula that saw them net 80 league goals.

“Magath gave his artists a framework in which they could let loose – with an idea of fast attacking football, with hungry and able players, with a hard training regime,” wrote German daily Tagesspiegel.

Their title triumph was built on a tremendous late-season burst of form, in which strikers Edin Dzeko of Bosnia and Brazilian Grafite came to the fore.

The pair’s 54 goals broke the 37-year-old record for a strike partnership set by Bayern Munich pair Gerd Muller and Uli Hoeness in 1971-72, but owed much to the promptings of Bosnian playmaker Zvjezdan Misimovic.

Playmakers like Misimovic were in vogue across Europe, with Yoann Gourcuff inspiring Bordeaux to their first French title for 10 years, while in England the deployment of Steven Gerrard in a more advanced role took Liverpool to within inches of their first league crown since 1990.

Brazilian maestro Diego earned a lucrative move to Italian giants Juventus after inspiring Werder Bremen to glory in the German Cup and a place in the UEFA Cup final, where they were beaten by another team based on Brazilian flair in the form of Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk.

“My philosophy is to build teams, to educate players, to try to bring through young players,” said Shakhtar’s 63-year-old Romanian coach Mircea Lucescu after his side’s 2-1 victory.

“It’s a big passion and I will do it for as long as I can.”

As this summer’s transfer merry-go-round swings into motion it is the sport’s star attackers – Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo and Franck Ribery among them – who are generating all the headlines, and it is hardly surprising after a season in which attack was firmly established as the way forward.