Jordi Cruyff: ‘Barcelona is still special, players will lose money to be here’

“In the end, there is relief,” Jordi Cruyff says. “There’s a ‘pfff, thank goodness’. And if the signings then fit in and play well, you get a feeling of a job well done.”

There was a minute to go before midnight on deadline day, clock running, when the paperwork finally arrived and Barcelona at last knew they could register Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, somehow securing a fourth January signing. Six weeks later, he scored twice and gave an assist for Ferran Torres, another winter arrival, in a 4-0 destruction of Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu. It was Aubameyang’s ninth goal since joining, Barcelona’s 12th game without defeat, a new start. A job well done, indeed.

It is not an easy job, one where decisions have to be made that can “break your heart”, and still less in the midst of a crisis such as the one Barcelona must fix; it is also a job Cruyff has only occupied since 1 September when he became sporting adviser, later named director of international football, now effectively de facto technical secretary, working alongside Xavi Hernández and the director of football, Mateu Alemany, on transfers. But the preparation goes back further – he has been player, coach, sporting director – and so does the inspiration.

He talks eloquently about learning from Sir Alex Ferguson, a man “ahead of his time”, “ruthless” but “humane”, even if he didn’t always realise those were lessons then. And his father Johan, who died six years ago on Thursday and would have been 75 this year, was the most influential figure football has seen. A legacy is left through Cruyff’s foundation, celebrating its quarter century, and in just about everything else. Nowhere is it felt more than here; no one feels it more than him.

Johan built the modern