GUARDIOLA... Defence improving too

Defence improving too

It’s not just up front where Guardiola’s teams have shone though, as they have also continued to improve their defensive record. In the first season under Guardiola, the team averaged 0.88 goals conceded per game, a figure that has dropped to 0.61 this season, after an impressive 0.66 last year.

401 GOALS UNDER GUARDIOLA

401 goals under Guardiola

Marc Guillén

Guardiola’s Barça have taken just two and a half seasons to pass the 400 goal mark –notching up 401 goals in 157 official games. Under Guardiola’s stewardship the team have continued to improve their goal scoring figures year on year.

Saturday January 29th 2011: Messi picks up the ball in front of the Hercules box and although Alves is free down the right, he decides to go it alone and hits a great strike past the keeper. That goal finishes off the hosts’ hopes and also makes it 400 goals under Guardiola. 97 seconds later, the world number 1 made it 0-3 with the 401st.

More goals than ever Guardiola’s teams have always recorded great goal scoring figures, but this season they have surpassed their own superlative standards. During the 2008/09 season, when they won the treble, they averaged 2,54 goals a game and last year that slipped a little to 2,33 before bouncing back to an astonishing 2.91 so far this season.

Messi leads the charge Guardiola’s leading scorer is Messi, with 122 goals, followed by Pedro with 42, Eto’o with 36, Henry on 30 and then Bojan with 26.

More goals in La Liga It’s the La Liga competition where Guardiola’s team’s fire power has been most evident, with an average of 2,78 goals a game, compared to 2,25 in the Cup and 2,12 in the Champions League.

Welcome. FC BARCELONA's Blog. FC Barcelona, MES QUE UN CLUB

MORE THAN A CLUB

The slogan “more than a club” is open-ended in meaning.

It is perhaps this flexibility that makes it so appropriate for defining the complexities of FC Barcelona’s identity, a club that competes in a sporting sense on the field of play, but that also beats, every day, to the rhythm of its people’s concerns.

FC Barcelona is “more than a club” in Catalonia because it is the sports club that most represents the country and is also one of its greatest ambassadors. Also, for different reasons, FC Barcelona is “more than a club” for many people living elsewhere in Spain, who see Barça as a staunch defender of democratic rights and freedom.

Today, football has become a global phenomenon, and support for Barcelona has spread spectacularly around the world. The number of club members from outside of Catalonia and Spain is increasing daily, and the club wants to respond to that show of passion for Barça. This has developed into a need and an obligation. And the best way for the club to do that has been to take a step further and become “more than a club around the world” as well. This Barça that is so concerned for its people needs to be globalised. This caring and humanitarian Barça needs to be globalised. It is a strategic decision that is in keeping with the club’s history and the way that football is continuing to develop on a worldwide basis.

That is why the club has decided to contribute 0.7 per cent of its ordinary income to the FC Barcelona Foundation in order to set up international cooperation programmes for development, supports the UN Millennium Development Goals and has made a commitment to Unicef’s humanitarian aid programs through the donation of one and a half million euros for the next five years and now wears the Unicef logo on its shirts. An agreement that has made Barça unique.
Click here to find out about the historical background to 'more than a club'