The Player

Oscar Garcia Junyent was a very promising La Masia player who came from Sabadell at the age of 9, and played for every single Spanish NT Youth team, but ended up not getting many chances on his first four years with the first team due to the fact it was the Dream Team era, and even though he was seen as Bakero’s successor.

So he was loaned out to Albacete, where he spent the 1994-1995 season, and did well enough return to FC Barcelona and play a relevant role on the 1995-1996 season, where he ended up scoring 10 goals from 11 matches, and lost the real possibility of a Triplete (Liga, Copa and UEFA Cup) on the last 2 weeks of the season.

Even though Johan Cruijff, his biggest inspiration and the person who instilled in him the way to see the game, the style and the philosophy he liked and was part at, had left, Oscar remained on the squad until he decided to leave for Valencia in 1999, where he stayed for one season, scored beautiful goals, but was never a fit with the team’s physical style. He then went to Espanyol, where he played from 2000-2004 with several ex-La Masia players, including his brother, Roger. He retired Lleida, due to recurring injuries, when he was 32 years old.

Oscar’s playing style was once described as “A 6 who could play as a 4, but had the ability to attack like an 8 and could finish like a 9”, which means he could run and organize the team, but could also be a pivote, and had the ability to dribble and enter the area, while being a good finisher. A useful midfielder for the FC Barcelona system, a player Cruijff believed in. Oscar could interpret the games, was very intelligent, could read the spaces well, was very technically gifted and could play 1-2s with anyone. You could say he suffered from the same fate Thiago Alcantara went through at FCB: a midfielder that could literally play anywhere and was certainly good enough, but the lack of time and tries to find the perfect spot never really turned him into a vital part of the team. But the fans always remember him as a La Masia player that, even though never gave them all they hope he would, was always capable of providing something useful to the team, and the Camp Nou could always notice that.

Here’s what Oscar said about his playing career in 2014: “Oscar the coach would not pick Oscar the player. I made a mistake when I was a player because I thought I knew everything. It was too easy for me and that was a big mistake. I had a lot of talent and maybe I thought I didn’t have to work as hard. I do not want to repeat that mistake as a manager. Everybody said I could have been so much better, but as a manager I will be, I will be the best I possibly can”.

The Coach

From 2005 until 2009, Oscar actually thought he was gonna be a pundit, but really we has already taking notes of several matches he watched. Football, and the philosophy he was brought up in, was actually what he liked. After these 4 transitional years from player to coach, he enrolled in a course to get his coaching credentials.

At first, he was the Catalunya’s NT U-18 team, and then Johan Cruijff himself invited him to be his assistant on the NT’s first team. Later on, and with the required credentials, he returned to La Masia and became the  Juvenil A’s coach for the 2010-11 season. At the end of 2011, he was finally a professional football coach.

He spent 2 seasons there, winning titles with the Juvenil A team. After the first season, where the team won everything available (3 out of 3 titles, only 3 defeats in 50 matches, more than 100 goals scored), and he coached and developed players like Deulofeu, Icardi, Rafinha and Dongou, he was chosen as the coach to replace Luis Enrique on Barça B.

But that choice that had been made by sporting factors was overruled in the offices of the Presidency, who never actually liked having someone so close to Cruijff under their ranks. That’s when Eusebio became Barça B’s coach. But Oscar Garcia remained at the club.

On his second year there, he suffered greatly. He was often starved of his best players by Eusebio, and most of these players ended up not playing in either side. That way, Oscar Garcia could not compete and lost on the Next Gen Series and on the Juvenil A Liga. On the day the Juvenil A was knocked out of the European competition by Ajax, not a single board member went down the dressing room to compliment the kids…
Even though he was unhappy, he was told by Zubizarreta that Eusebio would leave Barça B, so he stayed until the end of the 2011-12 season as Juvenil A coach under that promise. And he was lied to. Eusebio would be renewed a month later, and again Oscar would be starved of players. He ended up losing the Liga on the last match day. Eusebio had taken Dongou from him, and didn’t even use the player on Barça B. Then Oscar finally realized he had to leave, that the way he saw football and his closeness to Cruijff was hurting him inside his own club, the club that owes its greatest successes to Johan…

After being mistreated for a whole season, in a way he could not even work properly with his players, the press even had the nerve to say Oscar was the one who could not deal with the club and not even the players. Classy. This board and the press never liked him for his personality, his views and his friends. Being a great coach did not change that.

Oscar then went to Israel, to coach Maccabi after being invited by Jordi Cruijff, and managed to win the League for the first time in 10 years. And he did while applying the system he was raised as a footballer, the system he could learn from Cruijff himself. Even the adversaries would come up to him to congratulate for how the Maccabi was playing, and some teams were even trying to do the same. And the Israeli NT, who didn’t use to call up any Maccabi player, now was calling 5-6 of his players. Besides that, the NT itself was inspired by the brand of football Oscar had taken to the Middle East.

The year was very successful, but Oscar missed his family and left Israel.

After his success in Israel, Oscar Garcia took the reins at Brighton for the 2013-2014, and managed to take them to the Championship Play-Offs, but was knocked off on the semi-finals, and finished the league on the 6^th position.

In June/2014, he went back to Maccabi, but left the country due to the conflicts near Gaza. In September/2014 he signed with Watford, but only stayed there for a month, since he had health issues.

He has since recovered and now works as a pundit in Spain, working for radios and writing for some newspapers. He’ll soon resume coaching.

Here are some quotes from Oscar regarding his playing style and philosophy:

“You need the ball, but also know what to do with it. The ball has to run, but it doesn’t mean that the player has to run as much as it, even though it’s evident the player must be very well prepared to enter such dynamic. You need a physical work with a great focus on the mentality. You must be really prepared for it, but also willing to give your best for this idea. When you see how the players respond is when you know you got things right”.

“You get things right as a coach and leader when you see the players are involved. They are always positive around you. You can ask them for 10, and they give you 12. You can notice it on their eyes when they arrive for training. And when the training session is done, there are some who stay to “practice”. Such things, small details, are what matters the most when the actual match starts. And I was raised like that, since I was in La Masia”.

When asked if he would ever coach FCB’s first team in 2013: “Nobody knows that right now. If I’ve learned something is not to build castle out of air. If they ask me if I wanted to, the answer is evident. It wouldn’t be for the money or the prestige or anything else: being considered to coach the club of your life is priceless. If that ever comes to happen, I can’t tell. I have no idea. Sometimes, life changes around you in a second. And someone opens a door you never even knew was there”.