Guillermo Amor Looks Back on Legendary Career at Barcelona | OneFootball

One of the most decorated players to ever don the blaugrana stripes, Guillermo Amor sits down with us to reflect on his playing days at FC Barcelona.

Lionel Messi. Xavi Hernández. Andrés Iniesta. Gerard Piqué. Carles Puyol. Sergio Busquets. Jordi Alba. Pedro Rodríguez. Víctor Valdés. What do these players all have in common? They’ve all gone from plying their trade in Barcelona’s famed La Masia academy to establishing themselves as club legends for FC Barcelona.

There is already a litany of homegrown stars who have etched their name into Barcelona’s history books, and between Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsí, Fermín López, Gavi, Alejandro Balde, Eric García, Gerard Martín and Marc Casadó, it seems that list is only going to grow in the coming years. However, the very first academy graduate to establish himself as a Blaugrana icon was none other than Guillermo Amor Martínez.

Born in Benidorm, Spain on December 4, 1967, Amor started his footballing development with a number of local sides like Benidorm Club de Fútbol before earning a week-long trial with Barcelona in January 1980 at the age of 12. At the time, La Masia was just three months old, with Barcelona taking an old country residence that had been built in 1702 and remodeling it as a dormitory for young players who were coming from other areas of Spain and seeking a permanent base in Catalunya.

“I had a happy childhood in Benidorm, a small town in the province of Alicante,” said Amor in an exclusive Urban Pitch interview. ” I came to Barcelona at a very young age, but I’ve been here ever since. So many years have passed, and naturally, a lot of things have changed. Nothing is the same with the city of Barcelona or the club’s facilities or La Masia, everything keeps getting bigger.”

Amor made his unofficial senior debut on September 23, 1982, when he replaced Diego Maradona on the day of the Miniestadi’s inauguration (the home of Barcelona B, Juvenil A, and Barcelona’s women’s team until 2019). He would have to wait another six years before making his competitive debut against Catalan rivals Espanyol, paving the way for a breakthrough 1988-89 campaign that saw become one of the first names on the team sheet of Johan Cruyff. He scored 13 goals in 36 appearances, and won the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, Barcelona’s first European trophy since 1982.

“From the age of 20 onwards, that’s when I started to become part of the Barcelona first team with the arrival of Johan Cruyff,” Amor said. “The truth is, from starting at 20 years of age to having to leave the team at 30 years of age, those were 10 fantastic years of great experiences and unique moments. We had a lot of fun doing what we loved most.

“It’s a job, but for us it was fun, and it was a daily routine of training and having a great time. Things went well, we achieved a lot of great things and played good football that people enjoyed watching. It was important for us to restore the enthusiasm of the Barcelona fans. From 30 years of age onwards, there have been a lot of other stages of football outside of Barcelona and returning home in other roles, as well as working at the club in other positions. All of this I value everything very positively.”

At the time, FC Barcelona were in the doldrums, watching helplessly as arch rivals Real Madrid dominated Spanish football with an iron fist. Nicknamed La Quinta del Buitre (The Vulturé’s Cohort), Emilio ‘El Buitre’ Butragueño, Manolo Sanchís, Rafael Martín Vázquez, Míchel and Miguel Pardeza graduated from Real Madrid’s La Fábrica academy and become crucial in Los Blancos winning five straight league titles from 1986 to 1990.

Unlike Real, who had already accumulated six European Cups before Amor was even born, Barcelona had never lifted the biggest trophy on the continent. They came within inches of breaking their hex in 1986, only to end up drawing 0-0 to Steaua București in Sevilla and losing 4-2 on penalties. Little did they know it, but Barcelona were about to flip the script and return to the apex.

“For all of us Culés who feel the Barcelona colors and love the club, it was important to restore the enthusiasm,” Amor said. “It was a little bit about trusting ourselves, our football, and becoming a club with a winning mentality again. There used to be always many doubts with Barcelona, there were many seasons where they didn’t win anything, and then Cruyff’s arrival introduced a new way of playing and caught everyone’s attention, even the fans, with a very risky, offensive system of play that sought to dominate but also treat it as a game.

“This is football, it’s supposed to be fun, it’s what we all love to do since we were little, and that’s why we always enjoy it so much. And now that we have the opportunity to do it at a much higher level, we want to try to command possession, open up the field and creating chances down the flanks. It’s the kind of football where you might have 2-3 wins followed by 3-4 losses, because when you play with so much risk, you can lose, but the ideas took hold and started to go well, we started winning titles, and little by little, people started to believe and become overjoyed to come to the stadium and cheer.”

Amor enjoyed a strong sophomore campaign in 1989-90 that saw him score eight goals and an assist in 42 appearances, none more important than his opening goal in the 68th minute of the Copa del Rey Final. Julio Salinas would double the lead in the final minutes to secure a 2-0 win at Mestalla against defending champions Real Madrid. This proved the turning point for Barcelona, who would win the next four league titles under Cruyff.

“In those years, the Quinta del Buitre era of Real Madrid was in full swing, but after beating Real in the cup final, the club’s mentality grew a lot,” Amor said. “You saw us on the pitch and immediately thought ‘These guys know how they play,’ because we knew where our teammates were right away and could easily play one-touch or two-touch football and always had a clear plan.

“We’ve seen so many like Pep [Guardiola] try to make this work elsewhere and defend these ideas of wanting to play well, wanting to win with a certain philosophy and style…I think that the vast majority of people who were around Johan have put that into practice. So many different coaches like Pep, Johan and Luis Enrique have come and gone and kept the bar very high with what they’ve achieved. The pressure is very high as everyone in the Barcelona fanbase want the club to win, but above all, to win in a certain way. Playing beautiful football is one thing, but above all, it’s about being clear on how we play.”

With Amor running the show in midfield, Barcelona’s ‘Dream Team’ dominated domestic and European football and reached the zenith in 1992, when they won their first European Cup after beating Sampdoria in the final. However, after back-to-back finishes outside the top two, Barcelona opted to move on from Cruyff and appointed Bobby Robson, who won three trophies in his only season with the club, but not the league title. Louis van Gaal came in 1998, and won two La Liga trophies to go along with a Copa del Rey and UEFA Super Cup in his three years at the helm.

Amor proved essential every step of the way, emerging as an instrumental figure in midfield for club and country, competing in the 1996 EUROs and 1998 World Cup and scoring 4 goals for Spain. The summer of 1998 was a pivotal moment for Amor, who made his 37th and final cap for La Roja, and who called it quits on his Barcelona adventure after nearly two decades with the club. He departed as the most successful player in Barcelona history with five league titles, three Copa del Rey titles, two UEFA Super Cups, two UEFA Cup Winners’ Cups, four Supercopa de España titles, and one historic Champions League title.

After a legendary spell that saw him score 68 goals and 12 assists in 421 appearances, Amor spent two years with Italian side Fiorentina before returning home and joining Villarreal, helping the Yellow Submarine stake out their presence in the top-flight, followed by a brief swan song with Scottish outfit Livingston. Since hanging up his boots in 2003, Amor has spent the majority of his post-playing career with FC Barcelona, apart from his coaching spell at Australian side Adelaide United.

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He’s worked a number of different roles at Barcelona like Head of Youth Football, Technical Director of Football Training, and Head of Institutional and Sports Relations for the first team, which he occupied from October 2017 until his dismissal in July 2021. However, at 58 years of age, he isn’t quite itching for a fifth spell at the Blaugrana club.

“I don’t think about [returning to Barcelona],” said Amor in an RG interview. “I have a back-and-forth experience with them; I came for four years and left for three, then came back for four years and left for three, and then came back again. At 58 years of age, you’re at an age where you think, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ Right now, I prefer to live in the moment and enjoy what I do. I wake up in the morning and feel good. Nothing’s wrong with me; I’m fine, I’m healthy, I’m strong, and I’m eager to work and help my son’s business grow little by little. I’m really enjoying watching football in every way, especially the youth teams, and what’s meant to be will be. But right now I’d rather not think about it too much.”

Guillermo Amor: A Q&A

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Urban Pitch: What’s your favorite Barcelona kit ever?

Guillermo Amor: Blaugrana. There have been so many kits over the years, but there’s one Blaugrana color. There were times when we didn’t need to wear other colors because it was easy to spot and it distinguished well from the others, and as long as I wore these colors, I liked it. Now, it’s true that some models have been nicer than others, so I couldn’t tell you exactly what our era was. We had some beautiful ones like from Meyba, which was one of the first, and Kappa, which we wore for a short time, and there was one that also had little buttons here like a red cape border, which we played in some competitions, that was pretty too. There were some that were really good.

What was it like playing under Johan Cruyff?

You may see other teams where a player gets the ball and starts looking for someone and can’t find anyone, and we were very clear about that. Especially from the beginning with Johan, it was very positional football. We knew each player: the No. 4 was very far in front of the defense, the Nos. 8 and 10s were positioned inside the forwards, the No. 6 was in front of defense, and the No. 9 was holding the ball high up the pitch and releasing his wingers into wide areas, we automatically knew what we had to do, we knew where our colleagues were, even without looking. It was fantastic in every way.

Lastly, what’s the greatest Barcelona midfield of all time?

I don’t like to compare us to teams from other eras because Barcelona has always had great squads and great midfields before us, and the players from the ’60s were not like those of the ’70s or ’80s. Barcelona has always had good teams, even though some years they’ve played poorly and others less so, because football has evolved and changed, but we’ve gotten used to Barcelona playing good football.

I think there have always been very good footballers at Barça, but not only in midfield. Of course, because it’s a position where they also produces many homegrown players from their youth academy, midfielders as well as other players like fullbacks, center backs, goalkeepers and wingers like Lamine Yamal, although the one position where they can struggle to produce players is the No. 9. They want a striker who’s already consolidated himself and who’s going to score 30-40 goals, not someone from the academy who’s going to have some teething issues, they’re always looking to sign the best.