Bobby Robson: Under Pressure

"Johna (Cruyff) will tell you that, they'll all tell you that, and after two years I'll probably say it too, because it is what it is: it's a giant, a phenomenal club. You've got 100,000 people at the game and the pressure of the press and the rivalry with Athlético and real and everybody wants to beat you and....GRRRRR!"

He lets out a growl, as if to say:it's a jungle out there. 2So, it's white-hot. But the other side is that if you get good results, then it's the best job int he world."

It's early days in his first season with Barcelona, but Robert William Robson has enough behind him to know what kind of terrain lies ahead. For 45 of his 63 years, he's been in professional football. The son of a coal miner in north-east England, he was signed by Fulham at the age of 17 and went on to play for the national team some 20 times over the course of his 17-year career. He made his managerial reputation by taking modest Ipswich Town club to the top. Then followed an ardulous, mixed, eight-year stretch as England manager. More recently ,he's been at PSV Eindhover, Sporting Lisbon and Oporto with further successes.

And right now, he's settling into an interview after a morning Barça training session - the usual Camp Nou training scene of swarming fans, souvenir sellers and photographers. Not to mention million-dollar players wherever you look, even if there are a few absences today owing to international commitments.

"This is a problem we'll have regularly," says Robson and then joking: "We create a monster and the monster eats itself! By having excellence within the team, we create new problems for ourselves." This monstrous team, rebuilt in scarcely a few weeks with an investment of 5,300 million pessetas, is in sharp contrast when compared with Robson's tranquil days at Ipswich Town.

"My baby" is what he calls Ipswich, with unconcealed fondness. "I was there 13 years, we didn't have much money to spend and it was all based on developing our own players. The board knew that it was a long-term policy and they were very patient people. Like everyobdy, they wanted to win. But if we lost, it wasn't a disaster. They prided themselves on the fact that they had never sacked a manger, they had never actually in mid-contract said to the guy, OUT!"

The point being that, in the end, Ipswich did win: in Robson's last five years they won an FA cup, a UEFA cup and twice finished second in the League. So could some clubs these days learn from the Ipswich attitude to managers?

"Yeah, they forget about it. The demand for success is paramount and the pressure is incredible now and many times it comes not from within but from without, from the media. And they cause the panic, because they convince the public."

The attitude sounds a little cynica, but he's speaking from bitter experience. Even the football encyclopedias append their brief biographies with a mention of the "incessant hounding by the tabloid press" that Robson suffered while in charge of the England side. When he talks about these later jobs (managing England, the three European clubs and now Barcelona) you almost get a picture of the football coach as a politician, juggling pressures and public opinion.

"The England job is a special job, it's 12 very big and important games per year, where the pressure is intense. On the other hand, club football is a weekly situation. And the thing about that is that you can play one game and you can lose it, and three or seven days later you can wipe that out because you play again and you can win. So immediately people forget about the last result, they only remember the next one, you've won it. When you're with a national tream, you might lose and you might not play again for six weeks, so you have that defeat on you for six weeks."

But Barça, says Robson, is another story, because of its sheer size. "So the pressure in Barcelona is almost equal to what I had with England, where every game was very important, 12 times a year. Here, it's 60 times a year.

"If you ask me what the job in Barcelona is about I'll tell you: it's winning football games. Win football games and you've got a job and you have a nice life. Lose them and your life is going to be quite hectick, I think."

Was coming to Barcelona a difficult decision then? "No, not at all. I knew what I was coming to. One day they rang me and said that Johan was leaving, they wanted someone urgently and they'd chosen me. And I said, 'I'll be there'. It happened at the...momento correcto."

And he came. And, as his injection Castilian into the conversation suggests, one of his new challenges is a new language. The moment the subject is raised, it's Robson who becomes the interviewer. "Do you speak Spanish? Fluently?" he asks with genuine curiosity. For himself, he says that there is an international footbal terminology that gets him by on the training field - he uses a kind of Portuguese-Castilian-English mixture - and anything more complicated he leaves to his interpreters. But is he studying?

"Yes, but the trouble is..." he sighs, and runs through his busy schedule for the day. "By the time you get home at eight o'clock, you can't study. Your brain's gone. But I'll have to make the time. How long did it take you?"

As for that home life, Bobby Robson lives with his wife Elsie and has three grown-up sons, all working in London. He plays golf when he can't find the time, and when he can't , his usual escape route is via a book. "Wilbur Smith, James Michener, Leon Uris, that sort of thing."

This is the man who is taking Barça's team into the future. A future which, Robson agrees, has recently been altered substantially by the Bosman ruling, the European Court judgment that opened the floodgates to buying foreign players. One thing he says he's concerned about is continuity for clubs trying to develop a team - taking the point of view that it's the clubs that need more protection, as players will try to move around and make more money in a fluid market.

"What you will find is once a club makes up its mind, it will pay a lot of money and, you know, those players are going to have to say, okay, I will sign a long-term contract - like in Ronaldo's and Vitor Baía's case, they both signed eight-year contracts."

But, what about the danger of a club like Barcelona losing its Catalan identity? "Yes, you've got to be careful: make sure that the basis of your team is Catalonian or Spanish and add to it I think sensible clubs will do that - protect their identity."

So, two years down the track, when Bobby Robson's cotnract expires, where will F.C. Barcelona be? The trophy that sparkles with the most lustre for Robson is, predictably, the Champion's League. To play in that European competition next year, Barça must win the Spanish League in 1996-97, above all other priorites. "That's the object. I can't say we will win it. But we know the importance of it and will do our very best. "What? You wish me luck? Thanks. I'll need it."