Barcelona's Luis Enrique Has Had 2 Dominant Years: Does the Hard Part Start Now?

It would be easy to think it was said about Jose Mourinho, but though it wasn't, it has applied to him and many others as well. "The third season," the great Hungarian manager Bela Guttmann used to say, per Jonathan Wilson's Inverting the Pyramid, "is fatal."

Guttmann's wariness of the third season was reflected by his nomadic existence. One of the original cult managers, the man who broke Real Madrid's hold over the European Cup with Benfica in 1961 enjoyed a coaching career that spanned four decades from the 1930s to the early 1970s, consisting of 25 different stops with 21 teams.

To him, the third season represented the point at which a method grew stale, the same voice became tiresome for players and at which opponents would begin to discover the antidote. More famously than anyone in recent times, Mourinho—another cult figure—has embodied such an issue, but history shows the Portuguese is not alone; Guttmann's line has something to it.  

And so here we are: The most successful manager of the past two years has reached the third season. 

As Luis Enrique readies himself for the 2016-17 campaign, his Barcelona outfit is eyeing the continuation of an historic run. 

Since 2008-09, the Catalan giants have won six of eight league titles and lifted three Champions League trophies. In Enrique's two-year tenure alone since his appointment in 2014, they've claimed seven of the nine competitions they've contested, and as they've done so, the numbers have been colossal and the style devastating. Few will need reminding of just how unplayable Enrique's Barcelona have been at various stages of his reign. 

One's initial inclination, then, is to assume the success will continue, and it's probably true that backing against them is unwise. This is a side led by arguably the best front three in history, one that is fed by two of the game's pre-eminent midfielders in Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets, and that is supported in defence by the too-often-overlooked authority of Gerard Pique.

And all of it is founded upon one of—if not the—most defined club identities in the game.

Thus, Enrique's job is an enviable one for many. But concurrently, in line with Guttmann's belief, it's intriguing to ponder whether the approaching season might represent the point at which Enrique's hardest task begins. 

Manu Fernandez/Associated Press

When Barcelona claimed last season's league title with a final-day victory over Granada, Iniesta delivered a line of neat significance. "Six league titles in eight says a lot about this cycle," he said. 

He was right, it does. But the underlying point went beyond numbers: Winning like this, consistently, over and over and over again, is hard. The margins are tiny, the process takes a physical and mental toll, and maintaining a single-mindedness amid an avalanche of success is perhaps sport's most difficult skill. 

Last season, Barcelona once again overcame those complications, but they also showed how strenuous it is while doing so.

Despite their emphatic five-game dash to the line, the Catalans exhibited their first signs of slowing down under Enrique in the latter part of last season. Atletico Madrid dumped them out of the Champions League in the quarter-finals, and three straight defeats in La Liga in April included a late-but-notable trampling by Real Madrid. 

It wasn't a case of Barcelona being worked out, but vulnerabilities did show: The squad was relatively small, depth was missing in key areas and fatigue was evident. Like there is for any team, there's a risk that trajectory can continue into the new season. 

To address that, the club's work in the summer transfer market has been encouragingly swift. Samuel Umtiti, Lucas Digne and Denis Suarez have already arrived to address problematic areas, and the trio will give the squad the raw tools to again seriously compete on all fronts. 

Yet it should be noted that the integration of the three will require time; adjusting to Barcelona is different to adjusting elsewhere. Initially, at least, they'll also have a limited impact on the first XI, which is where Enrique's primary task lies. 

Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press

Without any landscape-altering moves, eight or nine of the 11 spots in Barcelona's lineup are set in stone: Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar are untouchable; Iniesta, Busquets and Ivan Rakitic are settled in midfield; Pique, Jordi Alba and probably Javier Mascherano know they will anchor the defence. 

Competition exists in goal and at right-back, but even so, those involved are existing faces. 

Such continuity is valuable, of course, but amid dominant eras, managers are also aware of the need for renewal, for jolts to the system to avoid plateauing or slipping. In 2009, Pep Guardiola used Zlatan Ibrahimovic for that; it didn't ultimately work, but that was the intent. A year later, it was David Villa. A year after that, it was Cesc Fabregas and Alexis Sanchez. 

But Enrique won't have that sort of tool to spark another surge in 2016-17. Instead, the Asturian will need to oversee organic and continual evolution. Upon his arrival, he set about creating a side of more speed and greater volatility, but now that method will need tweaking, too, for football doesn't stand still.

Barcelona have seen that before, and so has Spain as a whole, and Enrique will have to convince players whom he's spent two years instructing in a certain way that subtle change is necessary again.

That's not as straightforward as it sounds, and his task goes beyond the realm of style. 

The 46-year-old has to maintain a vibrancy in his squad, both physically and mentally. Iniesta's workload will need more careful management than it has previously, the supporting cast in attack needs greater involvement and the delicate dependency on Pique requires work. 

Just as testing for Enrique will be the necessity to continue feeding his players' drive. Astutely, he'll need to keep pushing his stars, challenging them, appealing relentlessly to them as competitors for another year after already doing so for two. 

Guttmann would argue that's the hard part. 

Then there's the matter of the competition. 

Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press

Back in the capital, both Atletico and Real Madrid are expected to be stronger in the coming season than they were last. 

At the Vicente Calderon, Nico Gaitan will add attacking punch, and Atleti will pursue another striker. But more than anything, it's the rapid and ongoing rise of Antoine Griezmann on which Diego Simeone's men will challenge. 

Up the hill at the Santiago Bernabeu, meanwhile, the unusual lack of summer upheaval means Barcelona's eternal rivals could take their trajectory from late last season under Zinedine Zidane into the new one. From the date of the Frenchman's appointment last term, no side won more points than his. 

Does that guarantee anything? No.

But are they more settled now? Definitely. 

That leaves Enrique facing conquerable-but-significant challenges both internally and externally as the new season looms. That's the case for every manager in every year, yes, but for Enrique and Barcelona, those challenges are now different to what they've been until this point in his tenure.

With each season, the broader picture evolves, and so must a team. That continually gets more difficult, as even Guardiola was prepared to admit. "Four years on the Barcelona bench is an eternity," he said, exhausted, when announcing his departure in 2012. By that measure, Enrique is already halfway to eternity. 

In the first year of that, he thrived. In the second, he consolidated. 

Now the tricky third is here. 

Will Enrique refute Guttmann's famous line? Or will he further validate it?

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