Nou broom sweeps clean as Barcelona come good

UEFA Champions League: Emmet Malone on how Jose Mourinho will find the Spanish giants a different proposition from when he was there as assistant boss

He has rarely put a foot wrong since arriving at Stamford Bridge but Jose Mourinho might have been well advised to heed the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for", prior to expressing a desire for a return to Barcelona on the eve of December's draw for the first knockout stage of the Champions League.

The Chelsea coach was characteristically modest about the prospect of going back to the club where he was assistant to Louis van Gaal until the year 2000. "I love Barcelona and I know the people there love me," he said. "In every corner of the club I have a friend and it would be a very emotional return for me."

The level of Mourinho's popularity at the Nou Camp is, in fact, not entirely clear, although if it has survived his close association with the widely reviled Dutch coach it may just be the greatest achievement of his career in management to date.

In his favour, at least, is the fact that when van Gaal went back to the club for a second stint Mourinho had moved on to greater things. The Dutchman's return was little short of disastrous and when it emerged that then club president Joan Gaspart wanted to sack the coach but couldn't find the money to pay him off, the team's former striker, Hristo Stoichkov, suggested he be made to "work out his contract cleaning, selling chocolate bars or taking tickets on the turnstiles".

The transformation of the club's fortunes since have been almost as dramatic as Chelsea's, the difference being Barca haven't had a Russian billionaire to sign the cheques.

Instead there has been Gaspart's successor, Joan Laporta, a young Catalan lawyer swept to power by the club's supporters in the summer of 2003 after a campaign based in no small part on a promise to bring David Beckham to the Nou Camp.

With him he brought a board largely drawn from a new generation of the city's business elite, including two pivotal figures in the reversal of the club's decline, the former chief of Nike Spain, Sandro Rosell, and telecoms millionaire Ferran Soriano.

Barca were €150 million in debt and saddled with an under-performing team costing it a fortune. The new management immediately set about cutting costs by loaning out any well-paid player not involved in the first team and looking at every way possible to generate revenue.

Another Dutchman, Frank Rijkaard, was hired despite having never coached a major club. He had led the Netherlands to the semi-finals of Euro 2000 when, as hosts, many expected them to win, and then spent a year at Sparta Rotterdam who were relegated after decades in the country's top flight.

Rijkaard's lack of a track record did mean he was affordable but it almost backfired when the club struggled through the opening half of last season and went into Christmas 18 points adrift of bitter rivals Real Madrid.

The arrival of Edgar Davids during the January transfer window after the board had scraped together the €2 million required to pay his wages until the end of the season injected new life into the team, however, and saved Rijkaard's job.

A much more significant signing had been made the previous summer when, thanks to Rosell's extensive connections with Brazilian football, Barca had beaten Manchester United in the race for Ronaldinho. The English club's determination not to become involved in a bidding war for the gifted South American was to prove a major blunder but Laporta's determination to recruit the young star was as much down to his need to compensate his supporters for missing out on Beckham.

The Brazilian cost €5 million less than the England skipper would have and scored 22 goals in his first season at the Nou Camp, many of them match-winners as the team surged up the table and past Real to second place behind Valencia during the second half of the campaign.

The Brazilian's form and the team's improvement had a dramatic knock-on effect. The club's games gained 20 million new viewers in Asia and South America, while an additional 20,000 supporters became members at a cost of €100 each. Under Soriano's guidance, commercial and other revenues improved also and financial confidence was sufficiently rebuilt to allow for the restructuring of the club's debt.

The result was all too apparent last summer when Rijkaard made way for a string of expensive new signings by clearing out the likes of Patrick Kluivert, Marc Overmars and Javier Saviola. Some €60 million was spent as Deco arrived from Porto, Ludovic Giuly from Monaco and Rosell's influence (Rijkaard has little say over who is signed) was seen as Brazilian trio Juliano Belletti, Sylvinho and Edmilson were recruited. All have done well since and Soriano boasted that "there is no player now that becomes available in this market that we cannot afford to buy".

Sure enough the club again flexed their rediscovered financial muscle by paying €25 million to Real Mallorca for Samuel Eto'o, a striker who Real Madrid had forgotten to pick up from the airport when, as a 15 year-old, he arrived from Cameroon to sign for them.

Their treatment of him didn't seem to get much better with the African first loaned out and then sold. Real, though, retained a half stake in the player and tried to exercise an option to take him back last summer. But there were reports they merely wished to use him as part payment for Michael Owen and the striker announced that "even if they were prepared to pay €1000 million I would not go back there".

In a caustic reference to the club's policy of signing Galacticos he observed, "I may not be as handsome as David Beckham but I'm a better footballer".

Eto'o, a quick and clever striker, is La Liga's leading scorer with 16 goals for a side who lead their old rivals by four points in what is already a two-horse title race. He also has three Champions League goals in five games, which he will be keen to add to next Wednesday.