All you wanted to know about Tito Vilanova

“Pito? Pito Vilanova? I don’t know any Pito Vilanova.”

That is what Jose Mourinho said of Barcelona’s assistant coach and current heir to the empire. That was also the night when Jose almost gouged his eyes out after a post-match quarrel which is often seen after an El Clasico.

Fast forward to today, and Pito…erm…Tito Vilanova will be the man to beat. He will be Barcelona manager.

Chelsea fans would love to think Fernando Torres is the man responsible for Pep Guardiola’s decision to step dow. But according to him, he had already decided his fate in December.

People would have expected a bigger signing, a bigger name. Something on the lines of a Guus Hiddink or a Roberto Mancini or a Jupp Heynckes. But Barcelona went for Vilanova.

So the question is who exactly is Tito?

To put in a line, Tito is boring.

At 42, he is a year older than Guardiola, and a product of the La Masia academy, a place where a certain form of tactics, technique and style has been practiced with military precision.As Pep made his way to the first team and became a regular, Tito’s patience was tested and he left Barcelona in order to gain more first team football.

But Tito was never a great player. He was more of a dogged midfielder who played in lower divisions, helping teams to promotion. He did, however, have a stint at Celta Vigo for three years and garnered only 26 appearances in total.

Apart from Celta Vigo, he plied his trade at lesser known clubs like Figueres, Badajoz, Mallorca, Lleida and Elche. The number of appearances he made at UDA Gramenet is not even known.

But great players don’t always make great managers. As with Jose Mourinho, Arsene Wenger, Harry Redknapp and till a certain extent even Alex Ferguson, Vilanova may turn out to be a masterstroke appointment.

After retiring at 34 in 2002, he became technical director at Terrassa FC before being appointed assistant at Barcelona B. With Vilanova, who was Pep’s assistant when both of them oversaw the promotion of Barcelona’s youth team from the fourth tier to the third tier, Barcelona will more or less follow the same footballing principles.

To give you a glimpse of his mindset, he once said: “We try to prepare the same way for every match. There’s not much difference whether we are playing Hospitalet or a final at Wembley. We work on tactics and strategy in the same way and give the players the same amount of information.

“I never like losing, but I learned very early on that you can’t win every time. If you know you’ve done everything you could and that you’ve had chances, then you accept losing is just part of the game. You take it on the chin and try to improve,” he said.

This culture of recruiting people from within the set-up avoids the risk of major unseen changes that another manager might bring with him. At clubs built on a sound football culture, like we see at Barcelona, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, the ‘inside man’ assures a dramatic change will not happen. These changes back-fire a lot of times, like we saw when Andre Villas-Boas took over at Chelsea and Juande Ramos at Spurs.

He has been Guardiola’s right hand man since half a decade at least, and the connection with La Masia will prove to be priceless.

Anyone hoping that Barcelona’s style will change under Tito should keep in mind that there is very little chance of that. Vilanova is a thorough Catalan had a big hand in setting up the team.

“He is a capable person whom the players already know. I was just the spokesman for ideas we developed together and he will give this club and these players what I no longer can give them,” Guardiola said about the new manager.

This Barcelona team will play with the same verve, in the same fashion and in the same manner that Pep left them. The first-team should feel more or less same and no team spirit will be lost.

Pep Guardiola leaves a lasting legacy at Barcelona, but all Tito needs to do is continue the legend. Can he?