Back to where he once belonged

Bobby Robson has been known to wear his heart on his sleeve. He sometimes wears a small shield on his lapel – a reminder of the foreign field where the noble knight fought a famous battle. Not that Sir Bobby was sporting his FC Barcelona badge on Friday morning as he settled into his chair in the media suite at St James' Park to pay homage to Catalonia, as another gentleman with strong Ipswich connections once famously did.

Unlike Eric Blair, the man-of-letters who took his nom de plume from the River Orwell, Sir Bobby never actually bore arms to fight for the people of Catalonia, or Catalunya, as he still calls it. He did see himself as a leader of their struggle, though, which is why he is wont to wear his Barça badge with such pride, and why he is looking forward to returning to the Catalan capital today with such eagerness, in preparation for Newcastle United's Champions' League game in what he (again like the locals) refers to as Camp Nou.

"Catalunya is a nation within a nation and FC Barcelona is more than a club," he said, leaning forward in his Newcastle track-suit. "That's what the club's motto is. It represents a nation. I used to call it the army of Catalunya. Every game we went into in Spain was a battle. When we went to Zaragoza or Santander or Bilbao or Seville, they didn't like us. They were Spanish and we were Catalunyan. And they were battles. Every match was a cup tie, home and away."

It says much for the footballing knight of St James', the miner's son from Langley Park (as in "From Langley Park to Memphis", of Prefab Sprout fame) that he won considerably more battles for the booted-up, shin-padded army of Catalonia than he lost. Indeed, as coach of FC Barcelona in the 1996-97 season, Sir Bobby won 38 of 58 league and cup matches. He lost just eight. His winning ratio of 65 per cent remains the best by a coach in Barça's 103-year history.

Yet Robson was booted out of the job after that one successful season – a season in which he delivered three trophies, the Cup Winners' Cup, the Spanish Cup and the Spanish Super Cup, and in which he secured qualification for the Champions' League as runners-up in La Liga, two points behind Real Madrid.

The machiavellian powers-that-be at the Nou Camp simply thought he would not win a fight that proved to be his toughest in football management – a fight for success on the field and for acceptance off it by Barcelona's 105,736 card-carrying members. The Barça board already had a replacement lined up – Louis van Gaal, the coach who will be on the home bench in the Nou Camp on Tuesday night – before Robson emerged victorious from his season-long personal battle.

Even eight years as manager of the English national team was scant preparation for the daily pressure Robson endured in Barcelona, not least from the excruciatingly critical Catalan and Spanish media. He was accused of being "unadventurous" after a 6-0 win against Rayo Vallecano and of being "incompetent" after Barça overcame a3-0 deficit to beat Atletico Madrid 5-4 in a classic encounter in the Nou Camp.

"I almost feel like Gary Cooper in High Noon," he confided at the time. "Sometimes I ask myself why has everybody got it in for me? If I was coach of a team in England that was challenging for three trophies I would be a bloody hero. Here I'm living from game to game. It's an inhuman situation and the worst thing is I can do nothing about it." That was not strictly true. In guiding Barça to three trophies and to second place in the league, Robson became the most successful club coach in Europe that season.

By the end of the term, even the Spanish inquisition of a media had been won round. As Albert Turro wrote in La Vanguardia: "No Barcelona coach has been the victim of such fierce criticism as Bobby Robson. He deserves nothing but praise. One of the club's best ever seasons may not be enough to save his job but his chivalry and professionalism have earned him a place in the hearts of fans."

Robson's record was indeed not enough to save his job. The trouble for him was two-fold. Firstly, Josep Lluis Nuñez, the Barça president at the time, was fighting for re-election and waiting for Van Gaal, the architect of Ajax's European Cup winning team of 1995, to serve a farewell season in Amsterdam. And secondly, the Barcelona fans were furious with Nuñez for the shoddy dismissal of Johan Cruyff, who guided Barça to four successive Spanish titles and to their only European Cup win, in 1992. After two blank seasons, the former Dutch maestro had been forcibly removed from the club's training ground and told he was being replaced with Robson.

Robson confessed that the ghost of Cruyff "was like a big black shadow looming over him". Despite that, though, and despite being pushed into an upstairs role at the Nou Camp to make way for Van Gaal, the Peter Pan of football management insists he "doesn't regret a minute" of his time at Barcelona. "I loved the club," he said. "I loved the city. It's a fantastic city and I loved my life there. I had a great lifestyle. I was contracted to bring success and I did it. I was proud of that. I bought Ronaldo and he was just fantastic. He was only 20 years of age and we put him in a good team and he just responded to it. We played some great football and won trophies. It was just a fabulous year.

"Basically, I didn't want to leave, so when Newcastle came in for me [initially midway through that season, after Kevin Keegan's resignation] it was a real heartache. I had a big decision to make. I did approach the president about it but he just said, 'Look, you've signed a contract. You can't go anywhere'. What he didn't tell me was he'd signed another contract with Louis van Gaal at the same time. If I'd known that I might have said, 'Well, I'm sorry but I'm going to go now'."

As it was, Robson stuck to the letter of his two-year contract. He accepted a role described as "director of transfers", continuing to draw a seven-figure salary for what he confessed to being "virtually a sabbatical year". "I said to the president, 'Look, you signed me for two years and look what I've done for you'," he reflected. "It was a difficult situation. They didn't think I'd do that well. They thought it would be easy to move me out. Of course, I had such a great season that at the end of it they were totally embarrassed. They didn't know what to do.

"They had Louis van Gaal signed and wanting to come. After that brilliant first year Louis came in. I had a contract which said I was head coach. Well, they were in a predicament, weren't they? I just solved it by saying, 'Look, it ain't going to work. We both want the job. If you think he's the long-term future, which I understand, I'll be the gentleman. I'll just step aside. I'll tell you the job I want and I'll have a year's sabbatical. I'll go and watch football.' And I got them out of trouble."

According to Luis Enrique, the Barcelona captain and the one surviving player from the class of '96-97 (and who, to his old coach's great relief, is currently on the injured list), Robson is assured of a hero's welcome on Tuesday night. The irony is that the man who succeeded him is regarded as an arch villain at the Nou Camp. Van Gaal was never very popular in his first incarnation as Barça coach, even though he guided the club to two titles, one Spanish Cup and a Champions' League semi-final appearance. Since returning in the summer, after failing to guide the Dutch national team to the World Cup finals, his stock has sunk even lower with the Nou Camp aficionados.

Barça have won all seven of their Champions' League games to date, qualifying from the first phase as only the fourth team in history with a perfect six-out-of-six record. In La Liga, though, they have won just four of 12 matches, slumping to tenth place after a 2-1 defeat away to Real Sociedad last Sunday. Even more embarrassingly, they were dumped out of the Copa del Rey, the Spanish Cup, by Noveldo, who play in Segunda B, the third tier of Spanish football. The rumour mill has already started churning out reports of an end-of-season replacement being lined up, some claiming that Joan Gaspart, Nuñez's successor as president, wants Sven Goran Eriksson.

Robson could be excused for chuckling wrily at the irony of it all. Typically, though, he takes no comfort from Van Gaal's discomfort. The pair have been friends since their days as rivals in the Eredivisie, when Robson's PSV won the Dutch title ahead of Van Gaal's Ajax in 1991 and 1992.

"There is no animosity between us," Robson said. "What happened to me at Barcelona wasn't his fault. The club screwed it up, not Louis van Gaal. I got along with him when he came to Barcelona." Indeed, Robson was scouting for the Dutchman at the World Youth Cup in Egypt when the Barcelona team he had qualified for the 1997-98 Champions' League fell to a 3-2 defeat under Van Gaal in their opening match at Newcastle. He was in the Nou Camp for the return, though. Newcastle lost 1-0, barely troubling the home goal without the injured Alan Shearer and Faustino Asprilla. Five years on, the Magpies will again be shorn of their first-choice striking duo in the Nou Camp. In the absence of the suspended Shearer and Craig Bellamy, Shola Ameobi and Lomana LuaLua are expected to form a likely lads' alliance up front for the Geordies.

Robson cannot hide his dejection at being unable to return to the Nou Camp with a full-strength line-up: the line-up that underlined the wonders he has worked in three-and-a-half years at St James' Park with their brilliant 3-2 win away to Feyenoord last month. "I wanted to go back to Barcelona with my best team and I'm not," he said, with a heavy sigh. "That does disappoint me, but there's not much I can do. I'll just have to soldier on and put it in the hands of the kids."

Robson himself is no kid, yet one month short of his 70th birthday he is still the engaging, animated soul who so impressed Nuñez and Gaspart with his illustration of tactics using salt cellar, pepper pot and drinks glasses when they attempted to lure him from Ipswich in 1981 that they resolved to get him, no matter how long they might wait. They always had his name in mind – unlike Jonathan Miller, who stared blankly when Robson introduced himself while both men waited to be knighted at Buckingham Palace last month. "And what do you do?" the theatre director-cum- medical consultant enquired to the amusement of the great football man.

It will be different in Barcelona on Tuesday night. Everyone knows El Mister, the former leader of Catalonia's symbolic fighting force. He is now Sir Bobby Robson, an English knight and commander-in-chief of the Toon Army.

Biography: Sir Bobby Robson

Born: 18 February 1933, Langley Park.

As a player: Joined Fulham in 1950 (152 appearances, 68 goals) before moving to West Brom. Played for England in the 1958 World Cup. Twenty-one caps. Re-joined Fulham in 1962 (193 games, nine goals).

Managerial career: Began in 1967 as player-coach of Vancouver Royals. Returned to Fulham as manager in 1968 before being sacked. At Ipswich Town from 1972 to 1982. Won the Dutch League twice with PSV; the 1997 Cup-Winners' Cup with Barcelona; the Portuguese Cup and League with Porto. Returned to PSV in 1998 before taking on Newcastle in 1999.

Clubs managed: PSV Eindhoven (twice), Barcelona, Porto, Sporting Lisbon, England, Ipswich, Fulham.