Barcelona’s peak under Pep Guardiola probably came at Wembley in the 2011 Champions League final. It was not only the performance, hugely impressive though it was, but the sense this was a dynasty that could last for an awfully long time.

Barça beat Manchester United 3-1 to win the competition for the second time in three years – having missed out in the middle season because of a combination of extraordinary resilience from José Mourinho’s Internazionale, an Icelandic volcano and ill fortune. With a long-established philosophy and much-admired academy, they seemed to have the ideal platform for success.

Three and a half years on, it has not worked out like that. Seven of the side who started that final had joined Barça as teenagers or younger: they had learned the Barça way of playing and did it almost instinctively and at great speed. Of the side who started the 2-0 win at Ajax on Wednesday, only four had come through La Masia and one of those was Xavi who, at 34, is nearing the end. This is the problem facing all clubs who would live by a philosophy. Academies cannot be relied on: some generations will always be better than others.

Under Guardiola, Barça created a unique ecosystem, one outsiders struggled to adapt to. The biggest criticism of his time at the club was his signings tended not to work out: Zlatan Ibrahimovic was the most notorious example, not helped by Lionel Messi’s increasing preference for playing in central areas, but players such as Alexander Hleb, Dmytro Chygrynskiy, Keirrison, Henrique and Martín Cáceres also struggled to fit in.

In part it was because of Guardiola and the success of his style of football. As a player, he had been plucked from La Masia by Johan Cruyff and, by and large, remained loyal to the Cruyff ideal of promoting young players steeped in the style of the club. It was also because, over a period of five years, La Masia produced Xavi, Víctor Valdés, Andrés Iniesta, Gerard Piqué, Messi, Pedro and Sergio Busquets. That sort of glut of talent – and a glut capable of playing together – is extremely rare.

Ajax have twice been through something similar, once in the early 70s and once in the mid-90s. They have never been a financial powerhouse and so when their great sides broke up, they had little option but to accept a lower status. As Elko Born argues in Issue 14 of The Blizzard, the Cruyff revolution that led to Frank de Boer being appointed manager was specifically predicated on restoring Ajax to their core philosophy, to focusing on youth – even if it meant there would be fallow periods.

Barcelona are a different case. They cannot afford fallow periods. Their elimination in the quarter-final last season of the Champions League meant they missed out on the semi-final for the first time in seven years. So, they bought. And, as is the modern way, they bought not necessarily where they most needed investment, but stars, ego-massaging commercial machines who have a value that extends far beyond the pitch.

Neymar and Luis Suárez are exceptionally gifted forwards. They, with Messi, will make Barcelona the most-loved European team in South America and will help with promoting the brand elsewhere. All three can play centrally or wide, drop deep or play as front men. The possibilities are mouth-watering, at least from an attacking point of view.

Barcelona’s strength under Guardiola was not their attacking – or rather, it was not just their attacking. They were technically better than opponents and had, in Messi, a wonderful individual talent but where they really outstripped other sides was in the way they regained possession – the ferocity and organisation of their pressing. Suárez has the energy and the application to hound players in possession but that is not Neymar’s natural mode, while Messi seems increasingly disinclined to press as he once did (whether that is an issue of ego or the fatigue that seems to have afflicted him for a year or more is debatable).

Perhaps Luis Enrique can devise a system whereby Barça can get away without the pressing of old, with the 4-3-3 operating almost as a broken team, with seven outfielders ready to drop back when possession is lost and the front three free to drift and create – but it is not the Barcelona way. The tensions between old and new methods was clear against Ajax. There were times, in the first half particularly, when Xavi pressed and the three forwards hung back. Was that the front three forgetting or disobeying instructions, or was it Xavi doing what came naturally even though the directive has altered?

The signings of Neymar and Suárez are just the most obvious manifestation of Barça’s change in approach. Over the past two years, there has been a noticeable slackening of intensity, whether to do with the changes in coaching staff or with weariness or diminishing hunger is difficult to say. Signing stars is a way of addressing that, perhaps the only way, while staying competitive at the highest level if the feeling at the club is academy products such as Bojan Krkic, Isaac Cuenca and Christian Tello are not up to it. It inevitably means a dilution of identity. Weaken it far enough and Barça become just another superclub.