After announcing his decision to leave the club in April of 2012, Pep Guardiola said, “Four years at Barcelona is like an eternity.”

In those four years, Pep Guardiola and his Barcelona side accomplished what many coaches and players could not achieve in three lifetimes. This Barcelona side are the greatest team of the 21st century. They played the most beautiful football. They had the best players. In future decades, fans of the game will look back at this side with sadness, wishing they could see them play just one more time.

When Pep Guardiola took control of Barcelona in 2008 after a season managing the B team, few would have predicted the dominance he was primed to unleash. His pedigree, however, suggests otherwise.

Stressing the importance of Barcelona’s heritage on his success as a manager, Guardiola said, "I've said many times that we're fortunate to have the legacy of Johan Cruyff and Charlie Rexach. They were the fathers, and we've followed them."

And Pep is rarely wrong.

The story of Barcelona is the story of Johan Cruyff. This was the man who defined “total-football” as a player in the Netherlands in the early ‘70s. The man who imported this philosophy to Catalonia, turning Barcelona into a high-pressing, possession dominating team in the early ‘90s. The man who insisted – no demanded – a complete transformation of Barcelona’s youth system into a farmhouse that produces men of talent, discipline, and humility – the creation of La Masia.

Though Guardiola and Cruyff will forever be linked by their connections to Barcelona and to the dominance they oversaw, their history began at Barcelona’s “Mini” stadium – used by their youth teams – when Guardiola was merely thirteen-years-old.