The refurbishment of the Barça team for the next season means building a new goal-scoring habitat for Leo Messi. A habitat in which he can get even more out of his 80-90 goals-a-year legs, while at the same time boosting the potential that his teammates have.

The system that Guardiola built was based on the team moving up the pitch as one, squashing the rivals against their goal area. This was done by always following two golden rules – move up steadily, and move up together.

In that kind of habitat, Messi formed just another part of the team's progress up the field, albeit becoming the decisive and deadly fulmination of the gameplay. We could even see it as Xavi orchestrating the whole team, bringing Messi in at the very end to play the final triumphant note.

Tito Vilanova did away with these two golden rules in order to create more spaces. This new habitat had five consequences to it: Messi scored even more goals, Barça came to shoot on goal less, albeit more effectively; being less connected, the team won less loose balls, the move back to defence became less effective, and the team started receiving more goals (from an average of 0.75 to 1.2 goals/game). Barça became a team built to serve Messi, without first being orchestrated by Xavi.

In La Liga, the advantages of this change have by far outweighed the disadvantages. In the Champions League, the negative consequences proved to be too much for the positive ones. And precisely because of that, a new habitat has to be built for Messi.