Tito Vilanova showed us that genius takes more than one form

Tito Vilanova died from cancer on April 25, 2014 after being diagnosed two and a half years prior. He would have been 50 years old today.

My Twitter header is a picture of Vilanova, who managed Barcelona for the 2012-13 season, and his quote: “You should never get nervous about anything. What today seems important, tomorrow isn’t so anymore.” It always reminded me of a quote from Matthews 6:34 that translates to: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.” These quotes have always been calming to me, especially in a hyper-informational world where each and every day seems to be the worst ever.

After his death, Vilanova’s quote has taken on a more sorrowful meaning for me, rather than the inspiring idea it was when he was alive. Now I think of it as a plea not to worry about the small things, because life itself is insignificant, and so are its problems. The troubles come and go, and they pale in comparison to what comes at the end. Today, it’s more of a memento mori.

My adoration for Vilanova started as a love for those who are overshadowed. We tend to think of genius as an individual gift. Pep Guardiola, who preceded Vilanova as Barcelona manager, is a footballing genius. He was responsible for perhaps the most successful era in Barcelona history, with its most beautiful football. He revolutionized the sport with his ideas about passing and space. He turned Lionel Messi into a god. He has gone on to change the way people think and the way players approach the sport in other countries. Vilanova’s burden when he took over Barcelona after Guardiola’s departure seemed to be not to ruin what Guardiola had built.

But Vilanova, who never got the headlines or adoration that Guardiola received, took over and surpassed Guardiola in La Liga. His Barcelona won the league back from Real Madrid and matched Madrid’s 100 points from the previous season while averaging three goals a game. They reached the semifinal of the Champions League.

Guardiola and Vilanova had been friends since they were young, and worked together when Guardiola started his coaching career with Barcelona B. At times on the bench the two of them would make the same gestures and it looked as if they were the same soul split into two bodies.

Some Barcelona fans’ initial distrust and hesitancy with Vilanova was a misunderstanding of how genius works. The mistake is in thinking that it is an individual gift, rather than an often collaborative project. There is no Leo Tolstoy without his wife, Sophia, writing and cleaning his manuscripts as well as all the other thankless work she did for him. There’s no Isaac Newton without Descartes, Galileo, and Isaac Barrow. No Michelangelo without Domenico Ghirlandaio and Donatello. No great writers without editors and copywriters.

When Vilanova took over Barcelona, Guardiola vouched for him by saying:

“You can expect the best from Tito. He’s more than skilled, the players know him … I think the club made a great choice. I was just the voice of the ideas Tito and I developed together.”

To me, Vilanova’s success was a victory for those small people that history usually forgets. The ones who make the work of the genius possible. He came in and showed that the talent of Guardiola wasn’t his alone, it was shared between them, and that he was just as capable, if not more, at doing the same type of work.

Many people like Vilanova never get their opportunity to show what they’re capable of. Sophia Tolstoy’s story was told decades after she died. And plenty of others who are essential to the work of great men (and let’s be honest, it’s usually men) are more often than not reduced to footnotes in the grander story of individual brilliance. Vilanova’s time in the spotlight was brief, but his success was a welcome change to the standard narrative around genius.

I also liked Vilanova because he seemed like a kind man. I only knew him from a distance, and that was fine as it was. I liked how he behaved. How gentle he was. How confident and assured he was in himself. He had the same ideas as Guardiola but where Guardiola moved and acted as if his genius was a burden that would drive him mad, Vilanova was calm, quiet and put things in perspective. Guardiola was obsessed with football to the point that he could be crass to his own players — like Zlatan Ibrahimovic. When Vilanova was named as Manager of the Year in 2013, Jupp Heyenckes said of him:

“Tito is a great football strategist. He’s hard-working, reserved and valiant, and has a direct, fluid relation with his players. He has a positive sense of human values. He has not only set an example for the sporting world, but for the world in general with his outstanding elegance.”

The best thing about the Vilanova quote from above, the one that told me I should never be nervous about anything, is it represented the person he was. The world is chaotic and football sometimes only works to make it all feel more extreme. Everything seems like it’s the worst thing to ever happen, and it feels like this all the time. Vilanova, for his brief time in charge of Barcelona, felt like a break in that unending cycle of doom and gloom. He had a confidence and optimism that was calming. His presence alone was a suggestion that things would be fine in the end, and more than his footballing genius, it’s that radiance which made him such a wonderful person.