Good point and I hope this is the philosophy under Flick. No more Amigos. The La Masia core of the squad love Inaki Pena, but if you're late for training, you lose starter role. No more kindergarten stuff.
In MATS case if you're not performing well, not only you lose minutes, but the captain armband is under risk.
Absolutely, the way I see it, since 2003 or so since Laporta took over, we had the era of Ronaldinho who lasted 3-4 years (normal cycle for elite stuff). Until 2007. Amigo culture started to take place, but then Laporta did a very smart thing which is cut the stars who stirred shite after naming Pep and giving him full powers.
That was an inspired move, and then we came back in force, until in 2012 we saw some of that happening again, motivation and focus started to dip a lot. Pep left instead of dealing with it, also because he felt the players (many of those were probably an issue) had the backing of the board.
Between 2012 and 2014-15 we had some off years, but then we used those money accumulated from the glory days of Pep to land us 3 hit signings. Neymar and Suarez most importantly to bolster the attack, but Rakitic as well to tackle aging legs in midfield. And those 3 starters added some fresh energy and motivation in the team.
Then Lucho, like Pep, started to see the balance was just very thin. And left as well, after only managing to get a truly elite level for about one calendar year. Surely Barca legends such as Pep and Lucho didn't want to be seen as the bad guys by going hard at some big names. And he also left. To do this, you need full and uncompromising support from the board. By 2017 the names we had to go after were simply too big to do this safely.
After Lucho, there's the biggest sign that, at that moment, the Amigo culture was so established and rooted, that the club even had to find managers who would tolerate it. None of the big names would have done that. Then you have EV, who basically was a nice guy type who tried to deal with bad things at the club in the most non-confrontational manner possible. But it only further enabled bad things in the club to run even more rampant.
Then the EV era basically led to a finished team, with ballooning wages and the 2-8 as symbols of the Amigo culture taking over the club due to an embarassment of a presidency. The cleaning job of those disastrous days isn't even done today, 6 years later.
