They hadn't signed a specialist centre-back for five years, when Pep Guardiola brought in Dmytro Chygrynskiy from Shakhtar Donetsk. Finally, they broke their duck this summer but with Barcelona being Barcelona, there was still a catch. When Jeremy Mathieu joined from Valencia in late July, it capped a remarkable rise from stalwart left-back to central defensive cornerstone at one of the world's premier clubs.
When policy changed after the arrival of Luis Enrique this summer, the arrivals of Mathieu and Thomas Vermaelen -- carrying an injury and coming off the back of a long spell of peripatetic activity at Arsenal -- underwhelmed. Yet on Saturday, Barca's planning received its latest ringing endorsement, as the 2-0 win over Rayo Vallecano kept the Blaugrana at the top of the table, and stretched the team's season opening without conceding a goal to a mammoth seven games -- a Liga record.
It helped goalkeeper Claudio Bravo snare his own club record, too. The Chilean has now gone 630 minutes without conceding since the season's start, with the Rayo match seeing him eclipse Pedro Maria Artola's record of 560 minutes, set in 1977-78. At this rate, you would not write off Bravo's chances of at least getting close to Abel Resino's high-water mark, set for Atletico Madrid in 1990-91, of a whopping 1,275 minutes.
Perhaps the biggest tribute to Bravo's own quality is that he has responded on the relatively rare occasions he has been called upon, with the excellent stop he made from Alberto Bueno when the game at Vallecas was still goalless evidence of his concentration. That things have changed in front of him is the real headline, though.
Mathieu has been a huge part of that. It is easy to wonder why, in retrospect, it has taken Barcelona so long to address such a big issue. Certainly, Chygrynskiy's difficulties in adapting to the house style had scarred Guardiola -- and perhaps the club's recruiters, including Andoni Zubizarreta -- enough to take signing "proper" central defenders off the menu completely. Javier Mascherano was the exception that proved the rule, an accomplished passer and tackler who could keep ball circulation flowing. Sergio Busquets, Alex Song and even full-back Adriano have found themselves filling the breach in recent times.
In fact, Mathieu is not a million miles away from that template. He may be a confirmed centre-back by trade now, but he's only been playing in the position for around 18 months, having dropped into the middle to cover the injury absences of countryman Adil Rami and Ricardo Costa, among others, at Valencia in early 2013. It was an emergency, and an eloquent expression of the club's limited means.
The switch worked fairly instantly, though -- in just his second game there, the 1-1 draw against Paris Saint-Germain at the Parc des Princes in the Champions League in March in which Valencia just missed out on a quarterfinal place, he was outstanding. He subsequently remained in the middle.
Mathieu had played out wide all of his career before, at left-back and left midfield for first club Sochaux and then Toulouse. At 6-foot-3, he may look well-suited for a central role (as his adaptation to the position and his strength in the air have since proved), yet he always had the qualities of a great attacking full-back: speed, poise and culture. Perhaps Mathieu's outstanding feature, as expressed now, is his elegance. Despite making his share of challenges, he rarely fouls. In fact, only Andres Iniesta has committed as few fouls per game as the Frenchman among Barca's squad this season.
In a central role, Mathieu has metamorphosed from useful to essential. He has no shortage of fans. The Argentinian coach Juan Antonio Pizzi, Mathieu's boss at Valencia in the second half of last season, had described him as "the best defender in La Liga at this moment." Barcelona tracked him for more than a year before finally signing him, a period during which Bayern Munich made their interest clear.
Mathieu's keenness to get the deal over the line this summer, as Valencia tried to keep him, spoke of a man who had waited a long time for this moment. While still at Valencia, in 2013, beIN Sport interviewed Mathieu at his home on the Costa Azahar, where he showed the cameras around the mementos of his career. He pointed out the framed shirt he had worn when his Sochaux side beat Nantes in the 2004 Coupe de la Ligue final. Interviewer John Ferreira asked whether it was his favourite trophy. "The favourite?" replied Mathieu, "It's the only one!"
Later on in the home tour, Mathieu picked out a favourite from his extensive collection of swapped shirts: a Barcelona top from Eric Abidal, marked (of course) with the Champions League winner's famous No. 22. Perhaps it was always destiny. Having worked so hard to get here, he is unlikely to let it all go to his head, though.
"For me, there are a lot of players out there who really lack respect [for others]," Mathieu told Ferreira. "It's something I teach my children, to respect everybody. It's not because blokes have money that they should automatically get respect. You have to earn it."
He has certainly earned his France call-up for the forthcoming games with Portugal and Armenia. Didier Deschamps is hardly stuck for left-sided centre-backs at the moment, with Mamadou Sakho and Eliaquim Mangala springing to mind immediately. As things stand, Mathieu is clearly the best of them.
Ironically, Mathieu played at left-back against Rayo -- "it had been a while since I played there," he said after the game, "but it felt good" -- as Barca nailed their record. His performance was strong enough that it has even been suggested that Enrique would like to use him to put pressure on Jordi Alba for his place.
Wherever he plays, and it really should continue to be in the centre, Mathieu is already proving a considerable asset. Despite so many initial doubts of whether he was good enough for Barcelona, he is now providing the guarantees the team has needed for a long time.