  The application of Network Science to social systems has introduced new
methodologies to analyze classical problems such as the emergence of epidemics,
the arousal of cooperation between individuals or the propagation of
information along social networks. More recently, the organization of football
teams and their performance have been unveiled using metrics coming from
Network Science, where a team is considered as a complex network whose nodes
(i.e., players) interact with the aim of overcoming the opponent network. Here,
we combine the use of different network metrics to extract the particular
signature of the F.C. Barcelona coached by Guardiola, which has been considered
one of the best teams along football history. We have first compared the
network organization of Guardiola's team with their opponents along one season
of the Spanish national league, identifying those metrics with statistically
significant differences and relating them with the Guardiola's game. Next, we
have focused on the temporal nature of football passing networks and calculated
the evolution of all network properties along a match, instead of considering
their average. In this way, we are able to identify those network metrics that
enhance the probability of scoring/receiving a goal, showing that not all teams
behave in the same way and how the organization Guardiola's F.C. Barcelona is
different from the rest, including its clustering coefficient, shortest-path
length, largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix, algebraic connectivity and
centrality distribution.
