Barcelona's gilded squad, including a bearded team captain in Carles Puyol, looked a distraught bunch as they convened for a press conference on Friday evening.

There it was announced that Tito's reign was over – that Tito Vilanova, the club's head coach, would be stepping down immediately to continue his treatment for cancer.

Among the players was Lionel Messi, ashen-faced and later to post a message of support to the ill coach on his Facebook page: "Strength Tito! We are all with you in this fight!" Similar sentiments were delivered from around the world, including messages from Tour de France cyclist Alberto Contador and NBA basketball player Pau Gasol, who started his career in the sport with Barca.

This is the third time that Vilanova has been gripped by the effects of cancer; in November 2011, while working as Pep Guardiola's assistant, the Catalan underwent surgery on his parotid gland to remove a tumour, while a little over 12 months later, by which time he had succeeded Guardiola as Barca's head coach, he was forced to miss two months of the campaign to undergo chemotherapy in New York.

While hospitalised, Vilanova followed the team's training from cameras placed at the club's training ground, chatted daily on the phone to caretaker coach, Jordi Roura, and sent video messages to the players before key matches. Yet his presence was missed, and the team – which had won 18 matches and drawing one in the league – began to wobble, losing twice in five days to Real Madrid, including in the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey, before an unanticipated defeat by AC Milan
in the first leg of a tie in the knockout stages of the Champions League. Vilanova returned in early April, just in time to oversee an ignominious 7-0 aggregate defeat
by Bayern Munich in the semi-final of the Champions League but also
to conclude the club's triumphant march to a league title in May.

His departure marks another chapter in the outrageous catalogue of misfortune that has befallen the Catalan club. Its founder committed suicide; a president was murdered during the Spanish Civil War; and
in March 1981, totem striker Quini was kidnapped for 25 days, an ordeal which derailed the club's title aspirations that season.

"Barcelonismo couldn't conceive of a present or a future without Tito," wrote Ramon Besa in Saturday's edition of El Pais, although Sandro Rosell, the club's president, is more pragmatic.
In announcing the recurrence of Vilanova's cancer in a brief press conference that invited no questions, he stated that it was a "cruel blow",
but stressed that it was "impossible" that Vilanova could continue
his duties as head coach while undergoing further treatment.
"Life goes on," he said, suggesting that a new manager will "probably" be announced early this week.

The haste with which the new appointment will be made hints at careful contingency planning on the part of Rosell and his directors at the club. None the less, the three potential successors to Vilanova touted in the Spanish press during his hospitalisation last spring have all since signed with new clubs – Luis Enrique was installed as Celta Vigo coach last month; Manuel Pellegrini has taken over at Manchester City; and Ernesto Valverde (who was second choice after Vilanova when Guardiola announced in April 2012 that he was leaving Camp Nou) has taken the reins at Athletic Bilbao.

Valverde replaced Marcelo Bielsa at the Basque club, who was also one of several candidates floated by the Spanish press over the weekend as
a replacement for Vilanova,
but other potential names for the Camp Nou post include Tottenham Hotspur's Andre Villas-Boas; Swansea City manager Michael Laudrup, who was the chief sorcerer in Johan Cruyff's magnificent Barca team of the early-1990s but who has distanced himself from the position publicly; and Barca's recently appointed assistant coach, Rubi, who led Girona to the play-offs in Spain's Segunda Division last term.

There are two names which
stand out more vividly in the parlour game to guess Vilanova's successor, though. Gerardo Martino, who led Newell's Old Boys to a league title last season, is one as he is out of contract, is a former coach of Paraguay and, of course, shares
the same birthplace as Messi, the Argentinian city of Rosario.

The other is Luis Enrique, cited
as Barcelona's "first option" in yesterday's El Mundo Deportivo, one of Spain's daily sports newspapers. He is believed to be Vilanova's pick as his successor and would cost approximately £2.6m to buy him
out of his contract with Celta Vigo.

There are several items on Enrique's cv which make him seem
a good fit. The 43-year-old spent eight years as a player at Barca, amassing over 300 appearances and a clutch of winners' medals, while he also succeeded Guardiola as head of Barcelona's B team in 2008 and led the side to Spain's second division for the first time in over a decade. He would secure third place a year later, although his side was ineligible for promotion to the primera division.

Roma came for him in 2011, although he would endure a difficult time in the Italian capital, where he was mocked by his players for arriving at his first training session with an iPad – an intellectual prop which earned him the nickname 'Zichichi' after Antonino Zichichi, the prominent nuclear physicist.

Later claiming he was "tired
and drained", Enrique left the club before a year had passed, having failed to qualify for European competition. Roma did, however, top Serie A's possession stats, something which will endear him to the tika-taka masters at Camp Nou.

Before the wheels came off during Roura's brief spell as caretaker last spring, there was a degree of giddy, even nonsensical talk among the Catalan press that Barca's great team could play without a manager. They were that good. Now, though
it is still more valid to wonder, irrespective of a new manager, just how much is left in a side containing Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta. It is a pivotal moment in their journey.

Xavi and Iniesta won every major tournament they played from 2008 to 2012 – the European Championship, Champions League, World Cup, Champions League and European Championship again – but were substituted conspicuously, both visibly exhausted, during Bayern's 3-0 win at Camp Nou in May. The team would also record the club's worst defensive record since 1962 last February, a statistic which has caused Barca to be linked with Thiago Silva and David Luiz.

However, it is the arrival of
their compatriot, Brazil's Neymar, which has delivered a real sense of optimism. Marca, Madrid's chief sports newspaper, has dubbed his partnership with Messi in attack as "frightening", even if Cruyff, the club's godfather, remains sceptical.

It might be that a strong manager is needed to make sure they pull together.