Lets talk about the analogy for a moment. It was good, and i had further thoughts on it. Yet i couldnt figure if i agree or disagree with you. Not that this technicality matters anyway. 
so now we move on to the structure issues. For this discussion, I suppose they are a few teams we can look at, and i should list Barcelona, Real, Arsenal, Man utd and ourselves.
Of the 5, at the moment, only Barcelona, Arsenal and MAn utd has an identity, in terms of the footballing philosophy they stick to. Real MAdrid strangely lost its way despite having Arrigo Saachi upstairs. Or maybe we just have not seen the fruits of his efforts yet.
Barcelona is quite likely the most successful in terms of their production line. And also not doing too badly in their own league as well as in Europe. Much of it is down to Cruyff as most would say. I am not privy to the actual Ins and Outs, but surely it has nothing much to do with Riijkard (spelling) nor his predecessor.
So in this case, using the "CEO" role in your analogy, this CEO happens to be NOT the manager, but someone upstairs with a good footballing idea, a vision, with true appreciation of history of the club.
(sorry, i had wanted to write a long reply but losing my train of thoughts. )
I've been meaning to reply to your post nocturn, but I was still in my holiday haze then. Now that I'm back at work, here goes...
The CEO analogy for Cruyff would be akin to Jack Welch's legacy in GE. Cruyff was originally a successful player who represented Barcelona's post-Franco flowering, eventually taking over as manager of their 90s Dream Team and instituting several of the training methods and playing philosophies still apparent in the club today, from their cantera to their first team. The emphasis on the passing game, technique, ball control, upholding Catalanism - there's thread that runs from Cruyff to Guardiola. Because of his success as manager, the Barcelona board and shareholders have continued to demand the maintenance of his vision for the team. Cruyff left a legacy carried on by his successors. So in this sense he was the "founding CEO" of the "Barcelona way" as we know it today.
Jack Welch was also a lifetime employee at General Electric who rose up to become its Chief Executive Officer. GE, like Barcelona, is an old and fabled institution; and Welch, like Cruyff, remade and renewed his company for continuing success in contemporary times. Taking over GE in the 1980s, he detested its bureaucratic culture and old-line mentality brought over from its success since WW2. Welch instituted several practices which we now know of as the "GE Way" - emphasizing Six Sigma for quality control of products, decreeing that GE had to be No. 1 or 2 in any industry it was in or else selling off entire divisions, and implementing the "rank-and-yank" system of rating employees where everyone is ranked and the bottom 10% is automatically fired. This made GE the successful conglomerate we know today in everything from turbines to financing, and his successor as CEO Jeff Immelt and the GE board have continued with Welch's practices.
That is the kind of transformative, collaborative program I mean when I compare Rafa to being our CEO. But does this make us a one-man club? Is it dangerous to give a manager total control because there's a danger he'll move on?
There's a reason I mention the word "collaborative" - because every project like this, whether in the business or footballing world, cannot be undertaken successfully by one man alone. I posted the Wenger article as an example of what happens when one man alone begins to dictate the whole project. But arguably, Wenger was most successful when the Arsenal board was cohesive and united with David Dein working as Wenger's confidant and collaborator. Dein has never been replaced, and Wenger is suffering for it. Going back to our own history, Shankly had Peter Robinson liaising with the board, and the Boot Room Boys working as a cauldron to experiment and test ideas in tactics, training and player purchases.
Is Rafa going to turn into Wenger? Unlikely. We know Rafa detests Parry (for good reasons) and our owners are not going to provide the check and balance that they should. But does Rafa insist on surrounding himself with yes-men, ignoring reality and Liverpool's traditions for his own narrow vision? We all know the answer to this. He's constantly worked on upgrading his backroom staff, bringing in Sammy Lee and Manuel Pellegrino to replace Pako Ayestaran and Alex Miller. These choices say something about Rafa - picking ex-players who have links to the club, who are by all instances upstanding guys, who have played at the highest levels and have the authority and experience to provide a counterpoint to Rafa's own vision. Does Rafa believe in his vision for Liverpool, in building a Red Machine to win all trophies before it? Yes. Does Rafa surround himself with good or great people who can support him in this project, people who have a blend of independence and experience? Yes.
I think it's revealing that I can't even remember when I've heard of Arsene Wenger's assistant manager or backroom staff, unlike the rest of the Big Four whose managers have always made it a priority to appoint good No. 2s to complement their strengths, counter their weaknesses, and introduce new things or old traditions back to the club. Sammy Lee, Ray Wilkins, Carlos Quieroz - you can see a thread running there.
Is it dangerous to give Rafa this much power because he'll move on? Well, there are two answers to this. The first is that if the project is successful, and indeed Rafa transforms Liverpool and projects us back to the heights of English and European football, why would he want to leave? He was already being headhunted by Real Madrid at the height of last season's crisis with the owners; he could've left when the going was good. But he stayed in fought, because Rafa is a winner and he knows he's close to achieving what he set out to do with Liverpool. He's said, repeatedly, that his family are settled on Merseyside and that he wants to win many trophies with us.
The second answer going on from the first, is that if and when Rafa retires or decides to go back to manage Real or the Spanish NT - when his kids are grown up, when Montse tires of the cold weather, when Rafa's bones begin to ache in the winter - he will have left a legacy of success in Liverpool so strong and so enduring that it must, it should, produce another dynasty after he's left. We survived when Bill Shankly left us, because he had transformed the club and left it in the excellent hands of Bob Paisley. Maybe it will be Sammy Lee taking over the helm; maybe it will be Carra, or Stevie. But they will be building on foundations that Rafa has laid, much like Immelt is continuing on from Welch or Guardiola is an extension of Cruyff. That is why this is a "transformative" project - because once he's done with us, we're not going to consider going back and doing things over, changing systems and styles and personnel. Because success, once built, perpetuates itself if we hold true to the core values it was built open. More than any other club, we at Liverpool understand this.
Of course, there is a third answer - that Rafa leaves because he has failed at Liverpool. In that case, Gnurglan's worst-case scenario kicks in and a new manager comes in and rips everything up, just like Rafa did with Houllier's playbook. That patently means that our CEO's Rafalution was not fit for purpose; but really, what other options do we have? What other person would you entrust to build his project with Liverpool? Not Parry, not the owners, not Mourinho. We need to stop being a club "in transition" - to keep holding back and hedging our bets. We're not bloody Tottenham or Newcastle with a managerial merry-go-round. If we feel that Rafa is our man, then we need to back him to the hilt and embrace the project, there can't be any second-guessing about it. Otherwise we may as well hire Graeme Souness as our Director of Football and Jaime Redknapp to be our head coach so that when Rafa fails and leaves, there's someone there to pick up the pieces, if we're that worried about it.
