Pep Confidential (24 page)

After the Copa del Rey final, which Madrid won with a Cristiano Ronaldo goal, the Barcelona coach congratulated the opposition, adding that his own team had been very close to victory themselves. The referee had, rightly, disallowed a goal by Pedro for offside. Guardiola said later: ‘A two-centimetre decision from a linesman who must have had a very good view ruled out Pedro’s goal.’

On April 26, 2011, Pep and his players were having lunch in the private restaurant of the Eurostars Madrid Tower Hotel. The television was showing Mourinho’s press conference ahead of the Champions League semi-final they would be playing the next day. Pep had his back to the screen and wasn’t paying attention when one of his assistants suggested he turn around and listen.

‘We have started a new cycle. Up until now there was a very small group of coaches who didn’t talk about referees and a very large group, in which I am included, who criticise referees. Now, with Pep’s comments, we have started a new era with a third group, featuring only one person, a man who criticises the referee when he makes good decisions. This is completely new to me.’

Pep’s players were also listening by this stage and were furious at Mourinho’s words and his mocking tone. It was the last straw for Guardiola. ‘The time has come!’

A few months earlier, Pep had said to his closest colleagues: ‘I know Mourinho only too well and he’s trying to provoke me into a reaction, but it won’t work. I’m not going to react. I’m not going to answer back. Only when I think the time is right.’

Mourinho was relentless and had often managed to wind Pep up. The Catalan had, however, maintained a dignified silence so far. Now his moment had come.

At 8pm on the day before the match, the players left the training session at the Bernabéu stadium, sensing that Pep was about to respond in kind to Mourinho. Word had got out and even senior management had heard that Pep was preparing a strongly-worded statement. Leaving the dressing room, one of the players closest to Guardiola wished him luck with the press conference, as did sports director Andoni Zubizarreta, who surprised him by saying, ‘We don’t answer back, eh, Pep? We don’t answer back. We like a low profile. A low profile’.

Once again Pep was left feeling that the club had hung him out to dry and he decided to ignore management’s advice and go ahead anyway. This time he responded with unprecedented fury. ‘Señor Mourinho has permitted himself the luxury of calling me Pep, so I will call him Jose. Tomorrow at 8.45pm we face each other on the pitch. He has won the battle off the pitch. He’s bested me in that arena the entire season and no doubt will continue to do so. If he wants his own personal Champions League trophy away from the pitch, let him take it home and enjoy it. In this room [the Bernabéu press room] Mourinho is the fucking chief, the fucking boss. He knows all about this and I don’t want to compete with him in here. I’d just like to remind him that I worked with him for four years [at Barcelona]. He knows me and I know him. If he prefers to value the views of the journalist friends who take their information in a drip feed from Florentino Pérez more than the relationship we had for four years then that’s his choice. I congratulated Real Madrid for winning the Cup. The offside call was a matter of centimetres. The referee was extremely smart and on the ball. I try to learn from Jose on the pitch when we play him or when I watch his team on television, but I prefer to learn as little as possible from him off the pitch.’

Pep’s response that evening had inflamed an already tense situation. When he arrived at the team hotel, his men were waiting to give him a standing ovation. They were delighted with his response, which they considered long overdue. These were players who, although used to receiving their fair share of praise and adulation, had also been accused of a range of transgressions including doping, dirty tricks, play acting and exerting undue influence over referees – and all of this whilst the club’s management pursued their apathetic policy of maintaining a low profile. The senior executives were not interested in defending them, but now Guardiola had stepped in. And he’d done it in the right place at exactly the right time.

In Munich, people are used to plain speaking. Men like Beckenbauer and Hoeness have never held back from criticising the coach or one of their players. What in Spain would be considered outright war in Bavaria is seen as a frank exchange of views. Nobody was surprised, for example, when the Allianz Arena’s Master of Ceremonies, Stephan Lehmann, asked Paul Breitner about a penalty they had been given. The ex-player told him: ‘That wasn’t a penalty. They gifted it to us.’ The conversation took place on the pitch at half-time in the Bayern-Nürnberg derby on August 24 and nobody felt that Breitner’s blunt honesty had been inappropriate.

Guardiola has had to get used to this new culture and midway through September 2013 finds himself caught up in ‘Hurricane Sammer’.

Bayern are up against Hannover 96 and the match goes in much the same direction as the one against Nuremberg three weeks before: a slow, dull, monotonous first half followed by an impassioned wake-up call by Guardiola at half-time and then a fast, furious second half which again ends with a 2-0 win.

The coach isn’t happy with his men’s performance but he’s also not particularly surprised.

He has always had concerns about the first game after an international call-up. For almost two weeks the players train differently and have to adapt their playing style to the national team. Their return to the club is usually a bit chaotic. ‘After eight or nine days with their national teams the players’ rhythm has completely changed. But we are ready to play the Champions League,’ says Pep after the match. He has chosen his words carefully, not wanting to betray his true feelings.

Perhaps for the first time since coming to Bayern, he is depressed and angry. It isn’t about the disconcerting sight of Thomas Müller being forced to play in midfield again because of all the injuries. In fact, playing a striker in midfield is actually beginning to show the player up.

It seems the players still do not fully understand him and he is not managing to make the team function well enough. Matthias Sammer is quick to intervene. Quietly but forcefully he makes his opinion clear: ‘We must forget the titles we’ve won – we are lethargic out there, unemotional. We’re just going through the motions and should be moving out of our comfort zone. Why am I saying this? Because the coach shouldn’t have to intervene to wake the players up every time they play. We are all hiding behind the coach.’

Despite all predictions to the contrary, Guardiola and Sammer have developed a strong, mutually-supportive relationship. They have immediately sensed how important they could be for each other and are determined to work together to take the club forward. Sammer also has the intuition of a former player whose talent made him a team leader. He has been quick to spot the team’s laid-back approach to games and that is why he has decided to drop this bomb without warning Pep. The coach is taken aback by the sports director’s directness but is nonetheless quite pleased and is quick to defend Sammer in the storm that blows up in the aftermath of his declaration.

As usually happens in Munich, Sammer’s words elicit a response. This time it is president Hoeness who speaks up in German newspaper
Bild
: ‘Apparently we should be apologising for only winning 2-0. Maybe we’ve actually lost four or five games. They must be laughing themselves silly at Dortmund.’

Kicker
magazine adds: ‘We understand that Matthias wanted to make things better, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’

Next Rummenigge enters the fray: ‘This is great for the press but it is not what either the team or the coach needed.’

Beckenbauer and Lotthar Matthäus also have their own opinions on the matter. As do the players. Toni Kroos and Manuel Neuer accept the criticisms publicly, agreeing that they did indeed play badly against Hannover and describing Sammer’s comments as a much needed wake-up call. Captain Philipp Lahm, on the other hand, appeals for criticisms like these to be aired privately in the dressing room rather than in public.

Two days later, the day before their first Champions League match, Guardiola speaks about the controversy. ‘This is about cultural differences and I have come to realise that in Germany this type of reaction is normal and I have to adapt. If the same thing happened in Spain –
bam!
– we’d have a huge problem on our hands, but it’s completely normal here and I wasn’t at all surprised by Sammer’s comments. He’s like me, very emotional.’

This doesn’t prevent Hoeness and Rummenigge calling Sammer to a tense face-to-face meeting. But the sports director has always gone out of his way to support Guardiola, and the coach returns the favour, saying firmly: ‘Matthias is one of us.’

It’s Sunday, September 15, 18 hours after the Hannover game, and Pep is still down but doing his best to hide it from the players at the morning training session. He has an intense, serious chat with them, waving his hands aggressively, surprising many of them by declaring: ‘I want to hold one of you up as an example to the rest. Mario Mandžukić. He and I didn’t have the best of starts and knew immediately that we were never going to be mates. But I can tell you that there is no one better than him. Nobody that tries harder, who comes to the ground more fired-up. This is a player who gives everything out there. That’s why he’s the best. He’s the one who sacrifices most for the team and in all my years as a coach I have never had a forward like him. Nobody has been better for the reasons I’ve just given you. In this team there’s Mario and 10 others.’

He little imagines that his low mood will result in one of the best ideas he has ever had.

30

‘GENTLEMEN, THIS IS
TIQUITACA
AND IT IS SHIT.’

Munich, September 15, 2013

‘MARIA! MÀRIUS! COME quickly!’

Pep’s two oldest children stop playing and run to the corner of the house where their father works. This is Guardiola’s second hideaway. The other one is his main office at Säbener Strasse. This one is a tiny room at the end of the hall in his flat in the centre of Munich. Just a few metres square, it contains a table, a chair and a laptop.

Today Pep is very down. Yesterday’s match has really discouraged him. His results are good enough. Bayern have won the European Super Cup and are second in the league, lying only two points behind Borussia Dortmund. Pep’s men have lost just one game in a month and a half, the German Super Cup, but he is still dissatisfied. Like any coach he needs to get the right results but for Pep it is the way his team plays that matters.

He felt like this during yesterday’s match against Hannover 96, despite the fact that he’d managed to give his troops a rousing speech at half-time and introduce several tactical changes that helped them win the match. He also pretended to be perfectly happy with the result and the team’s performance in the press conference later, but in reality he was deeply disappointed. Distracted during the post-match dinner in the players’ lounge, Pep was concerned that he was failing to get his ideas through to the players. He was failing to help them give of their best.

He leaves immediately after morning training instead of staying to chat to his assistants as usual. After a quick lunch he shuts himself up in his hideaway, telling his wife: ‘Sorry Cristina, I’ve got work to do.’

Cristina has been with him long enough not to need explanations. When he is like this – depressed, silent and brooding – it’s because he blames himself for something. He isn’t about to blame the Bayern players for their weak performances. He holds himself responsible for not managing to bring out their potential, for not finding the right words or exercises, for not putting them in the correct positions or providing the launch pad they need to express themselves. Pep is the son and grandson of a
paleta
, as it’s called in Catalan. His father, Valentín, is a bricklayer in Santpedor, near Manresa, in central Catalonia. He taught his son to stand on his own two feet and take responsibility for his actions without blaming others.

Pep might be one of the most respected coaches in the world, in charge of one of the world’s biggest clubs, but he is still a bricklayer’s son and he takes responsibility for his own actions.

He spends six hours watching videos of Saturday’s game and taking notes. He draws diagrams in his notebook, erases them and then starts to rethink his ideas. A bricklayer is a humble kind of builder. Pep goes over and over his problem all evening and then, at last, he sees the answer. He shouts: ‘Maria! Màrius! Come quickly! I’ve got it!’

This is not the exultant ‘Eureka!’ of an inventor but the relieved shout of a student who feels he’s ready for his exam, the satisfied cry of someone who has found the solution to the problem but knows that he still has to run it past his teachers.

Maria and Màrius are his teachers. Pep always tells them every detail of his matches and his kids love it. They are both fanatically interested in tactics and, what’s more, never hold back if they think he is wrong. But tonight he gets the thumbs up. Full marks.

By 8am the following day the coach is already ensconced in his Säbener Strasse office with Manel Estiarte. The table is covered with paperwork and they’re watching the Hannover match on the computer. There are loads of tactical formations drawn up on the whiteboards. Estiarte recalls that morning with a smile. ‘That was one of Pep’s 10 best moments. And this guy has had lots of wonderful moments. It was amazing.’

Guardiola is as high as a kite. Saturday’s pessimism (‘I’m not getting it right with the team’) has turned into Monday’s euphoria (‘We’ve got it, we’ve got it!’). He explains his ideas, starting slowly at first and then speeding up to such an extent that he loses his guest in a confusion of gestures and details.

This is what he is suggesting, more or less: ‘We keep Lahm in the midfield. That’s not up for discussion. On either side of him, backing him up, Boateng and Dante, so that Lahm can make aggressive runs to break up the opposition. Bastian [Schweinsteiger] and Kroos in front as attacking midfielders and then we delineate the movements. Rafinha and Alaba are no longer full-backs at that point – they join the midfield. In principle they occupy space slightly infield, although they can move to help Robben and Ribéry on the touchlines if it’s the right thing to do. When we are in possession we play vertically, building from the superiority in midfield which the addition of Rafinha and Alba has given us. If we lose the ball then we’ve all the right players located close to each other high up in the centre of the pitch: it’ll be easy to win the ball back.’ The formation looks like 3-4-2-1. In the line of three there are Dante, Boateng and Lahm. This is where the play begins again. Right now Lahm, the captain, is Bayern’s best organising midfielder – the best at bringing the ball out. He knows how to open up the opponents’ attacking line and find gaps; he knows precisely what to do in each instant. He plays with daring and opponents don’t get the ball off him. The two full-backs are to join up with the two creative midfielders to make a cluster of four attacking players, but also the first line of defence to put the brakes on an opposition counter-attack should Bayern lose the ball. Because of his training, Alaba won’t find it difficult to take up this role and thus Rafinha is the key component: if the Brazilian can function well in this plan then the idea will work. The line of two are Robben and Ribéry – with liberty to make runs inside or outside. If either of them moves inside, their full-back must take up the wide space to complement the movement. Then, up top, the single striker. Mandžukić – but in due course Müller, especially once any idea that he can play in midfield is put to bed.