Pep Confidential (38 page)

As well as Pep’s distinctive tactical refinements, the club also has its own approach to personal matters and prides itself on taking care of its own, ensuring that no one is abandoned in their hour of need. They see themselves as one big family and that applies whether they’re dealing with long-term injury, as in the case of Holger Badstuber, whose recovery would save them having to sign a new player, or even legal troubles.

Bayern had welcomed the Brazilian Breno Borges back after the player served a year-long prison sentence for burning his own house down. On his return, Borges was appointed as a member of the technical staff in charge of the youth team.

Schweinsteiger’s fitness has also caused the club difficulties, albeit on a different scale. After undergoing two ankle operations in just five months (June and November) his season has been a nightmare. In October the club had the chance to sign one of the best midfielders in the world for next season. It would have been an excellent deal, considering the technical and tactical abilities of the player in question as well as the financial terms, but the club turned it down, opting instead to continue to give their full support to Schweinsteiger.

In February, when Lahm, Kroos and Thiago were performing brilliantly, Pep decided to modify the team’s structure. Why? There was only one reason: he wanted to retain a role for Schweinsteiger. It’s a real dilemma for the coach but regardless of the short-term damage it might do to the team’s overall performance, he wants Schweini back. For Roman Grill, this decision is a serious threat to the team’s fluidity: ‘We’ve not yet seen everything Philipp, Thiago, Kroos or Götze can do in the midfield and I’ve been a bit disappointed that Pep has changed the set-up in his last two or three games. He’s moved Lahm back to right-back [in order to fit Schweinsteiger in] and it’s a pity because I think that it would be helpful to give these guys a lot more experience. They’re all adapting to something new – not only Lahm, but also Toni Kroos, who brings a lot of savvy and calm to the creative play, but who can still lose concentration from time to time during matches. It would have been great if they could have continued with this system and I’m disappointed that Pep seems to have changed it.’

Grill is right. Putting Lahm, Kroos and Thiago together works better and gives Bayern increased fluidity and greater consistency. On the other hand, Guardiola’s decision is understandable. He doesn’t want to lose a player of Schweinsteiger’s calibre, no matter how difficult his season has been. Achieving a compromise between the two options is like squaring a circle: impossible. But that’s what the coach is paid for: to take these kinds of decisions, even if he doesn’t always get it right.

50

‘I’VE GONE FOR CONTROL. CONTROL AND MORE CONTROL.’

Munich, March 11, 2014

HE HASN’T YET decided on his starting line-up for tonight. With just nine hours to go before the return leg against Arsenal in the last 16 of the Champions League Pep is still locked away in his Säbener Strasse hideaway, ruminating on whether to put Schweinsteiger or Lahm in the centre of midfield. Kroos has a slight cold but the expression on his face makes it clear that he is not willing to miss this match, no matter what. Pep still has doubts. He goes over and over the team in his head.

‘I’m not happy until I decide who’s playing. It’s not just about how to attack, but who are the best men to do it. It’s one thing to have a clear idea of how we’re going to approach the match but it’s quite another to choose the best players to do it. That’s the key decision.’

It’s noon in Munich and the team have done their morning training and listened to the second-last team talk. This is the one that strips down their opponent’s strategy, followed by a quick run through on how to attack and defend corners and wide free-kicks. But Pep is still thinking about his line-up. He has a couple of problems: Kroos, who has a cold, and, despite his protestations to the contrary, Schweinsteiger is still not 100%.

Pep has doubts. His technical assistants advise him to go with the players who have got the team this far in the Champions League, the guys who have taken them through the tough times and their epidemic of injuries, many of them a hangover from a punishing 2012/13 season. One of the assistants has a coffee with me outside the dressing room and tells me: ‘My advice would be to reward the guys who have got us this far. This is like a final. It would be a real success to get through to the quarter-finals and sticking to the same guys when everyone’s fit would serve to increase competition for places. If we get knocked out tonight, then it’s going to make the last few weeks of the season very long indeed.’

That would mean Rafinha at right-back, with Lahm and Kroos together in a two-man defensive midfield. But Pep is in two minds. Yesterday, he was on the point of agreeing with his assistants. It was mid-afternoon and for a moment it looked like he was sure: ‘One option would be to play the guys who have got us this far – the guys who had to play more because of all the injuries.’

It’s strange how he changes his mind from one day to the next. Yesterday he was absolutely clear. This match represented a key milestone in their season. The result would either mean giving up on one of their major objectives or embarking on their final push.

‘Tomorrow’s game is important because, given that we’ve already won the league, if we go out, the rest of the season is going to drag. We must get to the quarter-finals and then really go for it.’

But who should play? Overnight Pep had had a change of heart. He decided not to take any risks. The quarter-finals were within reach. All they had to do was control the match, close it down, do what they didn’t manage to do in the Emirates Stadium in the first few minutes. That’s how they’d do it. If they succeeded in controlling the match for 90 minutes, only four games would stand between them and another European final.

Pep’s not sure which is the better strategy: attack or control. He almost always goes on the attack but today he’s not so sure. So much so that by noon he’s still undecided. Deep down he likes having his back against the wall, when he doesn’t have enough players and has to play a Champions League final with an improvised back four because of suspension or injury, like he did in 2009 and 2011. In that kind of situation his talent for invention comes to the fore. But this is a new experience for him – he has his whole squad to pick from. It’s a good problem to have, what they call in Munich a Luxusproblem. And his players are professionals. They’ll understand. Or not.

He had had lunch with Toni Kroos the previous week and told him that he wanted him to become one of the group leaders over the next few seasons. He avoided any mention of the financial negotiations between the player and the club, nor did he make any wild promises about a guaranteed place as a starter. This is something he couldn’t promise any player. He did, however, leave Kroos in no doubt as to his coach’s high regard for him. Years before, at Barcelona, he had done exactly the same thing with Yayá Touré. He told Kroos that he wanted him beside him and offered to help him become an even better player. However, today Kroos won’t be starting. He’s got a cold and Pep also wants to cement Schweinsteiger’s place in the group. He wants everyone in peak fitness for April and May.

Badstuber apart, everyone is fit. This is a first – he’s had to wait until March 10 to have all his men available. Even the guys who have taken a few kicks have no problems in training. The pain has gone. The players are wearing their Champions League kit and that fact alone has a curative effect. Nobody is willing to miss their date with Arsenal.

At training the day before the match there are no clues as to the starting line-up. Pep still hasn’t decided whether they’re going out to get goals or erring on the side of safety and settling for ball domination. The session doesn’t focus on either of these approaches. Instead they rehearse how to defend the way that Arsenal begin their attacks from the keeper. They go over the co-ordinated movement the back line must make when the ball is being put long from the Arsenal keeper.

‘We know that [Lukasz] Fabianski almost always sends the ball to his right,’ Planchart reminds them. ‘If it reaches [Olivier] Giroud it’s so that he can chest it down and hold it up. If he puts it to [Bacary] Sagna it’s to make our full-back push up towards him and Sagna will try to head the ball onwards and into the space behind our full-back.’

And on Monday evening they go over and over the way to defend against these Arsenal goal-kicks, with Neuer in the role of Fabianski. For 20 minutes, Dante and Schweinsteiger are busy marking Pizarro, who acts as Giroud, and Alaba tries to perfect the way to close down Sagna, whose role is taken by Rafinha.

Next, Pep explains in detail how Mikel Arteta tries to draw in the opposing
pivote
in order to create a space in the middle of midfield into which Mesut Özil will try to appear. Pep walks through Arteta’s movements whilst emphasising to his players, who are spread out in front of him: ‘Özil is the dangerous one – he’s the one we really need to keep the closest eye on. Arteta draws you in, Özil pops up in that zone with [Santi] Cazorla and [Alex Oxlade-] Chamberlain around him and that’s the way that they achieve superiority in a key area. We can’t afford that to happen.’

They test out the way to defend against this Arteta-Özil movement. The idea is that Robben and Ribéry squeeze infield and that Martínez, in his central-defensive role, pushes into the empty space which Arteta has created. In turn, Rafinha’s task will be to fill the space which the Spaniard has had to leave open in the middle of the back four.

They go through a series of different actions, moving constantly. Pep keeps shouting out the names of Arsenal players – Arteta, Özil, Cazorla, Mertesacker – and these echo round Säbener Strasse whilst the Bayern players push themselves to a degree unheard of for a training session the day before a game. In fairness, they don’t go on for long. Just 20 minutes. It’s the rhythm and speed they’re working at that is so unusual. Something is changing. The players perform brilliantly and there is a growing sense of pride and total security so that it seems absolutely impossible for them not to win. Everyone is sweating at the end. Pep explains the thinking behind his approach. ‘You play at the rhythm you train at. In the match it’s down to each player to do the right thing tactically but the team’s rhythm depends on the training they’ve done. If you train badly, you play badly. If you work like a beast in training, you play the same way. And these guys, they train like beasts.’

Guardiola chooses control over aggression and picks Schweinsteiger instead of Kroos. By the time the bus is leaving the training ground for the Dolce Hotel, where they will spend the intervening six hours, the coach is relieved to have made his decision. He’s feeling very positive. ‘Control. I’ve gone for control. Control and more control.’

Robben has an outstanding game. He runs, defends and attacks with precision. As a player who can be inconsistent – capable of alternating superb football with major dips in performance – he is showing a new-found maturity. He is now a 30-something but has perfected the ability to head up the attacking, suffocating triangle of pressure Bayern put on opponents who are trying to play the ball. Later Pep will celebrate this exhibition of fine football by giving the Dutchman a warm hug.

In the 54th minute, Schweinsteiger breaks from the middle of the pitch and Cazorla doesn’t track him. The German hits the edge of the box in time to connect with a cross from Ribéry, from which he opens the scoring. Two minutes later Arsenal equalise through Lukas Podolski but that’s that for the game. Bayern certainly don’t play brilliantly but, overall, they have had total control of the tie, which has been in their hands pretty much for 173 of the 180 minutes. Only in the initial minutes of the first leg, up until the point Neuer saved Özil’s penalty, have they wavered.

It all ends with a similar theme, with Fabianski saving Müller’s penalty to deny the Bavarians two wins.

Pep is euphoric. Some commentators will suggest that Bayern have given a mediocre performance, but the coach is happier than ever. ‘I wanted control and that’s what my men gave me. Okay, our finishing was off, but we ran the game and that’s what I wanted. I know that in Munich people like us to attack and run up and down the pitch but this match needed the opposite of that. With a 2-0 lead from the away game, it made no sense to take risks. Okay, we weren’t particularly fluid in the centre of the pitch but we played the game we needed to play.’

By 10 the next morning he has already reviewed the match and expresses the same mix of satisfaction with the win and self-criticism for the mistakes that were made. ‘We did commit an error, which was to allow Lahm and Robben to work in the same channel on one side and Alaba and Ribéry on the other [in reference to the lined marking of lanes on the training pitch which Pep wants the players to make the structure of their positional play]. This duplication of positions took away our option of creating superiority. It is so, so important that the full-back and the winger don’t operate in the same channel. If the winger is open and wide then the full-back must be inside in the next channel and vice versa.’

He is, as always, coming up with new solutions. ‘The full-backs must position themselves as if they were attacking midfielders so that Götze can float and appear where he chooses to. But the full-backs need to be inside. And when their winger comes inside they must switch and move wide to the touchline and Götze will provide our superiority. But if the winger and the full-back play in the same channel, the full-back will be behind the winger and it all converts back into one-v-one – and we don’t achieve superiority of numbers in the midfield. This must be corrected.’

And so, on this glorious morning with Säbener Strasse overflowing with a sense of sheer joy, Pep makes one more decision: Ribéry and Götze are slightly off form and need a ‘mini pre-season’ training plan. Over the next three weeks, Lorenzo Buenaventura will give them special attention so that they are fully fit for the quarter-finals on April 1. The Champions League is now the absolute priority.