Pep Confidential (44 page)

Cristina now joins us, obviously anxious to support her husband in recovering his equilibrium. She suggests that perhaps some level of relaxation is inevitable after a great success.

‘But Pep, it happens to us all. When I got to the stadium this evening I was really relaxed compared to other matches. All I could think was that we were playing Dortmund with the league title already in the bag.’

‘I know, I know, you’re right of course. I was the same today. I even managed to eat something before the game. Can you believe it?’

He had had a plate of prawns for lunch at the hotel and obviously wasn’t feeling his usual nerves.

‘It’s true,’ he continues. ‘But I also prepared for this match with exactly the same attention to detail as I normally do. I went home at nine o’clock last night. I would have liked to have spent the evening with the kids but stayed on at the office analysing Dortmund and looking for ways to beat them. Carles Planchart and I were the last to leave Säbener Strasse. We had to lock up. I work very hard and today has been a total fuck-up.’

I still want to know whether there were some tactical reasons for today’s heavy defeat.

‘We played well to begin with and I was thinking: this is a good start, even though we’re finding it hard to find Götze with the ball between the lines. If Dortmund’s two
pivotes
are marking our two then it’s clear that Götze is free, but we just weren’t accurate enough in finding him. Still, I’m not moaning too much about the first half. With Rafinha and Alaba playing inside, how many counter-attacks did Dortmund hit us with in the first half? Not one.

‘In the second half I moved the two full-backs wide, changing it, so that we could have four attackers, and Dortmund destroyed us. Okay, so, it’s interesting because we’ll be playing them in the final of the DFB-Pokal. But it was hard to properly analyse and assimilate what was going on during the game because I was so, so pissed off.’

His kids ask about particular players but Pep insists that there has been a change in the whole team’s attitude. ‘We shouldn’t make the mistake of believing we are infallible. We are not super-human and need to keep running. Even when a team is on top form, it is still only hanging from a thread. All it takes is for us to stop running for the thread to break and everything to collapse on top of us.’

Whilst he talks, Guardiola is already forming his plan of action for the next few days. ‘
S´ha acabat el bròquil.’
It is a Catalan saying meaning ‘things are going to change around here’.

‘There will be no rotations in Braunschweig [next Saturday they are at home to the team in last place in the league] and if anyone gets injured, tough luck, they won’t get to play at the Bernabéu. We won the Bundesliga with half the team missing after all and managed to win in difficult grounds with most of our key men out, like in Dortmund. No one could score against us and now in just three days, suddenly we’re full of holes. Well, it stops here.’

Màrius, who is 11, asks his dad if he intends to say all this to his players.

‘Of course! Monday morning. At training. And then on Tuesday, during the team talk. I’ll tell them I messed up. Big time. But they need to run and run. They mustn’t fall into the trap of believing they have some sort of special status. If we want to be good, to go on being good, we have to run. I’m paid to coach and they’re paid to run. We’re not paid to play beautiful football but to run. The minute players stop running, they’re nobodies. If we really want to be in those two finals [the DFB-Pokal and the Champions League] we have to demand everything of ourselves.’

I make the same point as Cristina: it’s normal to relax a little after great success. ‘Of course, it’s logical but I don’t need to accept it. The same thing happened at Barça. Every time we won the league our performance dipped. But I’m not going to accept it. I’m rebelling. I am not going off on holiday thinking about this shit, this 3-0, without having done everything I can to turn things around. Have I ever been beaten 3-0 before?’

It’s a rhetorical question. Pep knows only too well that he has never suffered such a bad defeat at home (although he has yet to experience an even worse result).

Bayern’s next step is to make it to the DFB-Pokal final. ‘Let’s hope the game against Kaiserslautern [the Second Division team who will visit the Allianz Arena on Wednesday for the semi-final] makes up for today’s mess. Who knows, perhaps this defeat will end up doing us some good. If we had beaten Dortmund we would have been even fuller of ourselves. Now at least if we make it to the final we won’t be favourites. If we’re up against Dortmund, obviously they’ll be favourites. And the same applies to Real Madrid in the Champions League.’

His thoughts are already turning to Tuesday’s team talk and the upcoming matches against Kaiserslautern and Real Madrid.

‘Right now we need to get back to training as hard as we can, without stopping. And against Madrid our two strikers need to tie-up their entire back four, our wingers have to double up as full-backs, just as they did against United, and in the midfield we need the best players who keep and move the ball for long spells of productive possession. I won’t be wasting a lot of words on our strategy against Madrid, just two main tactical ideas plus a few specific directions to some of the players and then I’ll tell them all to run themselves into the ground. We just need two ideas to win: control the counter-attacks and hold on to possession. And
laufen
, a lot of
laufen
. Run like bastards…’

It’s now three hours since the end of the Dortmund game. The Allianz is practically deserted and, as always, Pep carries a sleeping Valentina in his arms. It’s the same scene match after match, except today he’s been defeated. In these three hours he has dealt with the impact of the defeat. He has accepted it, brooded on it in private, verbalised his feelings and identified his own mistakes and those of his players. He has then started the healing process by setting out his approach for the next few days. In the end this has been a transformative process and he has found the positive in the situation; he has ended the evening revitalised.

As he goes down in the lift, he starts talking about next season. ‘Lewandowski and one more. We need more competition within the team. Nobody should get too comfortable. I want them to work like bastards to earn their place. In every single training session. If we don’t do that then we’ll end up like some other teams. We need to use this success to reinvent ourselves. Otherwise there’s a real risk of Dortmund overtaking us next season.’

And, before he leaves, Pep cannot resist mentioning something that has been on his mind for a while: the fact that his football philosophy is alien to German football culture. He doesn’t say it disparagingly or in an aggressive way. For him it is just a fact of life, another opportunity to broaden his horizons.

60

‘WE HAVE TO REMEMBER THAT IF WE DON’T RUN, WE’RE NOTHING.’

Madrid, April 23, 2014

BAYERN SHOW THE kind of personality in the Bernabéu that very few teams manage to summon up when they play here. They enclose Real Madrid in their own penalty box and hold on to the ball, maintaining such tight control that, after only nine minutes, the Madrid fans begin to whistle in protest at the manner in which the home side are allowing themselves to be pummelled into submission.

Guardiola’s tactical talk had been brief and to the point: ‘You are great players. Go out into this great, historical stadium and show it. Go out and play like you know how. This is football. You are footballers. Be footballers.’

A week ago Real Madrid won the Copa del Rey against Barcelona by playing a defensive, deep 4-4-2 formation, a strategy which allowed them to control their opponents and deliver their own counter-attacks. Himself a first-rate-tactician, coach Carlo Ancelotti has decided to approach the Bayern game in the same way. He is happy to sacrifice control of the game and the ball, opting for deep defending in the third of the pitch in front of Madrid’s own goal, where Pepe and Sergio Ramos have been outstanding.

Bayern start strongly and the players do everything the coach has asked: Kroos moves the ball from wing to wing, driving Bayern’s attacks down either side. Robben drives forward from a central area, the full-backs hit Mandžukić with their crosses and Bayern’s positional play allows them to avoid Madrid’s counter-attacks.

However, Madrid won’t even need a genuine counter-attack in order to win. The only goal of the game comes from a Karim Benzema tap-in in the 19th minute. It’s a terrible blow for a team which has run out of steam over the last three weeks, managing to hold on only because of men like Lahm, Kroos and Robben. Even a goalkeeper as dependable as Neuer has come back full of doubts and errors after being injured 11 days ago against Borussia Dortmund.

Guardiola had tried to revitalise his men during the 10 days between the Dortmund defeat and the Madrid tie. On Tuesday, April 15, he called the squad together. Standing in the Säbener Strasse lecture theatre, with the lights off, Pep started by asking for his men’s forgiveness for his poor German, ‘although I think you can all understand me’. He then explained that when he gets home after training he always opens a bottle of wine to drink with his wife over dinner. The players laughed as he mimed opening an enormous bottle of wine. ‘Whilst I’m doing that I’m always thinking of you guys, thinking about how to help you, what I can do to help you play even better, how I can make you more secure. I reflect on all the things I can do to support you.’

But the one thing he cannot do, he told them, is ‘run for you’. He then showed them a short video which demonstrated very clearly the difference in the rhythm of their game before winning the league and after. They had obviously just stopped running full-out.

‘It’s completely normal and it happens to everyone after a bit of success. But we have to remember that if we don’t run, we’re nothing. If we start asking team-mates to send the ball to our feet instead of into the space in front of us, then we’ll lose much of our excellence and we’ll be a weaker opponent.’

He then turned the lights on and set up a whiteboard on which he had written the following figures:

27 games = 13 goals

3 games = 7 goals

This was the balance of goals conceded in the league thus far: only 13 in the first 27 games before winning the title, and then seven in three matches. The team had collapsed.

In their two matches preceding the first leg in Madrid his players made a huge effort to address the problem. They beat Kaiserslautern 5-1 in the semi-finals of the DFB-Pokal and then emerged with a 2-0 away win at Eintracht Braunschweig. Neither of these was a straightforward game. They may have been a second division team, but Kaiserslautern battled hard at the Allianz Arena, where Pep fielded his best team, minus Neuer. There were mixed feelings after the game. On the one hand, they were delighted to be going to the final in Berlin against no less a rival than Borussia Dortmund. On the other, the Bayern players had appeared sluggish and lacked fluidity.

It was also sadly lacking in Braunschweig, where the team fighting relegation fought tooth and nail for one last chance to save themselves. This game was possibly Bayern’s worst performance of the entire season, with some players misdirecting more than half of their passes, and the team achieving a mediocre pass accuracy of 78%. Moreover, with just five days to go before facing Real Madrid, it was clear that the best player of 2013 was still blocked. Franck Ribéry was struggling to regain his form, although not through lack of effort or desire. He was pushing himself to the limit but not managing to get back to that state of grace which had allowed him to take on all-comers. The causes may well have been partly psychological, but his back problems – he had a procedure to drain bad bruising on February 6 – were badly hampering his performance. These same back problems would eventually prevent him from playing in the World Cup.

Pizarro’s goal in the 75th minute sealed the win in Braunschweig and he was the team’s most effective forward at this point in the season, averaging a goal every 68 minutes. Pep insisted that his contract be renewed for another season.

In Madrid, the eventual successor to Bayern as European champions awaited them. Guardiola wasn’t sure whether or not to include Ribéry in his line-up, given his state of fitness. He was not feeling positive: just before leaving Munich the coach learned that Højbjerg’s father had passed away. In the group that travelled to Madrid, Alaba had a cold, Neuer was just back from injury, and Götze hadn’t yet reached his best. To add to their woes, Javi Martínez – who should have been a starter – was suffering from a bout of gastroenteritis which had caused him to lose almost four kilos in one weekend.

The players had undoubtedly run much more in the two matches since April 14 but, apparently, the guardian angel of the previous months had deserted them. Despite all of this, Bayern were exactly where they had aimed to be at this stage: with three titles won, the final of the DFB-Pokal to contest and just 180 minutes away from the Champions League final.

Pep decided to confront Madrid with courage and daring. He had experienced momentous victories with Barcelona in this stadium and, out of respect for Real Madrid, had been irritated by people in Munich talking about the
bête noire
(Bayern) which was about to descend on the Bernabéu. Madrid had been a great rival for Pep, as a player and coach and, regardless of their current difficulties, his team were determined to face them with valour and pride.

‘We’ve worked very, very hard to get here,’ he told me, ‘and we have done it by the skin of our teeth at times. I have only had my entire squad fit for three weeks this season. Just three weeks. And we’ve worked like dogs to get where we are. We’re not going to give up now. We need to go out there and enjoy this. I’m really looking forward to it. We’re going to try to take the ball off them, bring the ball out from the back and dominate the Bernabéu.’

And, as it turns out, the ball does indeed belong to Bayern. In the first 15 minutes they have 80% of possession, most of it in the opposition’s half.