Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (12 page)

After dinner over a glass of wine, Pep and Lillo would stay up until the small hours of the morning discussing the beautiful game even if they had training the following day.
Pep sometimes worries that he can bore his friends to tears with his one-track conversations about football, football and more football. He had no such fears when it came to his relationship with
Lillo, who had always been at the end of the phone to discuss the finer details of the game and had been a frequent visitor to Pep’s house while he played in Serie A. Pep hasn’t
talked football anywhere near as much as he has done with Lillo – who, along with Johan Cruyff, represents the biggest influence upon his evolution as a manager.

Pep used to feel unprepared when it came to certain topics like defensive concepts or particular training methodologies. When he needed answers he would turn to Lillo at any time of day:
‘How do you solve this type of situation?’ ‘If I do this what will happen?’ According to Pep, Lillo is one of the best prepared coaches in the world and a leader in his
field when it comes to developing a vision of the game, despite the fact that the world of elite sports hasn’t been kind in rewarding him.

Guardiola’s Mexican adventure finished in May 2006 when he returned to Spain, to Madrid, to complete a coaching course, and in July of that same year he had earned the right to call
himself a qualified football coach. So, on 15 November 2006, Guardiola confirmed via a radio interview on the Barcelona station RAC1 that he had retired from professional football. He was
thirty-five years old.

Unlike many former professionals, Pep had no desire to walk straight into the role of first-team coach at a big club and, as he said at the time, he felt he still had a great deal to learn.
‘As a player, the fuses have finally blown,’ said Pep, ‘but sooner or later I will be a coach. I’ll train any level offered to me, someone just has to open the door and give
me the chance. I’d love to work with the youth side, with the kids, because I’ve no pretensions that I’m ready to work at a higher level yet. You have to respect the fact that
this is a process, a learning curve. The first steps are vital and there are no second chances once you step up.’

In that public and emotional farewell as a player, he paid homage to what football had given him. ‘Sport has served me as my influential educational tool; I learnt to accept defeat; to
recover after not having done things well. It has taught me that my team-mate could be better than me. Taught me to accept that my coach can tell me I’m not playing because I’ve behaved
badly.’

Pep may have finished his playing career but he wanted to continue learning about the game. It wasn’t enough for him to have had first-hand experience of the methods of Cruyff, Robson, Van
Gaal, Mazzone or Capello, so he travelled to Argentina to deepen his knowledge. There, he met Ricardo La Volpe (a former Argentine World Cup-winning goalkeeper and the former
coach of the Mexican national team), Marcelo Bielsa (the much admired former Argentina and Chile national coach, and Athletic de Bilbao manager) and ‘El Flaco’, César Luis
Menotti (the coach who took Argentina to the World Cup in 1978) to talk at length about football. Menotti said after his visit, ‘Pep didn’t come here looking for us to tell him how it
was done. He already knew that.’

With his friend David Trueba, Guardiola drove the 309 kilometres from Buenos Aires to Rosario to meet Bielsa. The meeting between the two football men took place in the Argentinian’s
charca
, or villa, and lasted eleven intense yet productive hours. The pair chatted with wide-eyed curiosity about each other. There were heated discussions, searches on the computer,
revising techniques, detailed analyses and enactments of positional play which, at one point, included Trueba man-marking a chair. The two men shared their obsessions, manias and the passion for
the game – and emerged from the
charca
declaring eternal admiration for each other.

Pep and Bielsa have much in common: they love teams that dominate, that want to be protagonists on the pitch, to seek out the opposition goal as the main priority. And they can’t stand
those who resort to excuses when they lose: even though losing is, for both of them, a debilitating sensation that depresses and isolates them because they cannot bear the shame that comes with
defeat – they feel they have let the whole group down when they don’t come out with the points. Bielsa’s teams ‘can play badly or well, but talent depends on the inspiration
and the effort depends on each one of the players: the attitude for them is non-negotiable’, Marcelo, ‘
el loco
’, told him, adding that his sides cannot win if he cannot
transmit what he feels. Pep agreed, taking notes all the time.

It is no mere coincidence that Pep used many of Bielsa’s ideas, methods, expressions, philosophical nuggets in two key moments of his own career as a coach: in his presentation as a
Barcelona first-team manager in front of the press and also in the speech he gave on the Camp Nou pitch in his last home game as manager. ‘Do you
think I was born knowing
everything?’ he answered when someone pointed out those coincidences.

Before leaving the villa, Bielsa posed Pep a challenging question: ‘Why do you, as someone who knows about all the negative things that go on in the world of football, including the high
level of dishonesty of some people, still want to return and get involved in coaching? Do you like blood that much?’ Pep didn’t think twice – ‘I need that blood,’ he
said.

At the end of his spell in Argentina he felt that he was better prepared than ever before; not totally, because Pep will never allow himself to be completely satisfied, but he felt ready enough
to start putting everything he had learnt to the test.

Upon his return to Spain, Pep was linked with a position at another Catalan club, Nàstic de Tarragona, then struggling in the first division, where he would have been Luis Enrique’s
assistant. The names of both Pep and Luis Enrique were discussed by the Nàstic board but both were ultimately considered too inexperienced, with neither having managed at any level before,
and a concrete offer never arrived.

Instead, another opportunity arose: FC Barcelona wanted to talk to Pep about bringing him back in some capacity to the club he had left seven years earlier.

Monaco. UEFA Club Football Awards. August 2006

While Pep Guardiola was trying to discover himself, learn new tools for his managerial career, his beloved Barça had become the fashionable club of the era. The
2006–7 season kicked off with a show of appreciation for Frank Rijkaard’s side, which in a couple of seasons had won two league titles and a European Cup in Paris against the Arsenal of
Arsène Wenger, Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and Cesc Fàbregas. Many felt in fact that that team was on the brink of becoming the greatest in the club’s history. At the UEFA Club
Football Awards ceremony, on the eve of the European Super Cup, Barcelona captain Carles Puyol won the award for best defender,
Deco the award for best midfielder, Samuel
Eto’o the award for the best forward and Ronaldinho was recognised as the best player of the competition.

Yet that coronation of the team’s achievements paradoxically heralded the beginning of the end for Rijkaard’s Barcelona, as the first signs of indiscipline became apparent.

The Monaco trip had been a case in point.

Back at the hotel where Barcelona were based before the European Super Cup final against Sevilla, the coach had, to the astonishment of many, invited a Dutch pop group to join him at his table
for dinner the evening before the game. After the meal, instead of enforcing a curfew, Rijkaard allowed the players the freedom to go to bed at a time of their choosing, inevitably resulting in a
late night for the usual wayward suspects. The following day, on the morning of the match, Ronaldinho was authorised to leave the hotel to attend a photo-shoot with one of his sponsors, while the
rest of the squad were left to their own devices, effectively given the morning off to wander the designer boutiques of Monaco. It was in stark contrast to Sevilla, their Super Cup opponents, who,
under the direction of Juande Ramos, spent the day preparing for the game according to the Spaniard’s usual discipline and order. The end result of the respective teams’ preparations
was self-evident and reflected in the scoreline at the end of the match: a 3-0 victory for Sevilla. That defeat served as the first warning sign of the many that were to surface throughout the
following season.

In that summer of 2006 the dynamic had shifted in the Barcelona dressing room, triggered by the departure of assistant manager Henk Ten Cate, who left for the job of first-team coach at Ajax.
With a reputation as Rijkaard’s sergeant major, Ten Cate’s absence served as the catalyst for a complete breakdown in discipline within the Barcelona dressing room. The Dutchman had
always kept Ronaldinho on a tight leash and every time the Brazilian star put on a few pounds – something that happened all too often – the outspoken Ten Cate would not mince his words,
letting him know exactly what he thought of his expanding waistline, putting him in his place in front of the rest of the squad and yelling that he was showing a ‘lack
of
respect towards his colleagues’. Ten Cate had maintained a love-hate relationship with Samuel Eto’o, but the Cameroonian remained determined to win his respect and prove his worth.
Rijkaard and Ten Cate made the perfect double act; the ultimate good cop/bad cop routine, but without Henk banging his fist on the table, Rijkaard’s nice guy routine led to chaos.

Johan Neeskens followed Henk as Rijkaard’s new assistant, but didn’t have it in him to play the tough guy and, consequently, it was difficult to control the process that was causing
the team spirit to disintegrate. In fact, nobody suffered more as a consequence of Ronaldinho’s subsequent drop in standards than Ronaldinho himself. Here was a player who in the space of
nine months went from being applauded off the Bernabéu pitch by Real Madrid fans in appreciation of his unforgettable performance in a Barcelona 0-3 victory on their rival’s turf, to a
figure of ridicule for the press who grew more accustomed to seeing him ‘perform’ in his own personal corner of a nightclub in Castelldefels than on the Camp Nou pitch. It was his
waistline, rather than wonderful football, that caught the eye these days. Meanwhile, Eto’o suffered a knee injury and, in a decision that was to have serious consequences, was allowed to
recuperate away from the club, distancing himself from the day-to-day life of the team.

Rijkaard was aware of the stars’ behaviour, but indulged them, ever the optimist that the players were mature and responsible enough to know when to draw the line. It was a mistake. And,
by the middle of the 2006–7 season that started poorly in Monaco, it was a trend far too late to reverse as Barcelona’s results and their performances reflected the breakdown in
discipline. The December defeat in the World Club Cup to International de Porto Alegre (featuring a magnificent seventeen-year-old Alexander Pato) was symptomatic of the declining standards among
players and staff – Rijkaard had not even shown a video of the opposition to the players when preparing for the match. After Christmas, the South American players (Rafa Márquez, Deco,
Ronaldinho) were given a few extra days off but, even so, the three of them arrived late for training. There were no sanctions.

The director of football Txiki Beguiristain faced a conundrum: halfway through that season, going into the Christmas break, Barcelona were second in the table, just two
points behind Sevilla and three above Madrid in third. Txiki was aware of the indiscipline behind the scenes, but felt reluctant to intervene when the team was fighting for the lead at the top of
the table and, like everyone else, hoped that it would rediscover some of the old magic.

After four months recuperating in isolation, Eto’o returned to an undisciplined dressing room, and was so appalled by what he found that he informed president Joan Laporta, his main ally
at the club. Laporta sided with Eto’o and even offered him a captaincy role, so he felt reassured but, not long after, Rijkaard accused him of not wanting to play against Racing de Santander
(the player was warming up but looked as if he didn’t want to come on after being instructed) and Ronaldinho suggested in the mixed zone after the game that Eto’o had let them down
because he should have been thinking of the team. Eto’o, impatient and not known for being diplomatic, exploded a couple of days later at a book presentation: ‘He’s a bad
person’ – in reference to Rijkaard: ‘This is a war between two groups: those that are with the president and those that are with Sandro Rosell.’

Rosell, the former vice-president, who also happened to be a close friend of Ronaldinho and was responsible for persuading the Brazilian to sign for the club, had recently resigned following a
number of disagreements with Laporta. Eto’o also sent a message to Ronaldinho, without mentioning his name: ‘If a team-mate comes out saying that you must think of the team, the first
person who should do so is himself.’

Given the less than harmonious atmosphere in the dressing room, the team went into a downward spiral towards the end of that 2006–7 season, resulting in their failure to win any of the
titles or cups they had been competing for in the new year. Madrid finished the season level on points, but secured the title courtesy of their superior head-to-head results: the unanimous verdict
was that Barcelona had thrown their title away as a consequence of complacency and lapses in concentration.

Those twin vices were never more evident than when Barcelona threw away an opportunity to reach the final of the Copa del Rey after inexplicably throwing away a 5-2
semi-final first leg lead over Getafe. Thinking that the game was won, Rijkaard left Messi in Barcelona for the second leg in Madrid. Barça were soundly beaten 4-0.

Despite the pressure for a change within the first team, Laporta thought that the protagonists of that historic Rijkaard side deserved another season. After all, at the peak of their powers this
had been a magical and mesmerising group of exceptional talents that had secured the club’s first Champions League trophy in over twenty years. The Dutch coach assured Laporta that he was
strong enough to take control of the situation and recover the best of Ronaldinho, whom the club were considering offloading. In a visit by Laporta to Ronaldinho’s home in Castelldefels, the
Brazilian, who admitted to having been distracted, promised a return to the player he had been before. He begged for the opportunity to prove that he could change his ways.