Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (13 page)

Meanwhile, Pep Guardiola, recently returned from his trip to Argentina, received that phone call from FC Barcelona.

A beach in Pescara. Just before lunchtime, beginning of summer 2007

Watching a match with Pep is an enlightening experience, a football master class. If you are lucky enough to be sitting next to him while a game is on it becomes apparent that
he cannot help sharing everything he sees. ‘The ball runs faster than any human, so it’s the ball that has to do the running!’ which, in seventeen words, just about encapsulates
his philosophy.

‘Look at him! Him, that one there! He’s hiding! Your team-mates need to know that you are always available!’ he’ll shout, pointing a finger at the culprit. ‘Before
passing the ball, you need to know where you’re passing it to; if you don’t know, it’s better to keep it; give it to your goalie, but don’t give it to your opponent’;
it’s simple common sense, yet at the very core of a successful doctrine. ‘Football is the
simplest game in the world – the feet just have to obey the
head,’ explains Pep, yet he is more aware than anybody that it is anything but simple. And one more thing that Guardiola started saying while watching football: ‘One day I will be the
coach of FC Barcelona.’

Manel Estiarte heard those words more than a few times, muttered along with the rest of Pep’s footballing theories during their long conversations at Manel’s house in Pescara, Italy,
where the two friends and their families would spend a few weeks together almost every summer. Pescara might not be the most beautiful place in the world, but Estiarte, whose wife is Italian, has
had a house there since playing for the Pescara water polo team in the mid-eighties. After he retired, Manel escaped to the house whenever he could.

During those summers, the hot, fourteen-hour July days of sunshine would pass slowly for the two friends and their families who slipped into a simple daily routine: eight hours on the beach,
home to freshen up before dinner, wine and hours of good conversation long into the night before finally heading off to bed for a good night’s sleep in preparation for doing the same thing
all over again the next day. It’s what holidays were made for.

Of course, these days it’s more complicated to remain anonymous, as other tourists can’t help but notice that the most popular club manager in the world happens to be sitting on the
beach a few yards away from them, and they will inevitably approach him, perhaps to share their memories of a game. But until recently, Pescara provided a sanctuary where the friends could quietly
share their dreams, plans and set the world to rights.

At the start of their summer holiday in Pescara in 2007, Pep was out of work; the experience in Mexico and his Argentinian trip had finished and he had announced his retirement as a player. He
and Manel were walking along the beach when Pep dropped a bombshell.

‘I’ve been offered a job at Barça, if I want it.’

‘Wow, Barcelona!’

‘Yeah, they want me to work as technical director of the youth categories.’

‘Well, you like to organise things and you’re great working with kids.’

‘Yeah, yeah; but I don’t know. I don’t know ...’

‘What do you mean you don’t know!? You are going back to FC Barcelona!’

‘It’s just that ... I want to work with the B team, the second team. I see myself coaching them. I want to start off there.’

‘But didn’t they just get relegated and are now in the third division!!??’

Manel remembers that conversation vividly and recalls thinking that there was no point trying to convince his friend that it was, perhaps, a bad idea to start his coaching career with a team on
the slide on the wrong end of the Spanish league system (four divisions below La Liga) because once Pep had made his mind up, there was no turning back. Nevertheless, in this instance it
didn’t stop others from trying to persuade him he was about to make a mistake.

From a little village square in Santpedor, football had taken Guardiola all over the world. It had been a lengthy education; starting with tears at La Masía, coping with criticisms and
defeats, failed dreams, incredible highs and lows, periods of reflection, study; encouragement from family, friends, and mentors; lengthy coach trips around the Catalan countryside, a footballing
odyssey that would take him to Wembley, to Italy, to the Middle East, to Mexico and Argentina. It involved a great deal of observing, listening, watching and playing an awful lot of football.

By the summer of 2007, even though always learning, Pep felt ready – he wanted to coach and he knew how to do it and with which resources.

Txiki Beguiristain, then director of football at Barcelona, had other ideas, seeing Pep as the perfect fit for a more logistical role than a hands-on coaching position, which is why he called
Pep offering him the job as director of youth football at Barcelona. Txiki saw Pep as a coordinator, an ideologist, with a capacity for teaching and communicating the ‘Barça way’
to the youngsters coming through the ranks. As director of the junior categories, Pep would be responsible for organising the youth set-up, selecting the players and their coaches, overseeing
training methods and playing a key role in designing the new systems and the building where they would all be
based, replacing the old Masía. Beguiristain had wanted to
leave the club that same summer, a year before his contract ended, but when he learnt that Pep might consider coming back to Barcelona, he was prepared to continue for another season, with
Guardiola as his right-hand man and understudy, grooming him as his successor in twelve months’ time.

Before Txiki could even think about proposing Guardiola’s return to Laporta and the board, Pep needed to build a few bridges, starting with some repairs to the two former Dream Team
players’ own relationship that had been practically non-existent for at least four years. Pep and Cruyff were also distant for a while: the pair hadn’t quite seen eye to eye, back when
Pep was still playing for the club, over an incident that occurred just after the Dutchman had left the team. Cruyff’s successor in the dugout, Van Gaal, had got rid of several home-grown
players – Oscar and Roger García, Albert Celades, Toni Velamazán, Rufete – and Cruyff couldn’t understand how Guardiola, the captain, let that happen without saying
anything. When he told Pep, ‘Come on, help out the guys from the youth teams’, Pep said he wanted ‘nothing to do with this managerial stuff’, that he couldn’t
intervene in the decisions of the coach. Cruyff was not impressed.

But there was something else that divided the former Dream Team coach and captain. When Pep accepted the proposal of Lluis Bassat to become his director of football should the 2003 election
campaign be successful, it came as something of a surprise to a group of former Dream Team players – Txiki, Amor and Eusebio – who had made a pact, with Johan Cruyff’s blessing,
that they would not publicly back any candidate ahead of the vote and would offer their services to the eventual winner. The former players were under the impression that Pep was part of the group
and felt a degree of betrayal upon discovering that he had opted to publicly support Bassat. Laporta (with the backing of Cruyff behind the scenes) was victorious, leaving Pep somewhat isolated
from the group and, as a result, he didn’t talk to Txiki or Johan Cruyff, or even Laporta, for a few years afterwards.

But Pep had allies on the club’s board. On the day that his name was put forward, Evarist Murtra, a vocal director and friend of Guardiola, had a dental appointment. This meant that he
arrived late to Txiki
Beguiristain’s presentation in which he proposed certain changes to the management of the youth set-up: Beguiristain had considered Pep for the role
of manager of all the youth team coaches, together with Alexanco; Luis Enrique would work for them as coach of Barça B. Laporta asked Beguiristain to sum up his ideas for Murtra’s
benefit. The director listened. He was aware that at the time Guardiola had just got his coaching certificate and that what he really wanted to do was coach, not direct; put on a tracksuit and give
orders on the pitch, not in offices. So, when Beguiristain left the meeting, Murtra followed him out, acting as if he was going to the bathroom. When the sporting director was about to take the
lift Murtra told him, ‘Txiki, before confirming the job with Luis Enrique, do me a favour and give Pep a call first, just in case what he wants to do is coach.’

So, in the summer of 2007, a meeting between Txiki and Pep was arranged in the Princesa Sofía Hotel near the Camp Nou in order to discuss Guardiola’s potential return to the club.
Beguiristain walked into that hotel willing to forgive and to forget – and with a particular proposal and a position in mind for Pep. Despite the suggestion from Murtra, he wanted the former
captain to become the future director of football.

Guardiola: Thanks for the offer, but I want to be a coach.

Beguiristain: Where? There is no vacancy for you in the first team, even as an assistant to Rijkaard ...

Guardiola: Give me the B team, in the third division.

Beguiristain: What?! You must be crazy. It’s a no-win. It’s easier to win the league with the first team than to gain promotion with Barça B.

Guardiola: Let me have control of the B team; I know what to do with them.

Beguiristain: But the job we’re offering you is much better than just the B team, on a financial level as well. Being in charge of the academy is more prestigious. The B team is in the
third division!

Back in 2007 the B team was struggling and not considered the talent pool it now is: it had just suffered relegation to the English equivalent of League Two for the first time in thirty-four
years.

But Pep was insistent.

Guardiola: I want to be a coach, to train. Let me work with whatever team, whatever level you want: the juniors, or the infants, anybody. I will even work with the toddlers
on a potato field, but I want to become a ‘hands-on’ coach.

Beguiristain: You could get your fingers burned trying to rescue that B team, you must be mad. And another thing; what will it look like if we dump Pep Guardiola, the club’s icon, in the
third division side? It doesn’t make sense!

Pep proceeded to explain what he wanted to do with the team in great detail, how he planned to design the squad, what kind of training sessions and what kind of regime he wanted to implement.
‘I want to work with these kids; I know they don’t ask for anything and give you everything. I will get that team promoted,’ Pep repeated.

He took some convincing, but, eventually, Txiki was won over by Pep’s enthusiasm and ideas for the reserves. The director of football went away and started doing some digging around,
gathering second opinions about Pep’s qualities as an actual coach. He spoke to members of the academy set-up who had been on coaching courses with him, his tutors, too, and they all agreed
that Pep had been one of the most brilliant students they had ever worked with. So the decision was taken soon after that meeting.

It was typical Pep Guardiola: a blend of boldness and genius. There can’t be too many former players who have turned down a director’s role overseeing an entire academy set-up, in
order to beg for the chance to take over training a failing reserve side.

‘Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into, Pep?’ his friends would ask him repeatedly once they had heard what had happened that afternoon. ‘Four divisions
down, that’s hell: it has nothing to do with the football that you know. You’re not in for an easy ride, more like a bumpy one! Are you really sure about this?’ Oh, yes, he was
sure. ‘I just want to coach’ would be his answer. As David Trueba wrote, ‘Pep had always been very clear that life consists of taking risks, making mistakes – but wherever
possible, your own mistakes rather than those of others.’

However, there was another stumbling block to Pep’s wish that he be given the opportunity to coach and that was the fact that
someone had already been chosen for that
job: none other than Guardiola’s friend and former team-mate Luis Enrique. The former Spanish international had been told by an enthusiastic Barça director that his approval as B team
coach for the 2007–8 season would be unanimously accepted by the rest of the board. Pep’s appearance on the scene suddenly changed all of that and Txiki had to let Luis Enrique know the
decision had been reversed.

So in many ways, life had now gone full circle for Pep. The boy from Santpedor who had been lucky enough to get a phone call from La Masía some twenty years earlier was now coming back to
where it had all begun. In putting some distance between himself and the club in the interim, he had more to give than if he had stayed.

On 21 June 2007, seven months after retiring as a footballer, Pep Guardiola was unveiled as the new coach of Barcelona B.

Camp Nou. Press conference room, afternoon of 21 June 2007

‘I hadn’t had any other offers, nobody had phoned me. For this reason I am so grateful to the club, because for me it is a privilege to be able to train Barça
B.’ That is what Pep told the media that had assembled for his presentation at the Camp Nou on that summer day in 2007. The season that was about to start turned out to be more than just a
privilege; it evolved into a campaign that would define his abilities as a football coach.

At that press conference, Joan Laporta, who at that stage was beginning to resemble what the Americans refer to as a ‘lame duck president’, had salvaged a degree of credibility with
the appointment of a former player, symbol of the club and nation. At that moment in time, seated beside Guardiola, Laporta needed the benefit of Pep’s halo effect. The president’s
tenure had previously been a success, making Barcelona a force in Europe again with two league titles and a Champions League trophy delivered in swashbuckling style; but as time went on, the
president’s image had been tarnished by internal divisions at the club and accusations from a number of
former members of the Laporta board – including Sandro
Rosell, who had resigned – accusing him of becoming authoritarian and, some suggested, out of touch with reality. And of course, a trophyless 2006–7 season didn’t help. Power is a
strange thing and Laporta was the perfect example of the way it can transform even the most idealistic individual.