Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (2 page)

But that was then.

By the end of his tenure he was no longer the youthful, eager, enthusiastic manager you met that night in Rome or the following year in Nyon, at the UEFA headquarters, for a rare moment of
socialising.

On the day he announced to the world he was leaving his boyhood club after four years in charge of the first team you could see the toll it had taken: it was discernible in
his eyes and in his receding hairline, now flecked with grey. But the eyes: it was especially visible if you looked into his eyes. He was no longer as spirited and impressionable as on that morning
in Switzerland, when you offered him some words of wisdom and fatherly advice. Did you know that he still talks about that chat, those fifteen minutes with you, as one of the highlights of his
career? He was like a star-struck teenager, repeating for days afterwards: ‘I was with Sir Alex, I spoke to Sir Alex Ferguson!’ Back then, everything was new and exciting: obstacles
were challenges rather than insurmountable hurdles.

On that sunny morning in September 2010, at UEFA’s modern rectangular building on the shores of Lake Geneva, the annual coaches’ conference provided the setting for the first social
meeting between yourself and Pep Guardiola since you became coaches. Before that, you scarcely had time to exchange anything more than pleasantries in Rome, and Pep had been looking forward to
spending some time in your company, away from the pressures of competition. The conference provided an opportunity for coaches to gossip, discuss trends, whinge and bond as an elite group of
professionals who would spend the rest of the year in a state of perpetual solitude, struggling to manage twenty or so egos, plus their families and agents.

Among the guests in Nyon was a certain José Mourinho, the colourful new manager of Real Madrid and reigning European champion with Inter Milan, the team that had knocked Pep’s
Barcelona out in the semi-final the previous season. Mid-morning, on the first of two days, you arrived at UEFA headquarters in one of a pair of minibuses; the first carrying the Portuguese coach,
along with the then Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti and Roma’s Claudio Ranieri. Guardiola travelled in the second bus, with you. As soon as you entered the building, Mourinho approached the
group that had gathered around you, while Guardiola stepped to one side to take it all in: to photograph the moment – always aware of the significance of these events in his own life story.
After all, he was surrounded by
some of football’s great minds, he was there to listen, to watch and to learn. As he has always done.

Pep spent a while on his own, distanced from the conversations that were taking place. Mourinho spotted him out of the corner of his eye and left the group he was in. He greeted Guardiola and
shook his hand effusively. The pair smiled. They started talking animatedly for a few minutes and the Werder Bremen coach, Thomas Schaaf, joined in, occasionally managing to catch his
colleagues’ attention.

It was the last time Pep Guardiola and José Mourinho were to speak on such amicable terms.

The groups entered the main conference hall for the first of the two sessions that day, where you talked about the tactical trends that were used in the previous Champions League campaign, as
well as other topics related to the World Cup in South Africa, which Spain had just won. At the end of the first meeting, everyone posed for a group photograph. Didier Deschamps was sitting between
Guardiola and Mourinho in the centre of the front row. On the left, you sat next to Ancelotti. There was laughter and banter and it was developing into quite an entertaining day.

Just before the second session, there was time for coffee and you and Guardiola found yourselves together in a seating area with a breathtaking view of Lake Geneva, overlooking clear blue water
and the exclusive homes visible on the far shore.

Pep felt humbled in your presence. In his eyes you are a giant of the dugout, but that morning you were an affable Scot who smiled easily – as you often do when out of the limelight. You
admired the younger manager’s humility, despite the fact that Pep had already won seven titles out of a possible nine at that point – and had the world of football arguing about whether
he was implementing an evolution or a revolution at FC Barcelona. The general consensus at the time was that, at the very least, Pep’s youth and positivity were a breath of fresh air.

That chat over coffee quickly turned into an improvised lesson between teacher and pupil. Pep enjoys spending time watching and taking in what the legends of football have added to the game. In
great detail he recalls Van Gaal’s Ajax, Milan’s achievements with Sacchi.
He could talk to you for ages about both. And he holds winning a European Cup in almost
the same esteem as he does his shirt signed by his idol Michel Platini. You are also a member of Pep’s particular hall of fame.

As the pupil listened, soaking up every word, his respect for you was transformed into devotion: not only because of the symbolic content of the chat, your vision of the profession. It
wasn’t just the insight. It was the stature of the man who was doing the talking.

He is in awe of the longevity of your tenure at Manchester United: the resilience and inner strength required to stay in the job for so long. Pep has always thought that the pressures at
Barcelona and Manchester must be different. He yearns to understand how one sustains the hunger for success and avoids the loss of appetite that must inevitably follow successive victories. He
believes that a team that wins all the time needs to lose to benefit from the lessons that only defeat can bring. Pep wants to discover how you deal with that, Sir Alex; how you clear your mind;
how you relate to defeat. You didn’t have time to talk about everything, but those issues will be raised next time you cross paths, you can be sure of that.

Pep venerates your composure in both victory and defeat and the way you fight tooth and nail to defend your own brand of football – and you also advised him to keep faithful to who he is,
to his beliefs and inner self.

‘Pepe,’ you said to him – and he was too respectful to correct you about getting his name wrong – ‘you have to make sure you don’t lose sight of who you are.
Many young coaches change, for whatever reason – because of circumstances beyond their control, because things don’t come out right at first or because success can change you. All of a
sudden, they want to amend tactics, themselves. They don’t realise football is a monster that you can only beat and face if you are always yourself: under any circumstance.’

For you, it was perhaps little more than some friendly advice, satisfying a fatherly instinct you have often had for the new faces on the scene. Yet, unintentionally perhaps, you revealed to Pep
the secrets of your enduring resilience in the football profession, your
need to continue and your strange relationship with the sport, where sometimes you feel trapped and at
other times liberated.

Your words came back to him more than once while he was agonisingly deliberating his future. He understands what you were talking about, but, nevertheless, he could not help changing during his
four years leading the Barcelona first team. Football, that monster, transformed him.

You warned him against losing sight of his true self, but he changed, partly due to the pressure from a grateful and adoring fanbase, who forgot he was only a football coach; partly because of
his own behaviour, eventually being unable to take decisions that would hurt him and hurt his players – the emotional toll ended up being too much, became insurmountable, in fact. It reached
the point where Pep believed the only way he could recover some of his true self was to leave behind everything that he had helped create.

It turned out that, as much as he wanted to heed your advice, Pep is not like you, Sir Alex. You sometimes compare football to a strange type of prison, one that you in particular don’t to
want to escape. Arsène Wenger shares your view and is also incapable of empathising with or understanding Guardiola’s decision to abandon a gloriously successful team, with the
world’s best player at his disposal, adored and admired by all.

On the morning that Pep announced his departure from Barcelona, three days after Chelsea had shocked the football world by dumping them out of the Champions League in the semi-final, Wenger told
the media: ‘The philosophy of Barcelona has to be bigger than winning or losing a championship. After being knocked out of the Champions League, it may not be the right moment to make this
decision. I would have loved to see Guardiola – even going through a disappointing year – stay and come back and insist with his philosophy. That would be interesting.’

Guardiola’s mind is often in turmoil, spinning at 100 rpm before every decision – still questioning it even after he’s come to a conclusion. He couldn’t escape his
destiny (as a coach, going back to Barcelona) but he is incapable of living with the level of intensity that would eventually grind him down. His world is full of uncertainty,
debate, doubts and demands that he can never reconcile or satisfy. They are ever-present: when he is golfing with his friends; or sprawled on the sofa at home, watching a movie with his partner
Cris and their three children; or unable to sleep at night. Wherever he is, he is always working, thinking, deciding, always questioning. And the only way he can disconnect from his job (and the
huge expectations) is to sever his ties completely.

He arrived full of life as a novice coach with the B team in 2007. He left as first-team coach, drained, five years – and fourteen titles – later. Don’t take my word for it;
Pep himself said how exhausted he felt in the press conference when he confirmed that he was leaving.

Remember when, before the 2011 Ballon d’Or event, you were once asked about Pep? You were both at the press conference that coincided with your lifetime achievement award and Pep’s
recognition as manager of the year. You were frank in your response: ‘Where is Guardiola going to go that will be better than at home? I don’t understand why he would want to leave all
that.’

That same day, Andoni Zubizarreta, the Barcelona director of football and long-time friend of Pep, aware of the influence of that chat in Nyon and the esteem he holds you in, referred to your
words in conversation with Guardiola: ‘Look what this wise man, Alex Ferguson, full of real-world and football experience, is saying …’, to which Pep, having already told Zubi
that he was thinking of leaving at the end of that season, replied, ‘You bastard. You are always looking for ways to confuse me!’

Sir Alex, just look at the images of Pep when he first stepped up to take charge of Barcelona’s first team in 2008. He was a youthful looking thirty-seven-year-old. Eager, ambitious,
energetic. Now look at him four years later. He doesn’t look forty-one, does he? On that morning in Nyon, he was a coach in the process of elevating a club to new, dizzying heights, of
helping a team make history. By the time of your brief chat overlooking Lake Geneva, Pep had already found innovative tactical solutions, but in the following seasons he was going to defend and
attack in even more revolutionary ways, and his team was going to win almost every competition in which they took part.

The problem was that, along the way, every victory was one victory closer to, not further from, the end.

A nation starved of contemporary role models, struggling through a recession, elevated Pep into a social leader, the perfect man: an ideal. Scary even for Pep. As you know, Sir Alex, nobody is
perfect. And you might disagree, but there are very, very few who can endure the weight of such a burden upon their shoulders.

To be a coach at Barcelona requires a lot of energy and after four years, now that he no longer enjoyed the European nights, now that Real Madrid had made La Liga an exhausting challenge both on
and off the pitch, Pep felt it was time to depart from the all-consuming entity he had served – with a break of only six years – since he was thirteen. And when he returns –
because he
will
return – isn’t it best to do so having left on a high?

Look again at the pictures of Pep, Sir Alex. Does it not now become clearer that he has given his all for FC Barcelona?

In November 2011, just before the last training session ahead of the trip to Milan for a Champions League group game, Pep, who was in his fourth year with the first team, asked
the players to form a circle. He started to explain the secret that he, Tito Vilanova and the doctors had kept from the squad, but he couldn’t articulate what he wanted to say. The enormity
of the moment left him lost for words. He was anxious and uncomfortable. His voice wobbled and he moved aside. The doctors took over and explained the gravity of the situation to the players while
Pep kept looking at the floor and drinking from his ever-present bottle of water that was supposed to prevent his voice from quavering. It didn’t work on that occasion.