Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (24 page)
Read Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography Online
Authors: Guillem Balague
Barcelona were in charge of the score and the game. Cannavaro and Metzelder did not know what to do. If they both moved forward to try to help Gago and Lass against the three Barcelona players
who occupied the central positions, they left their back exposed to the movements of Eto’o and Henry cutting in from the wings. If only one of the two centre backs moved forward, that gave
Messi the option of playing a one-on-one with a lot of space against a much slower defence outside their area. Before the match, Juande Ramos had a plan to counter Messi – involving Heinze,
the left back – but on the night the Argentinian full back instead had his hands full dealing with Eto’o.
Xavi, Iniesta and Messi were quick with their decisions and passing, tempting the opponent towards the ball then passing before contact. The game was becoming the perfect example of technique,
tactics and belief. It also heralded the beginning of the ‘Messi explosion’ that accompanied his move from the wing to playing as a false number nine. It was a tactical switch that was
going to destroy opposition defences across Spain and Europe – and revolutionise world football.
And the key to all this lay with two gifted and privileged minds of this game, Guardiola and Messi, both of whom understood the importance of positioning and the needs of the individual.
With Pep’s help and his own intuition, Messi started playing football with an accordion-like movement: the further the ball was away from him, the more distance he would put between
himself
and the ball. The closer it was to him, the closer he would move to get involved. Messi always wants the ball and in order for him to receive it in the best
circumstances, Pep has made him understand that looking for the opposition’s weaker side, where there are fewer opponents, behind the line demarcated by the deep-lying midfielders
(
pivotes
) and distancing himself from the centre backs, the ball will find him. Furthermore, in those areas, he will have a bit of extra space to rev his engine, to work his way up through
the gears, before hitting the opposition in full flow. And all this with very little effort: he only needed to work up through the gears when he received the ball. Without it he was allowed to take
time to recover, to rest while he played. It sounds simple enough, but in mastering that positioning and timing, Messi has shown a thorough understanding of the game and an ability to learn in
record time what many players take years to understand.
Barcelona grabbed their third just before the break. Messi. 1-3.
At half-time Guardiola warned his players not to get carried away by the scoreline nor the fact that they had an important match three days later. Madrid had managed much more incredible
comebacks in the previous weeks and they were, after all, playing at the Bernabéu.
The second half kicked off. Madrid scored their second. 2-3.
It was the moment when many sides would have panicked, allowed the momentum to shift in favour of the hosts. But Guardiola and his Barcelona players were not about to let that happen.
Thierry Henry made it 2-4.
Then came Barcelona’s fifth. The most magical of them all: Xavi performed a fantastic turn to lose his markers, then passing to Messi who, with a feint, sent Casillas diving to ground
prematurely, before slotting home with a shot that passed the helpless keeper. 2-5.
And then there were six.
Messi released Eto’o with a ball into space out wide on the right, who fired in a cross that was met by Gerard Piqué. That’s right: a centre half leading a counter-attack when
his side had a three-goal lead. 2-6.
Superiority in midfield, as predicted by Pep, was the key to the game. It was the happiest day of his regime up to that point. The
squad celebrated and hugged each other
like never before. Xavi remembers all the players bouncing around looking like a bunch of ‘teletubbies’, childish, uninhibited exuberance in victory. Players took photos in the dressing
room to immortalise the greatest moment in a century of Madrid–Barça games. It was Barcelona’s very own cannon shot heard all around the world, the moment when the football fans,
players and pundits across the globe took notice that something very special was taking place in a corner of Spain.
In the press room at the Bernabéu, Pep appeared more emotional than ever, truly moved by the historic event that had just taken place. ‘It’s one of the happiest days of my
life and I know we have also made a lot of people happy.’
Iniesta remembers the celebrations well: ‘The craziest, as always, was Piqué, he didn’t stop jumping and shouting. One of his favourite rituals is to connect his MP3 player to
the aeroplane’s loudspeaker on the way home and put music on full blast – ‘techno, ska, dance or whatever type of loud music appeals to him at the time.’ Needless to say,
the flight back to Barcelona that night was an impromptu Piqué-inspired disco.
The crowds awaiting the players at Barcelona airport in the early hours of Sunday morning greeted their returning heroes as if they were bringing home the trophy from a major cup final.
Guardiola, however, had to bring the players back down to earth almost immediately. He knew that he would have to calm everybody down, then pick them back up for another monumental and
season-defining challenge: a Champions League semi-final against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge just three days later.
THE SIX TITLES IN ONE CALENDAR YEAR
During the four years that Pep Guardiola was in charge of Barcelona he did not give interviews for publication, with the exception of one that was supposed to end up on the
history of Brescia DVD and somehow ‘mysteriously’ found its way on to the Italian television channel RAI!
Talking to Pep for this book was the only way I could open a hitherto closed window on his private world; to reveal what motivates him, what took him to where he is now, what fed his intuition
to make the right football decisions; ultimately to try to comprehend what was taking him away from all he adored, or had once adored.
Before I met him privately, I felt like a naughty kid peering over a high wall to try to catch glimpses of a life, a mind, that, I was certain, was not exactly the same as the one that was
discussed frequently and analysed to death. Clearly, as we all know, there are many Guardiolas: the public Pep, the passionate Pep, the fragile Pep, Pep the leader, visionary, role model and so on.
In order to convey anything close to the real Pep Guardiola, it was important to try and peel away the layers, to work around the public profile and understand the man behind the finely tailored
suits and the cool exterior.
Typically, meetings with Pep would be a planned twenty-minute chat at the end of a training session. More often than not, the press officer would return eighteen minutes after I’d arrived,
with a knock on the door and a ‘do you want a coffee?’, code for: ‘time’s up’! If Pep brushed him off with a ‘don’t worry, we are OK’, it was a small
success.
His private words mould this book. In any case, since the day he took over the first team at FC Barcelona, Pep has done enough talking in front of the press – at his 546 press conferences
– to fill an
encyclopaedia with his insights. By his own account, he has sat in front of the media for 272 hours, or eleven full days. That amounts to around eight
hundred questions a month. Can you imagine? Every single word scrutinised, every gesture picked up on, every utterance interpreted and extrapolated by the world’s press.
He has been asked if he believes in God, if he writes poetry, about his politics, about the financial crisis and at least a hundred times if he was going to renew his contract (‘although I
don’t really care if you do or not,’ one journalist once told him!). The pre-game press conferences, at least half an hour long, always became the story of the day, but there was more
to take from them if you were an advanced follower of both the politics within the media and the character himself – you hardly ever got a clue about the team, but if you were intuitive you
would find out about Pep’s state of mind.
So stop leaping around trying to see what’s on the other side of the wall. Take a seat, if you haven’t already, in one of the front rows of today’s empty press conference. You
will be the only journalist present. Imagine Pep clutching a bottle of water, hurrying to the front table and eagerly taking his seat, nervously touching the microphone, prepared to offer you an
insight into his mind. The answers to many of the questions you’d hope to ask might be revealed in the following paragraphs. Or maybe not. Keep reading and find out.
The press conference starts now. Pep leans forward into the microphone, and starts to speak:
‘When I face the press and the players, there is always an imposing element, almost theatrical, in order to be able to reach them. But in the end I always transmit what I feel. There is
an element of shame, of fear, of acting the fool that makes me contain myself a little, then there is what I have learnt from football and the thing is that it scares me to make a statement when
I know that the game is uncontrollable, that tomorrow my words could come back to haunt me. That’s why I always search for the element of scepticism, the “
je ne sais
quoi
”, a doubt. That false humility that people always say I have, always giving the players the credit, isn’t because I don’t want to acknowledge my own merits, I must
have done something right, it is because I panic about having those words turned on me. Because by doing exactly the same as what I am doing now, I could lose tomorrow. I
prefer to be wrong a million times than give my people the impression that I am sure about everything that I am not. Because if I get it wrong tomorrow through doing the same thing
as I do now, they’ll say, “You weren’t that clever, how didn’t you see that?”
‘I win because I am in a team rich in very good players and I try to make them give their all and out of ten games I win eight or nine. But the difference between winning and losing is
so small ... Chelsea didn’t win the European Cup because Terry slipped when taking a penalty, he slipped! I’ve given the players that example a thousand times.
‘Three or four books have been written about my leadership strategy. I look at them to discover myself and see if I really do those things, because I don’t know. They come to
conclusions about me that I had never even considered.
‘Why am I more of a leader than a coach who has been training for twenty years and hasn’t won anything? It isn’t false modesty, I can’t find the reason because I
wouldn’t have won trophies if I hadn’t been with Barça.
‘The players give me prestige and not the other way around.
‘I would go out on to the pitch with the players and go into the dressing room. I’m still very young and there are a lot of things that I would do. I’d go and hug them as a
player. But I can’t do that any more.
‘How do I exercise my leadership? Why do I tell players one thing or another? Nothing is premeditated; everything is pure intuition with the players at all times. When they lose they are
a mess, both those who played and those who didn’t. So, sometimes I turn up and hug one or tell another one something, it is pure intuition. Of the twenty decisions I make each day,
eighteen are intuitive, through observation.
‘Is that all true? I can’t work solely through intuition, I have to work using my knowledge, I don’t want them to brand me a visionary. Furthermore, if I were I would make my
players play in strange positions.
‘In the end we do what we can and feel, through our education, we only transmit what we have experienced. There are no general theories that apply to everything. And any one could be
valid, what doesn’t work is
imposing
something that doesn’t work.
‘As professional as they are, they are also scared of losing and they look for that figure that gives them the key, that tells them: “Hey, come this way ...” this is what we
coaches have to do. We have to transmit trust and security in all the decisions we make.
‘That trust, security and sincerity are the fundamental pillars for a good
coach. The players have to believe in the manager’s message. He must always speak to
the player fearlessly, sincerely and tell him what he thinks. Without deceiving him.
‘The players put you to the test each day; that’s why it is very important to be convinced about what you want and how you want to put it across. They are aware that luck is an
important factor in the game, but they want to feel that the coach is convinced and defends the decisions he has made. The day we played against Espanyol at home (1-2), I got it wrong at
half-time. A couple of weeks later, I mentioned it to them. They know that we aren’t perfect, but we are humble and sincere.
‘I don’t know in what aspect we are good coaches. We haven’t invented or revolutionised anything. The tactical concepts that we apply have been developed here, we have been
taught them. The secret is in the details and in observing a lot. You have to pay a great deal of attention, constantly, to what happens every day, more so than to the weekend’s game: we
are always aware of every aspect, of a player’s moods, their expressions, of thousands of almost unfathomable things that could make a difference. Observation is key.
‘When I lose I wonder if I am capable of being a coach, of maintaining that leadership, and if I win, the ecstasy lasts five minutes and then I lose it.
‘The fans need to know that their players work hard, the same as them. It is a good thing for people to know that we can be strict with them, fining them when they turn up late. The
supporters have to see themselves reflected in the players. It is a question of defence because in difficult times people have to know that they haven’t lost because they are lazy, that the
work has been put in.
‘I only know that a good leader is one who isn’t scared of the consequences of their decisions. They make the decision that their intuition tells them, no matter what happens.
‘In order to make decisions, you must be really convinced, they can’t be taken lightly when there is so much pressure. I don’t ignore the media element.
‘There are times when I am tired and I have to transmit energy and I don’t know how to do so. If you transmit it you’re not being yourself, and if you don’t transmit it
you’re not being true to yourself.
‘With the first team, there are weeks when you are running on empty. In some training sessions I only observe because I don’t have the sufficient time or energy to direct them;
Tito, Aureli or Loren Buenaventura direct them.
‘The key is to have a strong dressing room, knowing that we are stronger together than one person on his own.
‘My players know that it bothers me less if they make a mistake ten times, than if they ignore me or don’t look at me when I call them. That destroys me.
‘The substitutes would do a better job if their ungrateful manager gave them an extended run of games.
‘I do more work as a team manager than as a coach, because, as there are games every three days, there are few pure footballing training sessions and there is a lot of co-existence and
it isn’t easy. But the lucky thing in this team is having found people with important human values.
‘A column in the press, instead of a front-page headline, is sometimes more influential on the players’ moods than my own opinion. I have to know which headlines have come out
about a player. If I have two stars and there are three headlines about one, I’m going to approach the player who hasn’t had any.
‘There are things that denote how a team is. Today we planned to meet at five o’ clock and by 4.30 most of us were here. They know, because I have said it and they have seen it,
that when they stop doing it, anyone can beat us. If each person does their job, and they know what it is because I make sure they know, then we are a team that is difficult to beat.
‘I have to conserve this passion that I have for what I do. The day that I stop feeling it, I will leave. Now I want to tell a player off and then hug him immediately after. If you lose
that, that’s bad ... when I stop correcting a player during training, it will mean that I have lost my passion. When I no longer get excited, I will go. That’s what happened to me
when I was a player.
‘At another team? It would be exactly the same. My closeness to my players is lessening. This year, less than last year, it is self-defence. Because I suffer, I prefer to distance
myself.’