Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (34 page)

Messi, the man-eater

For Messi, football is everything and everything is football. His happiest moments were when he was little playing on a makeshift pitch with thirty others, dribbling and weaving
his way past them all. ‘I don’t know what would have become of me without football. I play in the same way as when I was a little boy. I go out there and I have fun, nothing more. If I
could, I would play a match every day,’ Messi says.

There’s something incredibly child-like about Messi. He acts in the same way on and off the pitch, always distancing himself from the cameras and the attention, and what you see is pretty
much what you get. The club has allowed him to live as he would do at home back in Rosario, Argentina, with his family around him. Unlike others at Barcelona, he’s never been forced to speak
Catalan or represent the club off the pitch more than is necessary. He doesn’t talk to journalists, nor does he have a manager whom he can ring directly; he’s not acting out his life as
part of some carefully managed PR campaign. It’s all about what he does on the pitch.

At the World Club Cup in Tokyo, when Barcelona played against the Brazilian club Santos, Pep pointed something out to a friend of his, to illustrate the difference between a star and a
professional. He told his friend to take a look at Neymar. The Brazilian had a special haircut for the final, he had bought a big fancy watch and had some
Japanese inscription
added to his boots. ‘Now, look at Messi. Best player in the world. Perhaps in history. But still just Messi.’

According to Pep: ‘Messi doesn’t compete to appear in magazines, attract girls or appear in adverts, but to win the match, the title, the personal challenge. He competes against the
rival, against Cristiano Ronaldo, against Madrid, against Mourinho. Rain or shine, whether they foul him or not, basically he competes against himself to show that he is the best. He’s not
interested in the rest of it. Our obligation is to give the boy the ball in the best conditions. The rest is a case of sitting down and watching how it turns out.’

The Argentinian, who will never be able to illuminate for us the secret to his success, doesn’t need to have things explained to him twice when talking about football, nor receive messages
via the press, a trick that Pep quickly abandoned. He understood what Guardiola wanted from him and he applied that to his game. He’ll switch wings in order to help Barça gain
superiority, he will hold back or he will almost disappear from the game only to reappear again by surprise. As Pep told the Argentinian coach Alejandro Sabella, ‘You don’t need to talk
much to him, just protect him and listen to the very things he says. And don’t take him off, not even for an ovation.’ Unlike the foreign players who are signed as stars, he has grown
up in La Masía, immersed in the culture of the club. ‘He can participate in the “musical theory” side of things, accompanying Xavi and Iniesta – and then finish off
with an exceptional solo’, as Ramón Besa describes it. ‘He usually does what the move demands of him.’ He only does his fancy tricks to solve a problem.

And if things got complicated, he would always step up to the challenge. You simply have to be clever in the way you ask things of him. So Pep would sometimes tell the players just before a
game: ‘You should know that Leo is going to pressurise high up and will commit himself to the cause every time we decide to press.’ Indirectly, Leo, that is your order. While manager of
Swansea, Brendan Rodgers said, ‘Leo Messi has made it very difficult for footballers who think they are good players. If you have someone like him doing the pressure without the ball, then
I’m sure my friend Nathan Dyer can do it. It is an easy sell.’

Messi has a certain freedom in attack, yet he is well aware of his responsibilities in defence. If he is distracted, the midfielders remind him of that, because the great
success of teamwork is having shared responsibilities. The Argentinian knows that he can miss one or two defensive movements, but not a third. In one game against Arsenal, Xavi and Iniesta, who
generally act as his guardians, had to tell him off for disappearing from the game, for not tracking back, overshadowed by Ibrahimovi
ć
who had scored twice and was
playing as a centre forward.

From day one, Guardiola took an holistic approach, overseeing every level of his team’s preparation: physical, medical and dietary. And when he discovered that Argentinian beef –
arguably the best there is – formed the basis of Messi’s diet, the player having never eaten fish, the coach insisted that a special diet was drawn up for him, banning cola, popcorn,
pizza, and – Messi’s favourite –
conguitos
(chocolate peanuts).

The effort to understand and accommodate Messi is justified not only because of his talent, but primarily because of his behaviour; his commitment. Leo works his socks off in every training
session; his team-mates see that. He has never said: ‘I am Messi, you have to do this for me.’ He generally recognises that there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’. For that
reason, there were occasions when Guardiola gave Messi permission to go on holiday earlier than the rest of the squad or allowed him to return later. The logic was straightforward: he was often
asked to do more than anybody else and frequently Messi played more. And scored more, and won more games.

During the process of determining Messi’s ideal partner in attack, Guardiola had made some big decisions but he did also have some footballing doubts: where did he want to take the team?
Barcelona was experiencing unprecedented success but Pep had changed his footballing criteria from one year to the next and he needed to find, once again, the right path after deciding that
Eto’o and Ibrahimovi
ć
were not the right options.

Upon his arrival, Pep decided to play with a ‘
punta
’, someone like Eto’o: a quick and incisive, highly mobile striker who is always looking to make runs behind the
defenders. Then he realised that that type
of play, with small midfielders and Eto’o, created problems in terms of aerial defending. With Ibrahimovi
ć
’s arrival another system was established with different possibilities: a more fixed forward who allowed long-ball play, depth, arriving up front from the second line.
But that new idea disappeared after just one year and a third way was established. Or was it the first? He went from having the space of the forward occupied to having it free; no one would be a
fixed number nine. Messi would appear there whenever he thought it convenient.

It had been seen before, that ‘false striker’ role, as Alfredo Relaño recalled in a memorable editorial in
AS
newspaper: ‘From Sinclair’s Wunderteam to
Messi and Laudrup’s Barça, not forgetting Pedernera’s River Plate, Hidegkuti’s Hungary, Di Stéfano’s Madrid, Tostao’s Brasil, Cruyff’s
Ajax.’

Those changes up front could have caused doubts, but the quality of the squad and a style that combined possession and defined positional play allowed the team to win titles while a way of
attacking was being mulled over. The formula was reinvented following Ibra’s departure and the arrival of David Villa. With Messi as a false nine – and Villa as a left winger. The
result and the success were instant: Leo went from winning the Ballon d’Or to the Golden Boot. He proved himself to be an extraordinary goalscorer, a unique passer of the ball and a player
who could open up defences when necessary: he scored in six of the eight finals he played in under Guardiola.

Pep explains what his role was in the process: ‘Messi is unique and a one-off. We have to hope that he doesn’t get bored, that the club can give him the players so that he can
continue feeling comfortable because when he is, he doesn’t fail. When he doesn’t play well it is because something in his environment isn’t working, you must try and make sure
that he maintains the calmness that he has in his personal life and hope that the club is intelligent enough to sign the right players to surround him.’ And that is one of the main reasons
why FC Barcelona awarded José Manuel Pinto, Messi’s best friend in the Barcelona dressing room, a new contract.

Of course, there is a lot more to it than making Messi comfortable. If the great teams in history are measured in the crucial moments, Barcelona were going to become one of the most reliable
ever. The
team was not only stylish, but competitive in the extreme – their players were insatiable, little despots. As Pep would say, they are easy to manage because
that attitude is the foundation for everything. Among all of them, Messi symbolises that spirit better than anyone – an icon of world football but one who still cries after a defeat.

Messi’s hunger to succeed brought him to tears in the dressing room in Seville when Barcelona were eliminated in the last-sixteen round of the Copa del Rey in 2010. It was the third
highest priority of the campaign and, in Pep’s era that was in its second year, the first trophy that Barcelona would fail to win. Messi played spectacularly and could have scored a hat-trick
if it hadn’t been for Palop’s sensational performance in goal for the opposition.

After the final whistle, the Argentinian could not hold back; he sat on the floor hidden away from the world and started to cry like a little boy, the way he did in private, in his house, during
his first months at the club, when he felt alone, small and was suffering growing pains and the side effects of the growth hormones with which he was being injected.

As Guardiola soon came to understand, there is nothing in life that the Argentinian enjoys more than playing football (perhaps his daily siestas come close); why take that away from him by
making him rest? He didn’t need to take Messi out for a meal; their relationship was based on the field of play, on the matches and training sessions. They communicated through gestures and
silences, hugs and brief talks. Sometimes just an ‘Everything OK?’ and a thumbs-up and a smile in response was all it took.

But the best footballer on the planet has the odd frustrating moment that Pep knows all too well. There are many times when Leo is on top form out on the pitch, but others when he struggles to
score – and the first thing Pep used to do when he saw that Leo wasn’t functioning at 100 per cent was to have a good look at him after the game. If the player’s head had dropped,
he focused on picking him back up.

Those frustrating games bring a moody Messi. He’ll stare at the ground in silence, unsmiling, sulky. Under that angelic, innocent exterior there is a predator; behind his ambition and
record-breaking
feats, there is also a child. And children are often unable to hide their feelings.

On one occasion, Messi took to the training pitch with a teaspoon in his mouth and kept it there throughout much of the session. He normally has a coffee or
yerba maté
(an
Argentinian herbal drink) before training and has a habit of sucking on the spoon until he reaches the pitch, throwing it away before starting his exercises. That day he chewed on it while they
warmed up doing a piggy-in-the-middle drill. His behaviour in training coincided with him having been subbed in the match the night before. On other occasions where he was rested or substituted, he
wouldn’t talk to his manager for days.

When Ibra received the plaudits during his first few months at the club, Messi spoke with Pep and said either he played as a number nine or he didn’t play at all. ‘And what am I
supposed to do with Ibrahimovi
ć
?’ said Pep. Messi was adamant: ‘I play here, or I don’t play at all; stick the others out on the wing.’

At the end of the 2010–11 season, Barcelona drew 0-0 in the Camp Nou against Deportivo, but, with the Liga title in the bag, the celebrations started at the end of the game. Messi had been
named as a substitute but hadn’t played a single minute, with a Champions League final against Manchester United looming; he wanted to distance himself from the celebrations of a Liga title
that belonged to him almost more than anyone else. He had found out that two goals from Ronaldo in Real Madrid’s encounter with Villarreal had almost put him out of the race for the Pichichi
and he wanted to go home. Juanjo Brau, the team physio, had to go and get him, but by then the official team photo had been taken without him. Upon his return, the photo was retaken.

In Pep’s last year, Messi gave his worst performance, coming from the bench against Real Sociedad for the last half-hour. The next day he didn’t turn up to training and he
didn’t get over his anger at being left out until the next game: since that encounter, at the start of September, Messi played every minute of the season. If you take football away from him,
you’re removing his life’s motivation. You just leave him with eating and sleeping.

Had Guardiola created a monster in Messi? The Argentinian had
absolute power in the coach’s final season, and his behaviour was sometimes out of place. He would get
annoyed if young players such as Cuenca (‘Lift your head up!’ Messi once shouted at him against Granada) or Tello (‘Cross!’ he shouted at him against Milan, when he went for
goal, looking for Abbiati’s near side) didn’t pass him the ball. Even David Villa wasn’t forgiven for having shots at goal if he had the option of passing to Messi.

Like all forwards, this shrewd and determined individual wanted to keep his place and he fought for it.

‘Messi learnt to make choices depending on the requirements of each game,’ Argentinian César Luis Menotti stresses, and he is right. But his influence went far beyond the
pitch: the club asked Messi’s circle what they would think if Barcelona signed Neymar. Messi knows the young star through Dani Alvés and the three have played online football on
PlayStation. The club got the answer it was looking for: ‘Go ahead, sign him.’

Did Pep feel that he had given Messi too much power? When he spoke about leaving the club so as not to ‘hurt each other’, many interpreted that as a reference to, among other
players, Messi. Would staying mean for Pep readdressing the balance of power somehow and avoiding one player scoring seventy-three goals and the rest evading responsibility?