Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (35 page)

There is an argument to be made that Pep Guardiola started his coaching career at Barcelona developing the team’s collective play but that in his last season he gave in to individual
quality. It is something that all managers do because the footballers are ultimately the ones who decide games and especially if the individual in question is Messi.

Getting the right balance between an exceptional player and the team ethic is very difficult and yet Pep somehow managed it for the majority of his time as a coach. But was it necessary for Pep
to say so clearly and so often that Messi was special? Was that the start of something that would eventually culminate in Guardiola leaving the club, conscious of the imbalance that had been
created? The coach is the equilibrium. And if he gives in to a player, according to the unwritten rules of football the scales need to be realigned.

Other victims of Messi

Fernando Parrado was one of the sixteen survivors of an event known as the ‘Andes Tragedy’. In October 1972, a squad of Uruguayan rugby players was flying from
Montevideo to Santiago de Chile when they crashed in the snow-bound Andes. The survivors, in a story dramatised in the Hollywood movie
Alive
, waited seventy-two days to be rescued. Low on
food, with friends dying around them and the feeling that there was no hope, they eventually cannibalised the bodies of the dead in order to stay alive. Parrado crossed the Andes with his friend
Roberto for ten days in search of help, traipsing through deep snow wearing a pair of training shoes. In Guardiola’s last year in charge, Fernando gave a motivational talk to the whole
Barcelona squad.

‘It helped us realise that awful things happen that can destroy anyone, but there are people who rebel against it and fight for their lives,’ Gerard Piqué commented on the
talk. Later, Parrado gave an account of his impression of the Barcelona players on Uruguayan television. ‘They’re sensitive young men, they were like an amateur team. And Guardiola told
me that if there is a hint of disharmony within the group he removes it, as he did with Eto’o and Ibrahimovi
ć
, who wanted to be stars in a team where no one
feels a star.’

In Pep’s first season in charge, Barcelona had missed a clear opportunity on goal in a key moment during a crucial game – the coach doesn’t want to remember which game nor who
had the chance. But immediately after the miss he turned around to look at the bench. Some footballers had leapt from it in anticipation of the ball nestling in the back of the net, while others
neither moved nor reacted. Pep is guided by many details such as this to understand the thinking of his group, and this one probably stayed in his memory. It ended up being more than an anecdote.
The following summer all the players who had failed to react had left the club.

At the start of Pep’s fourth season in charge of the first team, another striker had to move on. It wasn’t David Villa, signed to replace Ibrahimovi
ć
and with whom Guardiola was very publicly delighted. It was Bojan, the amicable, baby-faced and shy-looking
boy, who won the hearts of everyone after debuting in
Rijkaard’s team at just seventeen when he was heralded as one of the most promising players to come out of La Masía.

Bojan was hardly given a chance to shine under Pep and a loan move to AS Roma followed. The youngster was clearly upset at not being able to triumph at his boyhood club, but he was even more
hurt by how Guardiola managed his departure. ‘I didn’t say goodbye to Pep, only those who treated me well,’ he said shortly after leaving. ‘The relationship with Pep
wasn’t a very good one.’

Those words troubled Catalan commentators. The Barcelona sports daily
El Mundo Deportivo
wrote, ‘When Pep comes down to earth, walking on the same ground as we mere mortals, he
puzzles us. This is what Bojan’s comments have done: revealing a side to our coach that we didn’t want to discover. The tale from our young player from Linyola has shown us a cold,
unflappable manager, protected by an enigmatic and impeccable image, capable of keeping complete control of his feelings.’

At the heart of that debate lay the persona of Pep, untouchable, almost mystical, for the Barcelona fans and media, a persona challenged by a former player, with emotive words that came straight
from the heart. ‘If Pep were to phone me asking me to return, I would tell him no,’ said Bojan, in an emotional television interview made on his departure. ‘It would be difficult
for me to trust him. I’m not saying that our paths won’t cross again, but if he phoned me I would tell him no. I’ve not had a good time. It wouldn’t be a good idea to be
under his orders again.’

Bojan had left ‘primarily because I wasn’t playing’ and ‘I wasn’t happy’, but also because of ‘the way [I] was treated’ by Pep. ‘Not playing
is one thing, but another is not feeling part of the group; I felt that whatever I did, he didn’t see it,’ Bojan said, touched by a painful sadness, powerless and resigned. ‘My
parents, my friends, my girlfriend, they all told me: “Speak to him” but the words just didn’t come out. Perhaps because I was thinking: “Whatever you do, very little is
going to change ...”’

The emotion was visible in the boy’s eyes. Distressed, he confessed that in the last stage of the season he ‘wasn’t psychologically well’, he
‘had no desire to train’ in a successful team. ‘I didn’t feel loved by my team-mates and a large section of the public.’ It all came to a head in the
Champions League final at Wembley. ‘There I saw that I had no role to play and that I had put up with not playing for a long time.’ He gave himself some hope to take part in the final
for a few minutes, since he saw that ‘we were winning 3-1, Manchester couldn’t do anything and there was still a substitute left’. But Pep preferred to reward Afellay.

After that he didn’t even speak to his manager. ‘I didn’t think there was anything to say, and I still think that. He didn’t approach me either.’ Nor did he do so
before going to AS Roma. ‘I said bye to the people that treated me well, [between Pep and me] there was no farewell, neither on my behalf nor on his. Nor were there phone calls during the
summer.’ It was that raw. ‘I always say that Pep is the best trainer there is. But I have been unfortunate to not form part of his plans and to receive that treatment from him as a
player.’

Nobody has the God-given right to play for Barcelona, not even those who come from the lower ranks. So perhaps Guardiola should have been clearer. Bojan’s difficult period at AS Roma,
where he never managed to have a good run of games, suggested that it was his limitations and not a personal caprice of the manager, that stopped his career at Barcelona.

The problem with all the strikers was clear: Messi was devouring them. But in the process of improving the team, while its identity was being established other players fell by the wayside. The
Belarusian Alexander Hleb was another to find himself on the outside looking in and he also believes that, in the end, things could have been handled better. ‘The important meetings to decide
any weighty issues were made up solely of home-grown players. Guardiola was a very young coach and in some ways his lack of experience was noticeable in some situations,’ he explained.
‘For example, Arsène Wenger is someone who always tries to establish very close contact with each and every one of his players. I mean that when a coach talks to you and looks you
directly in the eyes, it really improves the player’s perception of the coach. So you listen to him and you say to yourself, “OK, he’s right. I need to work on this for myself, I
need to give more.”’

In other words, when Pep understood that his contribution was insufficient, when he saw that the Belarusian didn’t understand what the team needed, he cut him loose
before the season had even finished.

But as with other rejected players, Guardiola’s attempts to build bridges slip Hleb’s mind. ‘I have the English I have because of Hleb,’ Pep has said. He spoke on
countless occasions with him because he felt that he was the kind of player who needed the occasional arm around his shoulders. Guardiola thinks now that it was wasted time that could have been
spent doing other things. Hleb didn’t ever comprehend what Barça was about and even the player himself admits it. ‘I understand now that it was almost all my fault. I was
offended like a little kid. And I showed it: sometimes I would run less in training, sometimes I would pose. The coach would tell me to do one thing, and I’d do something else in defiance. It
was like kindergarten, I find it ridiculous now.’

Yaya Touré, another discarded player, blamed Guardiola for his departure: ‘Guardiola, when I asked him about why I wasn’t playing, would tell me strange things. That’s
why I went to City. I couldn’t speak to him for a year,’ he explained. ‘If Guardiola had talked to me I would have stayed at Barça. I wanted to finish my career at
Barça but he didn’t show any trust in me. He didn’t take any notice of me until I got the offer from City.’

Yaya Touré’s agent forced the situation to such an extent, with accusations against Pep Guardiola and the club (‘a madhouse’, he claimed), that the relationship with the
player deteriorated. According to his agent, Yaya should play every game, but Busquets’s promotion to the first team prevented him from doing so. Eventually, Pep’s relationship with
Yaya became purely professional and the footballer felt marginalised since he could no longer be a part of that cushioned world that Pep builds around his loyal players.

It was soon very clear to him that the emotional investment Pep asks of his players, an integral part of the group’s make-up, had an expiry date: the affection lasted as long as the
player’s desire to be a part of his vision.

Gerard Piqué, the eternal teenager

Pep recognised the need to – and indeed did – treat Thierry Henry, for instance, like the star he was, but also like the star who wanted to be treated as one. With
Gerard Piqué, though, the relationship took the opposite dynamic. Pep took him under his wing, loved him and cared for him more than perhaps any other player in the side; yet that same
devotion to Gerard ended up creating a tension that became one of the biggest challenges of Pep’s final season at Barcelona.

Initially, Pep had not requested Piqué’s signing. Tito Vilanova, his assistant and Gerard’s coach in the junior sides at La Masía, was the brains behind his transfer.
Pep had no problem in admitting so in the first conversation he had with the then twenty-one-year-old former Manchester United centre back when he returned to the Camp Nou: ‘If you’re
signing for Barcelona it is because of Tito Vilanova. I’ve only seen you play a couple of times, I don’t really know you that well, but Tito has real faith in you.’

Tito’s trust in Piqué was reflected in the choice of centre back for the second game of Pep’s first season, when injury kept Rafa Márquez out of the team and the former
United defender was selected for the 1-1 draw v Racing de Santander at the Camp Nou that left Barcelona with one point out of a possible six. The day after the game, Pep pulled the player to one
side in training and told him, ‘Think about their goal, the one where the shot rebounded, you should have pushed up and played them offside; make sure you’re ready for the game in
Lisbon.’ And Piqué thought to himself, ‘Shit, wow, this guy really believes in me.’ Right from the start, their relationship became special because of that immense
trust.

Piqué had really been signed as the fourth centre back (Márquez, Puyol and Cáceres were in front of him, Milito spent the whole season injured) and after getting the nod
against Racing came the first Champions League game of the season against Sporting Lisbon. Puyol was moved to left back and Márquez and the new guy were the centre backs. ‘Damn, he
must have some faith in me!’ Piqué kept scratching his head. That confidence boost carried him through to April, when he got selected to partner Márquez in the centre of
defence against Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final at the Camp Nou. Márquez ruptured a knee ligament in that game and Puyol came off the bench – and that was it.
Puyol and Piqué formed a central defensive pairing that became first choice for years to come and went unbeaten for more than fifty games.

‘My relationship with Pep is not like the friendship I have with my mates because you cannot have that between player and coach, but it is close,’ Piqué remembers.
‘We’ve only ever met once for a coffee away from training to discuss football matters. A few years ago he asked me to join him after training to chat about the team and my role in it.
We met at a hotel close to the training ground and talked for an hour or so, and Pep told me, “come on, you can give us a bit more”. He’s done the same thing with a few players;
he did it with Henry once.’

Piqué’s insight is a clue as to how their relationship developed since that Racing game. Guardiola has not publicly complimented many players the way he has Piqué; but
neither has he challenged them to the same extent either, on a daily basis, from day one. After seeing what he was capable of in his first season, Pep was insistent that Piqué did not waste
his talent and sometimes you could sense tension in their relationship. Gerard is Pep’s weakness, but he knew that the player always had more to give.

In his last season, Guardiola didn’t feel Piqué was in the right frame of mind and that was a source of frustration for him. The player didn’t understand why, partly because
of injury and partly as a technical decision, he missed six consecutive games at one point, including a Clásico, but the manager knew it was done not only for the good of the group, but for
Gerard, too. The centre back had lost those feelings a player needs to have to be a regular in the Barcelona line-up, that sense of being at peace with himself and the team when he entered the
dressing room. He had taken too much for granted; he was distracted.

‘When someone isn’t giving their all, then I think that maybe something is wrong in their personal life or they have some sort of problem,’ Guardiola explains. ‘So,
that’s when I have to step in. When someone isn’t giving everything to the team it isn’t because they are
bad or cheeky. If that were the case, either the
player goes or I do. I get paid to manage this player, to recover them.’ If they are worthwhile recovering, one might add.