Pep Confidential (2 page)

Guardiola quickly revolutionised Bayern’s training methods, introducing tactical and positional work at the expense of hard running. The Catalan would frequently tease his players over their insistence on running. ‘What purpose do these long runs have other than to hurt your back?’ he would laugh.
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Pep stretches after a training session while chatting with the author. ‘Pep is very fussy about his appearance,’ writes Perarnau.

Guardiola chats with the author in his office. The Bayern boss gave Perarnau unprecedented access to the club throughout the 2013-14 season on the proviso that he did not write about what he saw until the campaign had ended.

Lorenzo Buenaventura (left), Bayern’s head fitness coach, explains the team’s physical preparation strategy to the author. ‘He is trying to introduce new concepts to football and he likes to see it evolving year by year,’ says Buenaventura of Guardiola.

‘I’m trying to implement something that flies in the face of the culture here.’ Pep explains the details of his game plan, the player positions, sequences and movements to his coaches before training.

Guardiola and his wife, Cristina, embrace Oktoberfest in Munich by dressing in traditional German costume. ‘I don’t have any problem with all that because what is important for the club is also important for me,’ says Guardiola. ‘At Barça I didn’t do much of this kind of thing… each has its culture and its way of doing things.’

Guardiola’s relationship with Arjen Robben would prove pivotal to his revolution at Bayern. ‘I love this style of football because it reminds me a bit of the traditional Dutch game, the football Van Gaal used to play,’ said Robben.
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Bastian Schweinsteiger scores in the 1-1 draw during Bayern’s last 16 second-leg match against Arsenal in March 2014. ‘With a 2-0 lead from the away game, it made no sense to take risks,’ reflected Guardiola, who watched his side claim their place in the Champions League quarter-finals.
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Pep issues instructions to Franck Ribéry, Javi Martínez and Philipp Lahm during Bayern’s Bundesliga match against Werder Bremen on April 2014. ‘I want them to dig into that DNA, let themselves go, run, liberate themselves,’ insists Guardiola.
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Manchester United’s goalkeeper, David de Gea, is unable to save Arjen Robben’s strike during the Champions League quarter-final second leg at the Allianz Arena. It was a tough evening for the home side who fell behind to Patrice Evra’s strike and struggled to break United down, before emerging 3-1 winners on the night. ‘What else did you expect? They’re a brilliant team,’ insisted Guardiola.
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Guardiola faced his old El Clásico nemesis Real Madrid in the 2014 Champions League semi-final. It would prove to be an unhappy reunion for the Catalan, who lost the first leg 1-0 and then changed tactics for the second leg at the behest of his players, only to go down 4-0. ‘I got it totally wrong,’ he admitted.
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Sergio Ramos scores Real Madrid’s second goal during the Champions League semi-final second leg. Astonishingly, after a season of defensive solidity, Bayern conceded three of Madrid’s four goals from set plays.
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A dejected Philipp Lahm looks on as Real Madrid’s players celebrate their progression to the Champions League final. Guardiola’s decision to move Lahm from his influential berth in mid-field to right-back proved a serious tactical error against the Spaniards.
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Bayern secured the Bundesliga title with a record seven games still to play. It fulfilled Guardiola’s stated ambition to put domestic superiority ahead of everything else in his first season, but also disrupted his team’s momentum in the Champions League.
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Jérôme Boateng showers his manager with beer as they celebrate the Bundesliga title. ‘I loved every minute of that shower because of what it symbolised: we are the champions. No mean feat!’ said Guardiola.
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Pep holds aloft the Bundesliga trophy after Bayerns’s home win over VfB Stuttgart. ‘I particularly appreciate all the effort made by players … it has not been easy to come back from a treble-winning season and stay mentally or physically at peak,’ said Guardiola.
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Seven days after lifting the Bundesliga, Arjen Robben celebrates scoring against Borussia Dortmund during the DFB Pokal final at Berlin’s Olympiastadion. The 2-0 victory after extra-time is a tactical triumph for Guardiola, who employed a more conservative approach after learning lessons from the Champions League loss to Real Madrid.
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Guardiola is flung into the night sky in Berlin after victory in Berlin, mimicking the same celebration during his spell at Barcelona.
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‘Ich liebe euch. Ich bin ein Münchener [I love you. I’m a Munich man now]’. Cradling the DFB-Pokal, Guardiola joins his team on the Munich town hall balcony at Marienplatz before addressing the fans.
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Bayern became the second team to follow a treble-winning season with a double, the other being PSV Eindhoven in 1987/8 and 1988/9.
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‘We’ve won a lot and everyone is delighted because winning titles buys you the time you need to start building the future.’ Season 2014-15 will bring a host of new challenges for Guardiola, both domestically and in Europe.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks go to Lufthansa and the Munich U-Bahn (Metro) for getting me there on time.

And to the security guards at FC Bayern, led by Heinz Jünger, who sheltered me from the heat and the cold.

A huge thank you is also due to everyone at Munich’s Hotel Wetterstein, where I spent much of last year and felt very much at home.

Thanks also to Markus Hörwick, FC Bayern’s very able director of communications, and to his team Nina Aigner, Cristina Neumann, Holger Quest and Petra Trott.

I am enormously grateful to all the FC Bayern players, and in particular to Thiago Alcántara, Jerôme Boateng, Dante Bonfim, Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, Philipp Lahm, Javi Martínez, Manuel Neuer, Rafinha, Franck Ribéry, Arjen Robben and Bastian Schweinsteiger, for their collaboration and the kindness they have shown me.

Thanks also to Paul Breitner, Roman Grill, Jupp Heynckes, Jürgen Klopp, Alexis Menuge, Christoph Metzelder, Stefen Niemeyer, Manuel Pellegrini, Daniel Rathjen, Ronald Reng, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Xavier Sala i Martín, Christian Streich, Julien Wolff and Mounir Zitouni, who have all made interesting contributions to this book.

To Matthias Sammer, for all his passion and his German language tutorials.

Thanks also to Isaac Lluch, a young, talented journalist whose vital support for me, in every sense of the word, knew no bounds.

Sincere thanks to Guardiola’s technical team, Domènec Torrent, Lorenzo Buenaventura and Carles Planchart, without whose direction and advice it would have been impossible to understand the team’s training regime and playing style.

And to Manel Estiarte, the key that opens every door. It is impossible to express the enormous debt I owe him for all his help and support.

And finally, to Pep Guardiola, the man who gave me this opportunity to understand in depth the workings of an elite football team, for all the generosity he showed me even through the blackest moments of the season.

PART ONE

TIME, PATIENCE, PASSION

‘We need patience.’
KARL-HEINZ RUMMENIGGE

*  *  *

‘We need passion.’
MATTHIAS SAMMER

*  *  *

‘We need time.’
PEP GUARDIOLA

1

DINNER WITH KASPAROV

New York, October 2012

TAKING A LAST bite of salad, Garry Kasparov shook his head and muttered irritably: ‘Impossible!’

For the third time that night he tried to fend off Pep Guardiola’s relentless questioning. The Catalan was determined to understand why Kasparov would not even
consider
the idea of competing against the young maestro, Magnus Carlsen, the world’s most promising chess player.

Until then, the atmosphere over dinner had been perfectly congenial. Indeed, since meeting Kasparov a few weeks before, Pep had made no attempt to conceal his fascination for the great champion.

Kasparov embodies the qualities Pep prizes above all others: resilience, intelligence, dedication, persistence, inner strength and a healthy streak of rebelliousness. It had therefore been an absolute delight to meet up over a meal or two. So far the conversation had covered a range of topics from economics and technology to, inevitably, sport and competition.

Guardiola was a few months into his sabbatical from the elite of world football. He had promised himself a year of tranquility in New York and was just starting to enjoy it.

He had spearheaded a triumphant era at FC Barcelona, the most successful period in the Catalan club’s history – achievements which may never be matched. During his four years in charge he won a formidable total of 14 trophies out of the 19 available, including six titles in 2009 alone. Yet, despite all of the brilliance and passion, the experience had left him drained and exhausted. Increasingly dispirited, he had decided to leave Barça before the damage became irreparable.

New York represented a fresh start. He wanted the chance to switch off, forget the past and discover new ideas. This was an opportunity to recharge his batteries and top up the reserves of energy that had become so depleted. He was keen to spend time with his family, whom he had neglected under pressure of work.

There would also be time to touch base with old friends. One of those was Xavier Sala i Martín, professor of economics at Columbia University, who had been director of finance at Barça from 2009 to 2010, during Joan Laporta’s final term as president.

Sala i Martín, a renowned economist with an international reputation, is a good friend of the Guardiola family and has lived in New York for some time. His presence there was an important factor in overcoming the family’s misgivings about moving to the city. The children had not yet mastered English and Cristina, Pep’s wife, would have to leave her own job in the family business in Catalonia.

Initially, none of them was particularly enthusiastic about Pep’s proposal, but Sala i Martín persuaded them to give New York a go and so far the whole experience had proved much better than expected.

Sala i Martín also counts Garry Kasparov as a close friend and one autumn night was forced to decline a dinner invitation to the Guardiolas’ New York home: ‘Sorry Pep. I can’t make it tonight. I’m having dinner with the Kasparovs.’

He then suggested that his Catalan friend accompany him to the meal, an idea which delighted not just Pep but Kasparov and his wife, Daria, too.

During what was a fascinating evening, the conversation flowed despite the fact that neither chess nor football was mentioned. They talked about inventions and technology, about the value of breaking pre-established paradigms and the virtue of remaining steadfast in the face of uncertainty. Most of all, they talked about passion.

Central to the discussion was Kasparov’s rather bleak assertion that technological potential is being directed to the world of entertainment more than anything else. In his view, current technological advances lack the transcendence of their predecessors and this has helped contribute to worldwide economic stagnation.

According to the former world chess champion, even the birth of the internet can’t be compared to the transformative power of the invention of electricity, which resulted in authentic worldwide economic change. It gave women access to the workplace and doubled the total volume of the world economy. In other words, he believes that the economic impact of the internet in terms of market production rather than pure finance, is vastly inferior.

Citing the example of the iPhone, whose processing potential is far superior to that of the Apollo 11 computer, the AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer), which had 100,000 times less RAM memory, he pointed out that whilst ACGs were used to put men on the moon, now we use mobile phones to kill little birds (a reference to the popular game
Angry Birds
).

Sala i Martín observed the encounter with some admiration.

‘It was fascinating to spend time with two such clever men and be privy to their discussions about technology, inventions, passion and complexity.’

The mutual fascination was such that a few weeks later they made a date for a second meal. Sala i Martín, who had left for South America, was unable to attend, but this time Cristina Serra, Pep’s wife, joined the group.

On this occasion the subject of chess was definitely on the agenda.

Guardiola was surprised by Kasparov’s intransigent attitude towards the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, whom he predicted would be the new world champion (Carlsen did indeed become champion a year later in November 2013, when he beat Viswanathan Anand 6.5 to 3.5).

Kasparov was unstinting in his praise of the great young maestro (then 22 years old), whom he had secretly trained in 2009. But he also pointed out the weaknesses Carlsen would have to overcome in order to dominate the world of chess.

It was then that Guardiola asked Kasparov if he felt capable of beating the emerging Norwegian. The response surprised him: ‘I have the ability to beat him, but in practice it is impossible.’

The answer struck Guardiola as little more than political correctness. It was, he assumed, an attempt by the impetuous Russian to be as diplomatic as possible. ‘But Garry,’ he insisted, ‘you have the ability, so why couldn’t you beat him?’

For the second time, the rejoinder was an emphatic ‘Impossible!’