Pep Confidential (29 page)

‘We work in these five corridors and the fundamental thing is that the winger and the full-back from the same side of the team can’t ever be in the same corridor. Depending on what position the central defender takes up, the full-back and the winger on his side must position themselves in one or other of the available lanes. The ideal is that if the centre-half is moving open, the full-back should be in the next door lane, inside, and the winger in the wide lane, outside, so that the ball can be passed directly to him. If you achieve a wide pass directly to the winger you’ve vaulted the whole of the enemy midfield, and if the ball is lost then the full-back is inside and can close down space immediately.

‘It’s trying to force the opposition’s plans to change via your own actions. Our full-back comes inside, dragging their winger with him. If the winger doesn’t follow him, you’ve got a free man. If it’s their attacking midfielder who goes to cover him then our tracking midfielder isn’t marked now, and so it goes.’

Pep breaks down one by one every step each player needs to take. Not just his own, but especially those required in relation to what a team-mate does. ‘When we attack via a build-up from the back, the winger hangs wide and our centre-forward must do that, too, to drag his centre-half with him. That space down the middle is created so that our attacking midfielder or full-back can take advantage. If our full-back starts wide, the striker also copies that move, in which case it’s our winger (operating down the channel or corridor inside the furthest wide one) who attacks the opened-up space.’

These lanes are the instruments with which the orchestra will co-ordinate their movements but the overall aim, as always, is to disorganise their opponents. ‘We have to shake up our rivals’ organisational structure. Always. That’s our objective.’

In order to do this, Pep wants to establish superiority in the central area. ‘I want a lot of players inside, in fact that’s where most of them should be. Most coaches want the opposite. They want most of their men on the outside. I’m not saying my way is better. It’s just my way.’

Having presented his impassioned master class, Pep is now starving. ‘Ok, after all that talking I’m going to go and get my family and find us a nice terrace to have lunch.’

The coach’s family have adapted brilliantly to Munich and the three kids are happy. If they struggled a bit with English in New York, their current fluency means they are now all top of their respective classes.

As he leaves the sports ground on his way to Wettersteinplatz metro stop, Miquel Soler wonders: ‘Will Pep be able to keep this up for more than three years? I really doubt it. The guy uses up so much energy. He lives everything at 1000 miles an hour. I think the same thing will happen here as happened in Barça. He’ll be exhausted after three or four years and he’ll have to take another break. Then he’ll be off to England and more of the same. He just can’t keep this momentum up.’

36

‘DIEGO! I LOVE YOU!’

Munich, October 24, 2013

‘IT’S ABOUT COMPETING well even when you’re not in great shape,’ Lorenzo Buenaventura tells us.

Bayern aren’t in great shape as we approach the end of October. There are two reasons for this: injuries and new concepts. But they
are
winning matches.

Sometimes the final score speaks of complete domination, such as the 5-0 win against Viktoria Plzen in the Champions League, or the 3-0 win against Augsburg in the Bundesliga. At other times (3-2 at Hertha and a 2-1 win away to Hoffenheim) Bayern struggle through the first half as if trying to digest a heavy meal. Pep accepts there is a problem. ‘We tend to play well in the second half of matches in the Allianz Arena but the first half is always much tougher.’

His players are assimilating the new concepts well but putting them into practice is another matter entirely, and the high rate of injuries is slowing down this process even further. If it is not Ribéry it’s Dante; when Shaqiri is fit, suddenly Kroos or Robben develop a problem. The team is in constant flux and it’s impossible to achieve any kind of stability.

Pep might get two vital players like Götze and Javi Martínez back in the fold, but he then has to part with a crucial team member like Bastian Schweinsteiger, whose performance has dipped because of the unbearable pain in his ankle. He needs an operation.

Guardiola continues to find imaginative solutions. They play in the Champions League with Diego Contento in central defence. It’s an experiment – against Viktoria Plzen they used four full-backs: Rafinha, Contento, Alaba and Lahm.

The coach is not complaining. He knows that coping with unforeseen events and problematic situations is all part of the job. He’s pleased with his players although not entirely satisfied.

‘My objective is to get the best out of these men. I don’t like the way we play in the first half. It’s the only thing that really worries me. I want people enjoying it from the first minute, not the 46th. We have to play better. Much, much better.’

Improving their game will remain an obsession for the rest of the season. The league table paints a more positive picture than Pep. Bayern are top, one point ahead of Borussia Dortmund, and have only one point less than this time last year, when Heynckes’ men were basking in the praise being heaped upon them, but Manel Estiarte dismisses any attempt to draw comparisons. ‘It’s not about that. There’s no point in making comparisons. We just have to get on with the job.’

If anyone ever feels tempted to relax a little, even for a second, Estiarte is always there to remind him that there are no guarantees and that success only comes from hard work, day in day out. Manel’s is the voice of moderation. He’s the one who gives them a boost in the difficult times and who pierces the moments of euphoria with reminders that they have everything still to fight for. If this team doesn’t triumph in the end, it certainly won’t be for lack of effort. Even Gennaro Gattuso, the former AC Milan player who was a formidable midfielder in his day, is pretty taken aback by what he sees at Säbener Strasse: ‘Do they always train this hard? They’re like machines.’

Pep doesn’t let up, even in training sessions. The morning after thrashing Viktoria Plzen 5-0, he’s out on the grass going through his routine of gestures, instructions and orders, all delivered at maximum volume.

Everyone knows what to expect at work. The day immediately after a match the starting players do some
rondos
(in which Neuer and Müller count the touches and compete mercilessly) followed by joint mobility and recuperation exercises. Meanwhile, anyone who was a substitute is nose to the grindstone, toiling away as if every chance in the box, every cross, every shot might determine his place in the first team. In fact, that’s exactly what’s happening. In Pep’s eyes it’s not star quality or status that gets you a game. Every man has to earn his spot by sweating it out every day on the pitch. Even in a training session for second-choice players, he’s here, in the middle of the action, shouting, yelling, pushing them on.

By the end of October the team has already completed 107 training sessions and there has been a resulting shift in terms of the players’ grasp of Pep’s concepts. They’re starting to understand his football language, although they are still not consistently repeating the level of performance they showed in Manchester.

Fitness coach Lorenzo Buenaventura confirms that they are assimilating the new concepts well. ‘Pep deals with new concepts by introducing them from the warm-up, the simplest passing exercises onwards. Today he’ll share a few details and then give them some more tomorrow. The day after that he’ll talk about how to choose what angle the body is at to receive a pass, then, next time, how to take the ball on the move, followed by how to practise passing off your weaker foot. Little by little the players start to understand and assimilate and very soon it’s coming easily and they’re putting it all together at speed.’

They reached peak performance in Manchester and have suffered a dip in the subsequent weeks. Guardiola agrees with Buenaventura but resists any attempt to draw definitive conclusions. ‘We’re only at the end of October. There’s a long way to go yet!’

We watch today’s training session. Buenaventura talks us through it. ‘We never start off with the same warm-up. What do I mean by never? I mean that we have the next exercise planned and that dictates the kind of warm-up we do. Normally we start with some joint mobility exercises, then some injury prevention and after that, how to find space. That usually lasts between six and 10 minutes depending on the next exercise. At other times we prefer to start off with joint mobility work and a game of some sort. Or the focus might be on injury prevention, which we work on in the gym twice a week, usually after matches. We always do it post-match – a mix of mobility, stretching, balance and strength. Then when it’s one-on-one, each player works on mobility, but in relation to what the last type of injury problem he’s had, or whether he is lacking balance or strength or whatever.’

After that they do the
rondos
, an absolute imperative for Guardiola. There won’t be a single session this year when they miss them out. ‘Once the warm-up is finished the
rondos
are next. Apart from once per week – either the day before a game or the morning training session before a game – when we are a bit less demanding. The
rondos
normally put emphasis on one aspect or another: one day on who should play in the middle of the circle, then on how to win the ball back, another on how to support the man with the ball, or on how to find the third-man movement.’

Some days we make it more fun and we’ll have seven-against-two or eight-against-two, but usually we do small
rondos
of four-against-one or, most often, five-against-two or six-against-two.’ The
rondo
is the cornerstone of Pep’s football philosophy and that’s why he dedicates 20 minutes a day to it.

Next there is circuit work. Today this is high intensity strength-resistance conditioning. Buenaventura has designed an attacking exercise, emphasising strength, which meets Pep’s demands. ‘He has asked me to ensure that the drill ends up with the wide man centring for a shot and that there are movements within the drill which attack space and divide the opposition defence lines. He gives me general instructions and then I organise all the drill movements accordingly. I’m looking for strength conditioning in tackling and running, reaction strength [jumping] and elasticity of strength [repeated jumps]. All of it is designed to emphasise how the coach wants the team to attack in terms of movements. Normally it’s two or three drills with the ball and a few others just focusing on strength alone.

‘I’ll make them do strength-strength-strength-anticipation; or strength-strength-strength-pass; strength-strength-strength-one-two and shot. Then I make their return to set up for the next drill a part of the process. I’ll ask them to show intensity then too, not to relax, and they get very short amounts of time to recuperate. The aim is that they complete three in a row – doing one every 30-40 seconds. That’s how you hit the level of work required. Maximum intensity at all times. Today every player has completed a circuit which has ended with them shooting at goal a total of 18 times. It’s always a balance of physical/tactical/technical.’

The session has two further goals. The first is positional play, another fundamental in Pep’s manual. There are two teams within a rectangle of 20 x 12 metres – each team has seven men, but there are four players who act as wild cards (any of them can link with the team which has the ball and occasionally he’ll augment this to five of them). The idea is that a team tries to pass the ball as often as possible without being intercepted by the other side. Whoever has the ball tries to open up the pitch, even given the restrictive dimensions. The other team presses at maximum intensity and intelligence. Each player needs to know how to show for the ball, what first touch to give, where to move to, how best to circulate it rapidly – although usually with one touch.

It’s a drill which demands total concentration, technical excellence, vision in the pass and domination of the entire repertoire of football skills in every single movement. Sometimes Pep will ask players like Thiago, Kroos, Schweinsteiger and Lahm to use two touches, while everyone else is obliged to play one-touch. That makes the exercise still more complex. Today Pep has ordered three of these drills – five minutes each with two minutes of recuperation between them. While the exercise is going on there is not a second’s relaxation and Pep constantly corrects them as they do it. Without question we are watching the most valuable of all the drills, one which requires prodigious choreography given the diminished space in which they’re working.

There are no smiles, jokes, relaxation, ribbing – instead a constant and obsessive search for the right movement, the correct space, individual and team. And then there are what Pep christens the
tac-tac
moments. It’s the sound to which Säbener Strasse constantly echoes when the ball moves not only cleanly but at lightning speed, back and forwards in the space of split seconds between two phenomenal players like Lahm and Thiago, or Kroos and Thiago. Two passes within split seconds of each other, but again and again and again.

It’s now time for the last activity of the session. The forwards are released and, as always, they spend 20 minutes bombarding Neuer and Starke’s goal. Müller, Mandžukić and Kroos always take part, Pizarro also often joins in but today, Robben, who almost never practices shots on goal, has also joined the group.

The coach has also planned an activity for the defenders. It’s all about controlling counter-attacks. Rafinha, Van Buyten, Contento and Alaba line up. Javi Martínez, Højbjerg and four youth-team players attack, putting passes between the centre-half and his full-back, looking for the winger to be able to reach the pass and cross. The idea is to force the central defender to cover the front post of the goal. For 30 minutes Pep shouts instructions until it’s obvious the defenders have won. Pep is ecstatic with Diego Contento. ‘Bravo Diego! I love you!’ he says in English and trots off to practise corners with his forwards. Kroos, Ribéry and Robben will be here for another 20 minutes, practising throw-ins while adding in some of the details which Pep has asked for. ‘If you do these things before taking the throw, you’ll begin to make the opposing defence drop their guard and their concentration. Even if it’s only for a tenth of a second it can make the difference between them covering or losing the guy they are supposed to be marking.’