Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (18 page)

Busquets and Pedro were the first of twenty-two players promoted from the youth system to the first team during the four years with Guardiola at the helm. The pair went from playing third
division to Champions League football in a matter of weeks, and went on to win the World Cup the following season.

The squad was complete, the balance re-established in terms of authority and credibility. But there was to be an interesting contrast in terms of salaries.

Guardiola would earn one million euros a year gross plus bonuses, nine million less than Eto’o and seven less than Messi. Pep had agreed to join the first team without negotiating his
contract. When he signed it, he was the fourth lowest paid coach in Spain. He didn’t care.

And finally the first day of pre-season arrived. As Xavi recalls: ‘The holidays really dragged out because I wanted to join up with the team.’

Two trophyless years had passed them by. A change was needed. Important decisions had to be made. But, first and foremost, Pep had
to get the team on his side. A
face-to-face meeting with the squad as a whole was still pending.

It took place on the first day of training at the world-famous St Andrews, in Scotland, in a basement conference room of the hotel where they were staying during the first week of pre-season. It
turned out to be the day he set out his stall and transferred his philosophy to the group.

As he made his way to the room, Pep repeatedly told himself: ‘Be yourself. Be yourself.’ He felt that he had been through a similar experience at least once before, with the B team:
the faces were different, new people, there were new objectives – but the ideas that were going to be put across were practically the same. And he had the same nervous feeling in the pit of
his stomach.

The squad filled the room in seats set out in rows facing the front, like a classroom, with little room to spare. The medical staff, the assistants, the press guys, everybody who had travelled
to Scotland was invited to hear what he had to say. In the following half-hour he put across a message that mesmerised the group, hypnotised as they were by his concepts, requirements and
expectations, his sharing of responsibilities and, above all, by his ability to generate a new-found feeling of team spirit.

The players sat in silence, listening to Pep as he paced the room, making eye contact with his listeners, first one, then another, showing a mastery of communication skills. He gestured and
chose his words well, finding the right tone, emphasising his ideas.

According to the recollections of many of those present (Xavi, Iniesta, Piqué, Tito, Henry, Eto’o, Messi, fitness coach Emili Ricart, club media staff Chemi Terés and Sergi
Nogueras among others) we are able to piece together Pep’s words from that pivotal moment.

‘Gentlemen, good morning.

‘You can imagine what a huge motivation it is for me to be here, to coach this team. It is the ultimate honour. Above all, I love the club. I would never make a decision that would harm or
go against the club. Everything I am going to do is based on my love for FC Barcelona. And we need and want order and discipline.

‘The team has been through a time when not everybody was as professional as they should have been. It is time for everybody to run and to give their all.

‘I’ve been part of this club for many years and I am aware of the mistakes that have been made in the past, I will defend you to the death but I can also say that I will be very
demanding of you all: just like I will be with myself.

‘I only ask this of you. I won’t tell you off if you misplace a pass, or miss a header that costs us a goal, as long as I know you are giving 100 per cent. I could forgive you any
mistake, but I won’t forgive you if you don’t give your heart and soul to Barcelona.

‘I’m not asking results of you, just performance. I won’t accept people speculating about performance, if it’s half-hearted or people aren’t giving their all.

‘This is Barça, gentlemen, this is what is asked of us and this is what I will ask of you. You have to give your all.

‘A player on his own is no one, he needs his team-mates and colleagues around him: every one of us in this room, the people around you now.

‘Many of you don’t know me, so we will use the next few days to form the group, a family even. If anyone has any problems, I’m always available, not just in sporting matters
but professional, family, environmental. We’re here to help each other and make sure there is spiritual peace so that the players don’t feel tension or division. We are one. We are not
little groups because in all teams this is what ends up killing team spirit.

‘The players in this room are very good, if we can’t get them to win anything, it will be our fault.

‘And let’s stick together when times are hard. Make sure that nothing gets leaked to the press. I don’t want anybody to fight a battle on his own. Let’s be united, have
faith in me. As a former player, I have been in your shoes, I know what you are going through, what you are feeling.

‘The style comes dictated by the history of this club and we will be faithful to it. When we have the ball, we can’t lose it. And when that happens, run and get it back. That is it,
basically.’

The squad, the group, was seduced. Not for the last time; far from it.

Upon leaving the room, Xavi commented to a team-mate that everything that they had needed to know was there in that talk. A breath of fresh air, order and discipline. A reminder of the style he
wanted to reinforce. All that was established from day one.

There would be many more team talks, but the one at St Andrews laid the foundations for the new era at FC Barcelona.

‘There are talks that just come to you and talks that begin from a few ideas based on what you have seen. What you can’t do is study the talks, learn them by heart.
Two or three concepts are all you need ... and then you have to put your heart into it. You can’t deceive the players, they are too well prepared, intelligent, intuitive. I was a footballer
and I know what I’m saying. In every talk, from that one in St Andrews to the last one, I have put my heart into them. And when I don’t feel it, I don’t speak, it’s the best
way. There are days when you think that you have to say something, but you don’t feel it, so at times like that it is better to keep quiet. Sometimes you show them images of the rivals, and
sometimes you don’t show them a single image of the opposition because on that day you realise, for whatever reason, that in life there are more important things than a football game, you
tell them other things, unrelated to the game. Stories of overcoming difficulties, of human beings acting in extraordinary ways. This is the beautiful thing about this job, because each rival, each
situation, is different to the previous one and you always have to find that special something, to say to them “Guys, today is important ...” for such and such a reason. It
doesn’t have to be tactical. When you have been doing it for three or four years it is a lot easier to find. When you have been doing it for four years, with the same players, it is more
difficult.’

At St Andrews, Pep knew that his job would consist of reminding the players of some basic, fundamental truths and principles. He knew that many of them had lost their love for football, their
hunger – and that it was necessary to create the best conditions for them to
return to the pitch. Guardiola, after spending years asking so many questions, had learnt
what he had to do from some of the greatest minds in the game.

In terms of the playing staff, after putting his faith in the home-grown players, the coach chose professionals he could trust. And the same principles were applied to his backroom staff, where
he decided to go one step further and professionalise the entire set-up: introducing a hand-picked team of specialists to include technical assistants, fitness coaches, personal trainers, doctors,
nutritionists, physiotherapists, players’ assistants, analysts, press officers, delegates and even handymen. The control and evaluation of training sessions and competitions was exhaustive,
both at an individual level and as a group; recovery work was individualised and personalised.

All of them shared one thing in common: they were all
culés
(Barça fans). Xavi explains that this simple yet rare common attribute at a modern club was central to the
group’s ability to unite and feel that they were pulling in the same direction from day one: ‘We’re all
culés
. We give it our all and we all share the
glory.’

Pep’s right-hand man, Tito Vilanova, is a friend but also an exceptional match and team analyst. Notebook in hand, in the first season in the reserves he surprised people with his talent
for strategies that turned out to be key to the team’s promotion to the Second Division B. Such was his rapport with Guardiola that there were no doubts as to his selection when Pep was
offered the job with the first team. And they became a tandem. ‘I would mention something to Tito,’ Pep says. ‘If he keeps quiet, I know I have to convince him. If his face
doesn’t change it is probably because I got it wrong.’ Always in the corner of the shot when the cameras zoom in on Guardiola during matches, Tito was there in his tracksuit, giving
opinions and advising Pep on the bench. They complemented each other perfectly, as Tito points out: ‘I am really at ease with Pep because he gives me a kind of lead role, he listens to me and
gives me a voice within the team.’

Watching the players train one morning while still in Scotland, Pep pointed at Puyol and asked Tito, ‘What do you make of what he did just then?’ ‘First, we need to know why he
did it,’ Tito said.
Pep halted play. ‘Not like that!’ Pep Guardiola, ‘the coach’, took over. ‘Puyi! You shouldn’t leave your marker
until the ball is released for the pass.’ But Barça’s captain did what no one else did. ‘I did it because the other forward had managed to pull away from his marker,’
he replied, while inviting Tito to join in the debate: ‘Isn’t that right, Tito?’ Pep listened to the reasoning and then went on to explain: ‘You’re right, but ...,
proceeding then to give Puyol a lengthy, profound talk about how he should position himself on the pitch. A talk like so many others he would give during his first pre-season at St Andrews.

‘We all know how to play football, but very few of us know the type of football that the coach wants us to play,’ Dani Alvés said at the time. ‘At first, he would halt
many training sessions to correct us, to explain what he wanted from us,’ Piqué recalls; ‘but we are grateful to him for that because we’ll soon be coordinated and we will
be able to transfer his ideas on to the pitch.’ With a special focus on Messi (Pep spent a great deal of time working on his defensive game), the new coach had one overriding message he
wanted to transmit to the entire squad: ‘I want them all to understand that they can be much better as a team.’

Although he wanted an element of democracy within the group, with players using their initiative, making suggestions and keeping an open mind to new ideas, Guardiola did not delay in imposing a
number of strict rules in his first few days in charge: such as insisting upon the use of Castilian and Catalan as the only languages spoken among the group, arranging a seating plan at meal times
to encourage the players to mix and to prevent the team forming up into different cultural or national groups and cliques. However, his rules and the imposition of fines for those breaking them
were not introduced as a measure to keep the players under strict control, but, rather, as a means to encourage a stronger sense of solidarity and responsibility. Two years later, Pep abolished his
own system of sanctions and penalties, feeling that they had become unnecessary with the group exercising an impressive degree of self-discipline.

In life there are two ways of telling people what to do: either give them orders or set an example and encourage them to follow it. Pep
is very much of the latter school of
thought. In the modern game, if a coach does not know how to handle the different characters and varying individuals’ needs, then he will struggle to lead. Guardiola has a psychological edge,
experience and intuition, which helps him detect any problem and in Barcelona’s dressing room he surrounded himself with people he could trust who were capable of helping him intervene at the
right moment.

‘I didn’t know the boss or how he worked,’ Eric Abidal remembers. ‘The first month was difficult, because I’m a father, I’m thirty years old, and you
don’t speak in the same way to a young player who has just started in professional football, as you would to a veteran. And he was doing exactly that! He made us change who we sat with at
meal times and he made me speak in Castilian with Henry when we were with the group. I went to speak to the president, Laporta, to tell him that I wouldn’t tolerate it, that I wanted to
leave, but he told me to calm down, that it was his way of doing things and that everything would go well. Now, I still laugh with the boss when we think about it.’

Pep continued the methodologies and practices introduced at St Andrews when the team returned to their base in Barcelona, where he went even further in overhauling the daily habits of the
players and the club. The new training complex was shaped very much according to Pep’s instructions, to such an extent that today it epitomises Barça’s philosophy. Guardiola
changed things so that the players felt like employees of a football club and not Hollywood stars, in the knowledge that success was achieved through hard work, not just having fun. A dining room
was designed to encourage all the players to sit down at meal times together, something commonplace in Italy but previously unknown in the first team at FC Barcelona.

Whereas previous training sessions that used to take place on a training pitch next door to the Nou Camp had a fairly high-profile feel about them because of their location, the Joan Gamper
Training Ground, to which the first team had moved in January 2009, was strictly off limits to press and public on a daily basis. It was such a revolutionary step that the media christened it
‘La Ciudad Prohibida’ – ‘The Forbidden City’.