Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (19 page)

During their eleven-hour chats in Rosario, Argentina, Marcelo Bielsa told Pep all about his thoughts on the media – as well as everything else – and insisted
that it was wrong to give priority access to a big television company over a small newspaper. Pep followed suit and introduced a new rule at Barcelona whereby he refused to give one-to-one
interviews so as to avoid favouritism and getting drawn into media politics. From day one, Pep decided that he would speak to the press, but only at press conferences. He stopped taking calls from
local journalists and avoided meeting them in private.

He also bucked the Spanish tradition of getting the team together in a hotel the day before a match. As Guardiola explained at the time, ‘People don’t spend the day before they go to
work locked up in a hotel. We just try to make things the same for them. If they don’t rest, they’re not looking after themselves and that means they’ll play worse and lose their
jobs. I judge my players on the work they do, not on their private lives. I’m not a policeman. I’m in bed at ten o’clock and I’ve got no urge to go and check up on my
players. That’s why I’d rather have them at home and not cooped up in a hotel with nothing to do. We’re just trying to use common sense.’

Pep’s line of thinking was clearly the experience of a former top player at one of the world’s biggest clubs, now capable of empathising with the modern star as a manager, or so Xavi
thinks: ‘For me, two of the most important novelties were the move to the training ground and getting rid of the hotel meetings. Working at the training ground gave us a lot of peace of mind
and allowed us greater co-existence. It helped too that he made us eat together after training sessions. What is more, that way we watch our diet. I recognise that, at the start, it was a bit of a
pain for me because I couldn’t make plans, but you get used to it straight away and you realise that it is of benefit to you. With the meetings it was the same. I wasn’t used to being
at home a couple of hours before the match and at first it was very strange for me. I felt like I wasn’t well prepared. It felt like I was too switched off. I even thought that fate would
punish me with a bad game for not giving 100 per cent of my time to it beforehand. But I soon realised that, with these new rules, I would also benefit. Thinking too much can put too much pressure
on you; this turns into nerves and I have
learnt to analyse what is really important. Minimising the meetings reduces our stress levels all year round.’

‘I can’t promise titles but I am convinced that the fans will be proud of us,’ he said on 17 June 2008 in the press conference at which he was presented as the new manager of
FC Barcelona. ‘I give you my word that we will put in an effort. I don’t know if we’ll win, but we’ll persist. Fasten your seat belts, you are going to enjoy the
ride,’ he said on 16 August 2008 at his presentation at the Camp Nou in front of a stadium full of fans.

Guardiola’s first competitive game as first-team coach of FC Barcelona had arrived. Because of the team’s third-placed finish the previous season, the opening game would be in the
third qualifying round of the Champions League. Barça comfortably beat Polish club Wisła Kraków 4-0 at home. They then lost 1-0 in Kraków, but progressed with a 4-1
aggregate victory. The Pep era had begun with qualification for the Champions League proper.

‘I was an unknown quantity when I came in, and the first thing I asked the team to do was to put their trust in me,’ Pep remembers. ‘I told them everything would work out fine.
I wanted the fans to see that the team was going to work hard, run, play good football, and take pride in their work on the pitch. People want to be entertained. They don’t want to be
cheated. The fans can accept a poor performance but they won’t take it when you choose not to put in the effort. The team’s come on and we’ve made changes and tweaked a few things
here and there. The idea is still the same as it has always been in this house, though: to attack, score as many goals as possible, and play as well as we can.’

A coach is everything and nothing at the same time: nothing, because without the right tools at his disposal he’s unable to achieve greatness. But he’s smart enough to know that his
job is vital to create the right environment and conditions for his players to fulfil their potential; it is what makes the difference between converting a good group of players into an excellent
team. And that was something that Pep managed to achieve from day one, without allowing nagging doubts and questions such as ‘what if it this doesn’t work?’ to interfere.

On one occasion Guardiola explained that there are two types of coaches: those who think problems solve themselves and those who solve problems. Guardiola belongs to the
group that seeks solutions. That is his real passion.

The game. Seeing what the opponent does. Deciding the players you will use. That is the moment that ‘makes sense’ of the profession – the search for the solution, the decision
that will change a game, that will win a game.

Often for Pep, the moment when it all becomes clear in his head occurs to him in a subterranean office in the Camp Nou. Pep’s office is not much bigger than four square metres, receives
lots of direct light and contains a handful of books and a table lamp. There is also a plasma screen to analyse both his team’s and their rivals’ games, which he paid for out of his own
pocket.

If, in the middle of the almost spiritual process, engrossed in his analysis, somebody knocked on the door of his office, they would find it impossible to get his full attention. Some brave soul
might try to talk to him, but he would look through them rather than at them. He wouldn’t be listening. In his mind he would still be watching the videos of the rivals even if his eyes were
not on the screen. ‘OK, let’s talk later,’ he’d say, politely ushering his visitor out. And then Pep would turn his attention to visualising the game that would take place a
couple of days later. Searching for that flash of inspiration, that moment, the magical moment: ‘I’ve got it. I’ve got it. This is how we are going to win.’ If it were up to
him, he would get rid of everything else in football except that spark.

For Guardiola, tactical concepts are taken in if the players have the right attitude and understand what they are doing. The essence that he transmits is that the team should be in order, and
ordered, through the ball. He talks to the players about position, imbalance, balance, circulation – ultimately, the desire to win, working to be the best.

Since his coaching debut, Guardiola has never tired of repeating that Johan Cruyff was the inspiration for his approach and this sense of continuity has been a good thing
for the club. It’s allowed several factors to become well established so that, in the future, projects won’t have to be started from scratch. ‘We are a little bit like disciples
of the essence that Cruyff brought here,’ said Guardiola, who wrote more than a decade ago that ‘Cruyff wanted us to play that way, on the wings and using the wingers, and I apply that
whole theory ahead of everything. It was he, Johan, who imposed the criteria for quick movements of the ball, the obligation to open up the field in order to find space. To fill the centre of the
pitch in order to play having numerical superiority, and, I don’t know, introduce a lot more things so that everybody knew how Barça played and, above all, so it would be known how to
do it in the future. And that, in short, is the greatest thing that Cruyff left us. The idea of playing in a way that no team has done before in Spain seduces me. It is a sign of distinction, a
different way of experiencing football, a way of life, a culture.’

But Cruyff was not the only influence upon Pep’s footballing philosophy. Louis Van Gaal’s Ajax was a team that hypnotised him and he admitted to applying some of their methods.
‘The question is that that Ajax team always gave me the impression that they tried to and could do all of the following: play, sacrifice themselves as a team, shine individually and win
games. All the players, of different quality, without exception, were aware of their mission on the field of play. They demonstrated a tactical discipline and enormous capacity to apply all of that
at just the right time.’

As Jorge Valdano says, Pep is ‘a Catalan son of the Dutch school of football’. But Pep isn’t a simple transmitter of ideas, as journalist Ramón Besa explains:
‘Rather, he takes the message, improves it and spreads it with greater credibility.’

According to Víctor Valdés: ‘He insisted a lot on tactical concepts, on the system of play. His philosophy is clear: first we should have the ball. With it, the opponent
suffers and we have everything under control. Secondly, we try not to lose the ball in compromising positions since it could cause a dangerous situation. If they take the ball off us, it should be
through the opponent’s own merits, not
through our mistakes. The third aspect is the pressure in the rival’s half. We must bite, be very intense. We already did
that with Rijkaard, but he put more emphasis on it. Each player has a zone in which they should apply pressure. We should all help each other. You can’t lose concentration ever. Guardiola
says that these three concepts are our strong point, one of the things he repeats most in the dressing room. When we apply all three, everything works.’

He gave a different edge to the defensive side of the game and that is where Barça became strong and attractive: losing the ball but then, within five seconds, trying to win it back. The
principle is simple and comes from as far back as Van Gaal: after losing the ball there are five seconds of pressure to win it back; if it isn’t recovered, the defensive phase would begin and
players should quickly drop back.

At a time of regression in the football world, when the majority of coaches deployed their teams using a double-pivot (4-2-3-1), Guardiola went for a novel approach – a system with a
midfielder and two wingers, a choice that allowed him to discover first Pedro and then Busquets, as well as freeing up Messi.

In his first season, Guardiola radically altered concepts such as starting moves from the defence, using the centre backs as creators of moves; he gave the team greater depth with the constant
incorporation of the wingers; he increased the rhythm of the movement off the ball; he worked tirelessly on creating space via the constant movement of players; he developed the concepts of
numerical and positional superiority to the maximum level. He ultimately knew how to manage the concepts of time and space with such ease and fluidity that many observers were under the impression
that what the team
was doing was easy, when, in reality, there is nothing more difficult in the modern game.

The high technical quality of Barcelona’s players enabled them to make passes that other teams simply could not even attempt; Xavi, Iniesta, Messi could receive the ball and pass or move
out of the tightest of corners. But Guardiola revolutionised football because he used a Cruyff idea and made it a method: always accumulate more players than your rival right from the start of a
move to gain the initiative. So, having three players near the ball if the other team have two, or four players if they have three. This formula of numerical superiority doesn’t guarantee
anything, because in the end everything depends on the ability, precision and concentration of the ‘artists’, taking advantage of space and making the right decisions, but there will
always be an unmarked player and, therefore, a safe ‘pass line’ that can be used. In this way, football becomes a sport with a ball and spaces.

As time went on, Pep’s first-team squad was increasingly in a position to go out on to the pitch with a clear idea of what the game was going to be like, the characteristics of the rivals
both individually and as a group, and what had to be done to beat them. Yet within that meticulous preparation there co-existed a high degree of expression, always bearing in mind that this is
football, that players must think in tenths of a second and that there should be some freedom to show on the pitch, to do things that weren’t planned off it.

‘He went through all the mechanisms that bring the game plan closer to the rival’s goal,’ explains Martí Perarnau in his exceptional analysis of Barcelona,
The
Champion’s Path
(
Senda de Campeones
).
‘Xavi, Iniesta and Messi began that stage with the orders of staying close to the area. Xavi didn’t sit
very deep so his participation with Messi on the right, Eto’o in the middle and Iniesta on the other side took place often. Little by little, the plan changed because one of the pillars of
Pep’s methods is based on the evolution of the process. Guardiola has never believed in absolute truths, which gives him flexibility when it comes to interpreting life. So Xavi moved into a
deeper position with the intention of bringing back his direct opponent, distancing them from their centre backs and, in that way, creating more space for Messi in the back of the
midfield.’