Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (21 page)

‘We shouldn’t lose sight of the target.’

And the target wasn’t to win titles, but to achieve a certain way of playing. If they stuck to their principles, titles would be the most
logical consequence. Never
losing sight of their goal would be one of the keys to success.

In the days after the game, during hard training sessions, Guardiola pulled his players up on many things. He insisted that they hadn’t played well in terms of positioning. In future they
must place themselves more cleverly to receive the pass, and to start pressuring their opponents more quickly. Not once did Pep point the finger of blame, instead putting all his efforts into
finding solutions. More than training, it felt like teaching. The players were learning.

It is important in football, as in any walk of life, to appear calm in times of crisis. To hide weaknesses. Pep told them with conviction that they were on the right path. Not a complete lie but
he confessed to people at the club that he had slipped up: ‘The pre-season was great, but now the league has begun I’ve let the players fall back into their old ways of playing, their
former tactics, playing down the centre.’

The international break meant that two weeks would pass before the next league game. It was to be among the hardest fifteen days of his regime.

Pep Guardiola’s managerial debut at the Nou Camp came against Racing de Santander, another modest team whose target was to avoid relegation. Pep made two significant changes to his
line-up. Pedro and Busquets were included, with Yaya Touré left on the bench and Henry injured. Under pressure, as he would do repeatedly throughout his tenure, Pep looked for solutions in
the youth system.

The visitors held Barcelona to a 1-1 draw.

Pep’s team paid the price for not converting their chances in front of goal and had to settle for a share of the spoils against a very defensive Racing side that scored with their only
clear chance of the game. A hugely frustrating result.

In the dressing room, Pep did not need to point out mistakes, as there were few. It was during that post-match reflection that he really discovered himself as a trainer. He was grateful for
having prioritised and trusted his instincts about the game, ahead of what any amount of reading could have advised him. Yes, there was more soul-searching to do, more convincing to do, more work
on the ideas
that he wanted to instil at the club: but against Racing he had seen a team play as he had asked them to play.

There was certainly an improvement and any dissent or unrest was external – in the media and on radio phone-ins – rather than inside the dressing room. Some reactionary pundits even
called for Pep’s head.

Just before the next training session, Andrés Iniesta, who had started the Racing game on the bench, went up to Pep’s office, knocked on the door, stuck his head through the opening
without entering and said:

‘Don’t worry,
mister
. You should know, we’re with you until the death.’

Then walked off.

Other key members of the team reacted in their own ways. Xavi felt there was no need to say anything, just to win the next game. He could see that the team was playing ‘bloody brilliantly,
like angels’ but had one point out of six. He couldn’t believe it. He’d experienced days in the past when he knew that the team had played pitifully, but managed to sneak a win.
This was the reverse.

He had seen the media reaction in similar situations. After a victory, the headline was going to be ‘Barça are a marvel’ no matter what the performance was: ‘What people
want are results, and from the results they analyse if you’re playing well or not. If you lose, the headline will always be “Barça is a disaster”.’

Xavi, Henry, Valdés, Busquets all realised that Pep was nervous behind his calm façade. He won’t admit that a match can be lost without explanation. He has to find a reason
for everything. In this respect he watches football from a scientific perspective and appreciates the lessons a defeat can teach you: ‘What makes you grow is defeat, making mistakes. It is
what keeps you alert. When you win you think: “Great, we’ve won.” And we’d have surely done some things wrong, but you’re relaxed. The only thing that winning is
useful for is a good night’s sleep.’

Guardiola was well aware that two years without trophies caused a certain sense of urgency and that a defeat against Sporting de Gijón the following week could leave Barcelona at the
bottom of the
table, but was convinced that they would soon reap the rewards of their work in training. At the same time as receiving criticism for the results, there were a
number of influential voices in the media arguing that Barcelona were playing well and they had got their title-winning hunger back. Johan Cruyff wrote in
El Periódico
that it was
‘the best Barça side that he had seen in many years’.

Despite his confidence, Pep was in need of someone to reinforce his belief that all was well. He decided to chat to Cruyff.

Guardiola has been fascinated by the figure of the coach since before he even realised he wanted to be one. Of the many managers who have influenced Pep, few have had quite the
profound impact upon him as Johan Cruyff, the man who took his convictions to Barcelona and changed the whole structure of the club. Cruyff introduced a bug that infected Guardiola and many others
of his generation and his impact upon FC Barcelona went far beyond that of simply a player or football coach. Guardiola considers that Cruyff’s biggest miracle was to change a country’s
mentality, convincing the whole of Catalonia that his was the way to play.

‘Football is played for people,’ Cruyff often said. And more: ‘I want my team to play well even if it is because I have to watch all the games and I don’t want to get
bored.’

Johan needed to be arrogant to win over the sceptics so he developed a love-hate relationship with his pupils, the board and the media. Not everybody accepted what he was proposing and there was
even opposition to his ideas within factions of his early squads. A young Pep didn’t comprehend every decision taken but wanted to understand the thinking process behind it, and soon, once
convinced, became an evangelical follower of Cruyff.

For the Dutch coach there were three principles that were non-negotiable: firstly, on the pitch events were not casual occurrences, but consequences of your intentions. You could play the ball
with advantage not only because of the pass, but because of your positioning on the pitch and even the way your body was placed, for instance.

Secondly, you should be able to control the ball with one touch. If you needed another one, you were not one of the best players, just a good one. If you needed an extra
touch, you were playing badly.

Thirdly – and crucial for Pep’s position as the midfielder in front of the back four – he had to dispatch the ball to the wingers to make the pitch bigger, wider, to create
spaces all over the pitch.

Cruyff didn’t comment on each position, but gave general instructions invariably full of common sense: when talking about passing lines he would warn players that they didn’t need to
position themselves in the corners because that reduced the angle of the passes. Regarding positional play, he insisted on making sure the player stayed in his corresponding area, especially when
the ball was lost.

But Cruyff didn’t manage to convert all his ideology into a working methodology. Louis Van Gaal helped with that. And Pep Guardiola added a new twist to his version: ‘I steal ideas,
ideas are shared, they go from one person to another.’

Consequently, for Pep, a meeting with Cruyff would give him an opportunity to seek guidance from his mentor: a chance to listen to some new ideas and to seek reassurance for his own. After
overcoming some initial hesitation for having supported Lluis Bassat in the 2003 presidential elections, Guardiola knew, as we have seen, that he had bridges to build with the Dutchman – and
what better way than to make him feel important and demonstrate all the respect that he had for him than by coming before him as an apprentice?

Guardiola always addresses Cruyff in the ‘
usted
’ form – the formal ‘you’ in Spanish, a very rare, old-fashioned habit these days. During the initial
approach, be it at Cruyff’s house, at Pep’s, at a meal, a meeting or whatever, the pupil will always show the utmost respect and humility towards his former coach. Once the opening
formalities and small talk are out of the way there’s suddenly a spark and, BANG, they start talking about football. Arms are waved around energetically, the arguments are passionate, the
ideas clear. They speak and act from their hearts and everything from then on is football, football and more football. You would never hear Pep disagree and say, ‘You’re wrong’ to
Cruyff. Never. But they will discuss and debate
for hours, trying to convince the other of their own views. When it comes to football, they both talk the same language. If
football is a religion, they both worship at the same shrine.

On that occasion, though, after the Racing draw, the pupil met the master mostly to raise concerns and to listen to answers. Cruyff had already given Guardiola some advice in the summer that the
young coach took to heart: ‘You should know how to avoid problems, handle journalists, rumours, even the news that is unrelated to football. You must know how to make risky decisions given
little time. You’ve had a lot of influences throughout your career, now evolve in your own way. You must have lots of eyes, good helpers, good players, mark the path and those that
don’t follow it.

‘Each player must be convinced that what he does is the best thing for him, for his team-mates and for the general idea. The goal is to pass the “ABC” of football on to each
player. For example, you are an inside player, you must do this and not that, and nothing more. Once you learn what an inside player must do, you can then think of variations. And when it
doesn’t work, you must go back to the “ABC”. The main thing is to have rules. You can only ask a player to do something that he knows and nothing more. Ask for his quality. A
footballer should have faith in what he does. It is better for a player to lose the ball when he is dribbling, feeling over-confident, than for a blunder, a mistake due to being scared of getting
it wrong.

‘The whole team – coaches and players – should share the same idea. And don’t forget about authority. If you don’t want to crash like other coaches, you must have
control of your players. In order to be coach of Barcelona, it is more important knowing how to manage a group of stars than knowing how to correct a mistake made on the field. You have to have an
influence over the group, to be able to seduce and convince them. It’s necessary to take advantage of the “idol” image that players have of you as their coach.’

The level of demands, Cruyff reminded him, should match their possibilities – technical, sporting and economic. Cruyff never asked for the impossible, but he was capable of facing up to
any of the stars of the team – in front of the rest of the squad – to tell them things such as ‘Your performance doesn’t match the wages you get, so what
you are doing is not enough. You must give more.’ Cruyff knew how to deal with players, well, with most of them, cooling the excitement of the regulars and looking after the
egos of the ones who were often on the bench. But he had a look that could kill and some of his posturing could leave the players unsettled for weeks. ‘Cruyff is the trainer who has taught me
most, there’s no doubt about it,’ says Guardiola. ‘But Cruyff is also the trainer who has made me suffer most. With just a look he gave you shivers that could chill your
blood.’

Pep told his mentor that there was one thing that Johan could do, but that it would be a mistake for him to imitate. ‘Johan, you used to call some of the players “idiots”. I
cannot do that.
Usted
can, but I cannot. I suffer too much. I cannot tell them that.’

Pep remembers on one occasion how Cruyff insulted Txiki Beguiristain and Bakero, two of his key players in the Dream Team, and an hour later asked them to organise a meal for all of them and
their wives the following night. Pep envied that ability, but admitted that he is not made of the same stuff.

Subsequent meetings between the pair became frequent. Pep would visit Cruyff at his home or they would visit restaurants of well-known chef friends. Where possible, about once every six months,
a group that would consist of Cruyff, Estiarte, chef Ferran Adrià, former journalist and now consultant Joan Patsy and Guardiola would meet for a meal. After Pep left Barcelona, Adrià
planned to reopen the world-famous el Bulli restaurant just so that they could spend the day there.

But in that meeting a few months after Pep became the manager of Barcelona, and after two disappointing results, the message from Johan Cruyff was as clear as it was simple: ‘Keep going,
Pep. It will happen.’ Guardiola himself had come to exactly the same conclusion.

Two games. One point. Barcelona in the bottom three.

That week, Pep Guardiola met director of football Txiki Beguiristain. Scratching his head as he often did during the games, an unconscious nervous gesture that has always been apparent in
moments of doubt, Pep could not mask his anxiety. ‘If we don’t beat Gijón then I’ll be the first coach in Barça’s history to be bottom of
the league,’ he told Txiki, half joking.

‘The players haven’t been getting into the positions where we want them to be and the positions are dependent upon where the ball is and we haven’t respected that. We
haven’t done that well yet,’ Pep kept repeating and Txiki agreed. ‘Txiki, the best way of defending well is attacking well and I have to get the players to see that.’

Nobody within the club was demanding Pep’s head just yet. Externally there were those who saw the results as evidence that his promotion from the B team had been a mistake, the sign of a
board in turmoil that wanted to paper over the cracks with the appointment of a legendary player but an inexperienced coach. Joan Laporta was holding his breath and repeating that Pep just needed
time, hoping that all that was wrong with the side was that he couldn’t handle more pressure.