Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (28 page)

Perhaps Barcelona, as Sir Alex is suggesting, didn’t need more motivation than winning, than doing the best for their manager, than making sure they didn’t
disappoint Puyol or Xavi. But Pep felt that the occasion called for something out of the ordinary to help set the tone. His plan got under way a couple of weeks before the final with a text message
to Santi Padró, a TV producer for the Catalan channel TV3: ‘Hola, Santi. We have to meet. You have to help me win the Champions League.’

When Santi came up with the goods a few days later, Pep watched the end result on his laptop and the film the producer had put together brought a tear to his eye. Santi knew
straight away that he’d achieved exactly what Pep had asked him to do. Pep then called for Estiarte to come running, telling him he had to watch this DVD. His friend’s reaction was
equally resounding: ‘Where and when will you show it to them?’

‘Just before the game,’ replied Pep.

To which his friend could only add, ‘Wow!’

The players were surprised when their warm-up session at the Olympic stadium was brought to an end by the physical trainer a little sooner than they expected.

But they were still in the zone. There was emotion, tension, in the air
as they headed down the tunnel that took them to the dressing room. Nervous,
anxious.

Occasionally, one player shouts, claps a team-mate on the back, all to break the tension. Hearts racing. The clatter of studs on the floor. Toc toc toc toc toc toc
toc.

At that moment, footballers don’t want to be disturbed; they want only to focus on their routine, to be left alone to get on with their last-minute preparations and
superstitions. At Barcelona, Víctor Valdés is always the first to get back to the changing room after the pre-match warm-up. In Rome, he got to the dressing room, only to find it
locked. He banged on the door, but was not allowed in. One of Pep’s assistants came out and blocked his way, telling him he’d have to wait. Valdés was flabbergasted. Xavi was
next.

Xavi: What’s going on?

Víctor Valdés: He isn’t letting us in!

Xavi : Why!?

Víctor Valdés: I’ve been told to wait.

The rest of the group arrived, and they were finally let in after being made to hang around in the corridor a few minutes longer.

Pep made himself heard above the chatter: ‘Lads, I want you to watch this. Enjoy it. This is the teamwork that has taken us to Rome!’

The lights in the dressing room went off as a big screen illuminated the room and the theme from the movie
Gladiator
filled the space with sound.

Guardiola’s friend Santi had produced a rousing seven-minute video montage that merged images from the Hollywood blockbuster
Gladiator
with footage of the
entire Barcelona squad, all set to the film’s epic soundtrack. You can see it for yourself online. Every single footballer, even those who played a more peripheral role in the season, is
honoured in the film – two sub goalkeepers, Hleb, Milito, and it had been tricky finding footage of the injured defender from that campaign. It featured everyone. Except Pep Guardiola –
the coach had stipulated that under no circumstances did he want to be eulogised in the footage. It was all about his players.

When the film finished there was silence in the room. Nobody moved, firstly because of the surprise, then the emotion. Players were shyly
looking at each
other. Tears were shed. Milito cried, he was missing the final. Unthinking, unconsciously, players had put their arms around teammates’ shoulders. It was a moment, an intense, special
moment.

Unforgettable, emotive. But was it the right thing to do?

‘I don’t know if it was because of the feelings the video brought up or what, but our first minutes of the final were pretty awful,’ Iniesta says now. Even
Pep Guardiola admits that he might have moved the players a touch too much.

The game, the managers

Sir Alex Ferguson: We really should have won that game, we were a better team at the time.

Pep Guardiola: United were a fantastic team! Just look at their bench that day: Rafael, Kuszczak, Evans, Nani, Scholes, Berbatov and Tévez.

Sir Alex: I think Henry’s a great footballer, Eto’o’s a great footballer but they weren’t players that worried us, you know what I mean? The Wembley
final was different.

PG: Manchester United certainly didn’t set out to defend, it is not in their genes, is it? In any case, we had prepared different alternatives depending on how the game
went.

Sir Alex: So Eto’o started off in the centre and Messi right, but then it was changed around to Eto’o wide right and Messi dropping into the hole that he uses
quite well now. But in the final Messi did nothing, trust me, he didn’t do anything.

PG: We played Messi sporadically in that position, in the hole. We did it against Madrid, but not again until the final. Looking back, thinking about those tactics now ...
maybe we won because of the very positive dynamic we had.

Sir Alex: If you go back to the final in Paris, Arsenal–Barcelona, Eto’o played wide left in the game and he worked up and down, he worked his balls off in that
game. He’s been used to playing wide but we didn’t expect him to play wide in Rome. We expected at different times that they would change, Messi and Eto’o would change in the
game, but not to the point where we were worried too much about it.

PG: United put us under pressure, defended high, had a few chances
to score, and if they had scored, United are a team that kills you on the
counter-attack, so if they had taken the lead it would have been much more difficult for us. Especially with Ronaldo who is a wide player and in important European games he played through the
middle. If you leave Cristiano as a striker and with space, nobody can stop him, it is impossible, he’s unique.

Sir Alex: Conceding from a counter-attack when we were controlling the game turned out to be key, because Barcelona are not the type of side you want to be behind and chasing
the game.

PG: The first team to score a goal, like it or not, in a final, makes the difference.

Sir Alex: And when Eto’o scores the first goal, then, yes, Messi became a problem as Barcelona had overloaded the midfield and it was difficult to get the ball off him
but, actually, he didn’t threaten us that much.

PG: I remember the final in Rome came to an end and thinking, ‘God, we’ve played really, really well!’ Then, a couple of years later, when we were preparing
for the Wembley final, we watched the videos of the game in Rome and realised it hadn’t been as great as we imagined. We had been very lucky to survive the opening minutes.

Sir Alex: The Barcelona midfield – pass, pass, pass – was never threatening, really. When we beat Barcelona back in 1991, in the Cup Winners’ Cup final, that
team did exactly the same as in Rome. Salinas was the striker and Laudrup, too, with Beguiristain wide left, but they all dropped deep into the midfield, same thing. At that time we said,
‘Let them have the ball in there, keep the back four in all its positions’, and we never had a problem. But, if you wind on twenty years, a different quality player makes a
difference.

PG: In the end, playing against us is complicated. When we are playing well, we pass the ball and we force our opponents to drop deep bit by bit. It seems like they are
sitting back but, no, we’re pushing them back.

Sir Alex: And the second goal, if you think about it; Messi, five foot seven, scores from a header at the back post, against an English team. That shouldn’t
happen.

PG: We played better in the second half than we did in the first.

Sir Alex: Barcelona had one or two chances before Messi’s goal, just
after half-time, and could have killed us off then but in the last fifteen
minutes we actually had five chances.

PG: Xavi hit the post with a free kick and Thierry Henry was denied by Van der Sar before Messi scored with twenty minutes remaining. Then we dug in and defended. But after I
watched that final again, I looked back and thought that it was all a bit of a gift.

Scouting report: Champions League final 2009

FC BARCELONA 2-0 MANCHESTER 2009

First half:

Manchester United had beaten Barcelona the previous year in the semi-finals of the Champions League by being very defensive. With Ronaldo up front,
Tévez off the striker, Rooney very deep on the right wing. They sat back and counter-attacked. Evra marked Messi, who played on the right, with the help of a defensive midfielder. In 2008,
following a 0-0 at the Camp Nou, a repeat performance at Old Trafford with a goal by Paul Scholes took United to the final. United were very happy with the performance. It was perfect.

Before the Rome final, United’s mentality had changed: they were now Champions League title holders and the resulting confidence and sense of superiority were reflected
in their approach: Ferguson asked the team to press high. The message was, ‘we are the Champions, we can’t sit back and defend deep any more.’

Manchester United got off to a great, positive start: with Cristiano as
a striker up against Touré and Piqué; with Rooney on the left to
work the space behind Puyol at right back. The United idea was clear: pressure high up the pitch to stop Barcelona building from the back and look for Ronaldo as soon as they recovered possession,
with an emphasis on trying to find him in space behind Piqué (identified as being slower than Touré). This strategy unsettled the Barcelona defence that was placed quite high
upfield.

Ronaldo also dropped deep to receive the ball, turn round and run towards goal – and he always found space as the centre backs didn’t follow him
closely.

Evra attacked down the left flank as he was not being tracked by Messi or, later in the match, Eto’o – so the French left back and Rooney frequently found
themselves in some two v ones against Puyol.

The United forwards received the ball with their back to goal in between the Barcelona midfield and defence, and could turn easily as Barcelona didn’t close them down to
put them under pressure. Barça were either scared or asleep in those first few minutes.

Cleverly, Giggs defended against Busquets and made it difficult for Barcelona to build up from the back, forcing them to play longer balls than usual to the
midfielders.

Henry and Eto’o didn’t see much of the ball and couldn’t run into defenders or in behind defenders, so they couldn’t link with Messi who kept trying to
dribble three, four players at a time.

Then a fantastic tactical move took place that proved key to the game.

Pep moved Eto’o wide and Messi in the centre of attack. The first Barcelona goal came soon after, nine minutes played.

Barcelona 1-0 Man United (Eto’o, 9). Barcelona scoring with their first attack. Iniesta drifts past Anderson and slips the ball to Eto’o in the right channel. He
cuts inside Vidi
ć
and toe-pokes the ball past Van der Sar into the bottom left-hand corner despite a fruitless last-ditch lunge from Carrick.

In the final fifteen minutes of the first half, Messi dropped deeper into midfield to participate in the build-up and create superiority against the outnumbered United
midfielders, but the Barcelona wingers didn’t use the vacant space in the central striking position.

With Barcelona packing the midfield, the United players became demoralised while struggling to get a foothold. Interestingly enough, there was no fluidity
in the Barcelona game, or not as much as we saw in later years, and only Iniesta tried to open up the United defence with some individual work. Barcelona didn’t seem to be playing like
Barcelona: they lacked aggression, didn’t control the ball as much as usual, giving it away far too often. They posed little threat from the wings, playing predictable football, and were too
respectful of United. Despite the scoreline, Manchester United were creating lots of problems for Barcelona.

Half-time:

Sir Alex Ferguson was very unhappy. In fact after the first ten minutes he had shown his displeasure in the dugout. ‘Press high, you have to press high.
You be stopped doing that’, he shouted in the changing room. The infamous hair-dryer treatment. The United players had not followed instructions in the first forty-five minutes.

Second half:

Tévez came on for Anderson and Giggs moved to the double pivot position alongside Carrick.

The second half was similar to the first. Busquets didn’t participate much, Barcelona were again lacking intensity and aggression (not enough then). They made only a
couple of runs down the left flank, but created little danger through the wide areas.