The coaching staff’s analysis was that mistakes weren’t being made during the team talks – they were still based on in-depth studies of their rivals and delivered with the same enthusiasm and charisma as ever – but, rather, in their execution. But there were question marks over Pep’s faith in first-team newcomers from La Masía. Tello (who started on the wing against Real Madrid at the Camp Nou in what was a key victory for Mourinho’s team) and Cuenca (in the eleven against Chelsea in the return leg of the semi-finals of the 2012 Champions League) were expected to produce the same level of performance as Cesc, Alexis or Pedro, who were left out in one of the two games.
Could Barcelona afford to leave that sort of talent on the bench? Was Pep too close to the squad to actually see the wood for the trees?
These were pivotal decisions that affected the outcome of the season and Guardiola’s judgement in replacing experienced internationals with near-debutantes in season-defining games raised more than a few eyebrows. It also had a negative impact on the confidence of the youngsters selected and the older players dropped.
José Mourinho watched it all from Madrid with a wry smile. The impact of Mourinho and his destabilising strategies is irrefutable even though Pep will always deny it. When asked what he remembered of the previous Clásicos on the eve of his last as coach, Pep lowered his voice: ‘I don’t have fond memories, of either the victories or the defeats. There are always reasons that aren’t related to the game that have made a lot of things incomprehensible to me.’ Really? He couldn’t remember even the 2-6 demolition at the Bernabéu? The 5-0 in Mourinho’s first Clásico, described by many as the best performance in the history of the game? There was enormous pressure, not just from Mourinho but from Madrid’s sporting press who went as far as insulting Pep and suggesting Barcelona’s performances were enhanced by drugs. For a sensitive soul like Pep it was enough to wipe out even the best memories.
As the season was reaching the end, the decision about his future became unmovable – he was going to leave the club that was one of the most admired on the planet courtesy of his leadership. He just had to find the right way to tell the club. And the players. And the fans. But how? If they won the Champions League everything would be much easier.
While he finalised the details of his departure, he decided not to share his decision with anyone, not even his parents.
2
THE DECISION
Before he made an official announcement, the biggest hint that Guardiola gave about his future was inadvertently revealed in a chat with an Italian journalist, in his third year with the first team, in an interview that was to feature in a DVD on the history of Brescia; but Pep, who normally doesn’t do ‘on-the-record’, one-to-one interviews but making an exception here was betrayed and his quotes were leaked to Italian national television. It wasn’t so much an evaluation of his personal situation, but the description of an historic constant, applicable not just to Barcelona but to the majority of great clubs. ‘In order to be in a great institution for four years,’ Guardiola said, ‘you must have a lot of courage. The players get tired of you and you get tired of the players; the press gets tired of you and you get tired of the press, seeing the same faces, the same questions, the same things. In the end, you must know when the time comes, in the same way that I understood that when I was a player and said, “Look, it’s time for me to leave”.’
It turns out that Pep now felt the time had come for him to leave as a manager, too.
Just after Chelsea qualified for the Champions League final after drawing 2-2 (winning 3-2 on aggregate) in Barcelona playing with ten men for almost an hour, Guardiola met the president, Sandro Rosell, at the Camp Nou. ‘Come and see me at my house tomorrow morning, President,’ the coach said.
Pep also talked to his assistant, Tito Vilanova, telling him that, as Vilanova already suspected, he was not going to continue. Guardiola also surprised him with a prediction. ‘I think they are going to propose that you take over,’ he said. ‘And I will back you up with whatever decision you take.’ Unbeknown to Vilanova, his name had first been proposed in a conversation between Zubizarreta and Guardiola the previous November. ‘Do you think Tito can replace you if you decide to leave?’ the director of football asked. ‘For sure’ was Pep’s answer even though he had no idea if his friend was going to take the job – or if Zubizarreta was being serious.
At 9 a.m. the following day, Pep Guardiola held a meeting at his house with Sandro Rosell, Andoni Zubizarreta, Tito Vilanova and vice-president Josep Maria Bertomeu. It was then that he broke the news to the club hierarchy that he would not continue at FC Barcelona.
The meeting lasted for three hours as Pep explained his reasons for calling it a day. ‘You know all those things we have been talking about during the season? Nothing has changed. I am leaving. I have to leave,’ Pep told them. The defeat to Real Madrid and the loss against Chelsea weren’t the cause, but both had served as the catalyst for the chain of events.
The following day he told his parents and, although his mother, Dolors, believed that her son’s ‘health comes first’, she also felt that her ‘heart shrank’ on hearing the news. He needed, according to Dolors, ‘a place of rest and relaxation’. That is also how his father, Valentí, saw it: his son felt ‘overwhelmed by so much responsibility towards the members, the fans and the club’. His dad – according to Ramón Besa in El País – understood and even predicted the outcome, having said back in September, when Guardiola received the Gold Medal from the Catalan Parliament, that ‘as soon as the tributes start pouring in, it’s time to start packing your bags’.
As journalist Luis Martín, also from El País, discovered, many tried to change Pep’s mind in the two days leading up to the formal public announcement. SMS messages from Valdés, Iniesta, Xavi, and especially Messi, flooded his inbox. Even Vilanova asked him to reconsider. Zubizarreta ended up having a crazy idea, one of those forlorn hopes that you have to express even when you already know the answer: ‘There’s a vacancy in one of the youth teams. Why don’t you take it? What you like most of all is training the kids, isn’t it?’ Pep looked at him, trying to work out what was behind the question. He answered him with the same sense of ambiguity: ‘God, that could be a good idea.’ The two friends laughed.
Two days after announcing his departure to the president, it was time to tell the players.
Nobody in the squad was sure of the outcome. Following the Champions League semi-final defeat to Chelsea, Carles Puyol, waiting around after the match to give a urine sample for a routine drugs test, saw that Pep was stalling his arrival at the press conference. He thought it was a positive sign. So he told a team-mate: ‘He will tell us this week he is staying, you will see. He doesn’t want to leave us now.’ Puyol, as he now admits, doesn’t have a future as a clairvoyant. After the Champions League game, the players were given two days off. They had heard the rumours and knew about the meeting with Rosell but were unsure about what was going to happen.
The morning papers came with headlines which confirmed that nobody outside the club had a clear idea of what was about to take place; the front page of Mundo Deportivo split its front page in two, one half with the headline ‘Pep to leave’ and the other with ‘Pep to stay’. The majority of players thought that the meeting before training was merely to receive confirmation that Guardiola was staying. ‘He seems all right,’ they said to each other. They were hoping he had managed to shake off his fears and doubts and stay a bit longer, even one more season.
Only a handful of people knew for sure what was going to be said. The players gathered in the dressing room at the training ground. There were no jokes, just a low murmur of conversation which turned to silence once Pep walked in and started speaking. As the players were being told, Sky Sports News reported his decision. What he revealed was a shock. The Barcelona manager was departing.
‘You’re the best and I’m proud of you all. But now I have not got the energy to continue and it is time to leave. I’m d
rained.’ He appeared relaxed but his voice betrayed his emotions. He was using the same tricks that were so common to him when he wanted to show them where the weakness of the rival team was: he was trying to convince them it was the best that could happen and to do so he dwelt on his players’ feelings. ‘Around October I told the president that the end of my time as manager was close. But I couldn’t tell you then because it would have been problematic. Now it is definite. The next manager to come in will give things that I can no longer give. He will be strong. It would have been a risk for me to continue because we would have hurt each other. I think a lot of you all, and I would never forgive myself. There have been many moves that I have imagined that you have made a reality. So I will leave with the feeling of having done the job well, of having fulfilled my duty. This club has an unstoppable power, but I am the third coach in its history with the most number of games played – in just four years. What we have done has been exceptional because Barcelona coaches don’t last long. And we have lasted this long because we have won. But while that was happening, my strength was disappearing. I am leaving as a very happy man. The president has offered me another position but I need to be away from it all if I want to recharge again.’
There was further silence after those words were spoken. So he continued. ‘I wanted to tell you now that we are out of the big competitions so I have time to say goodbye to everyone – and call you individually into the office to thank you personally. I don’t want applause or anything, so ... let’s get to training.’
And Pep clapped his hands together to emphasise that the talk was over; it was an order to get up and move on. In less than a quarter of an hour, the history of the club had received a definitive twist. Players were confused, bewildered.
Pep asked very little of his footballers that day on the training ground. He knew that he had dealt them a bitter blow. For the players running out on to the pitch, that session represented the first steps on the road to healing. For Pep, it represented the beginning of the end of a journey that had begun around three decades earlier, in a sleepy little Catalan village called Santpedor.
Part II
From a Santpedor Square to the Camp Nou Dugout
Main square of the village of Santpedor. Almost any given morning in 1979
As you approach Pep’s childhood home in Santpedor, there is a striking view across the immense valley in which the village is situated. The air is fresh but it carries the smell of the dry earth. Looming on the horizon, the rocky outline of Montserrat, Catalonia’s striking iconic ‘serrated’ mountain, soars up out of the valley like a giant cardboard cut-out, providing a majestic backdrop for the sleepy Catalan village situated seventy kilometres from Barcelona.
One of the first buildings you come across on the outskirts of this village of only 7,500 inhabitants is the new home of Guardiola’s parents – built by Pep’s father, a bricklayer – a modern, three-storey edifice just off the main road, in an area dotted with new-build properties. As you head towards the centre of Santpedor, a few dilapidated factories remind you of the village’s more recent industrial past and provide a stark contrast to the medieval archways. Santpedor is the kind of village where people greet one another in the streets, whether they know each other or not. And those who do know each other stop for a chat about the same topics, as any other day. The broad roads start to merge into narrow labyrinths, centuries-old streets winding their way towards Santpedor’s two main squares, the Plaça Gran and the Plaça de la Generalitat. The latter also used to be known as the Plaça de Berga, but now it is more commonly referred to as ‘the square where Guardiola was born’.
On any given morning in 1979, a skinny ten-year-old boy would come out of number 15 Plaça de la Generalitat and walk the few steps towards the centre of the square with a football under his arm. Known to the locals as ‘Guardi’, the kid, with spindly legs like twigs, would call out for his friends, including a girl named Pilar, to join him. He would kick the ball against the wall until enough of his mates had arrived for a kickabout.
PlayStations didn’t exist back then and there were hardly enough cars on the roads to justify traffic lights or to pose any real danger to a bunch of kids engrossed in a game of street football. Pep would play before going to school, on his way home from school. He’d take the ball everywhere to have a kickabout at breaktime, at lunchtime, in the cobbled streets, around the fountains. He was even known to practise football during family dinners and his mother would tire of berating him, ‘Leave that ball alone for five minutes and get yourself over here!’ Like so many kids and so many mothers in towns and villages all over the world.
Back then everything was much more relaxed; there was less ‘protocol’, less ‘bureaucracy’, as Guardiola puts it. You’d go down to the square with the football and you’d play until it was too dark to see the ball: it was that simple. You didn’t need to go to a proper pitch or organise matches, nor set a time to play. There were no goalposts or nets, and nor were there signs warning kids that they couldn’t play ballgames either.
A metal garage door served as the goal and there were always arguments over who would be the keeper. Pilar never wanted to be the goalie; she had quite a kick and a good first touch – and for more than a decade the women’s team in a neighbouring village would enjoy the benefits of her hours of practice with Pep and the gang.
There were always disputes about who got to have Pep in their team. The tactics were clear: give him the ball so that he could control the game. All his friends were aware that he was better than the rest, that he had something that the others didn’t have. In the end, to avoid arguments, it was decided that Pep would be the one to choose the two teams – so that they were of more or less equal ability – and it also meant that from an early age, without hesitation, Pep assumed his role as a leader.
And when, in one of those street football games that might last the whole of Saturday or Sunday, one of the kids damaged something in the square with a wild shot, a smile from Pep would always get him and the rest of his friends out of trouble.
Nowadays, cars can drive through the square and even park in the centre. It’s no longer a place where kids can play.
When Pep returned to Barcelona to coach the reserve team, brief getaways to Santpedor and long walks in the surrounding countryside became a regular occurrence. Reflective to the point of bordering on meditation, Pep also made numerous trips to his village when he was debating about making the jump from the reserves to the first team. Although it was hardly seen during the four years that he was changing the football world as coach of the best team on the planet, his presence is felt in various corners of the village. The football stadium bears his name; his photograph adorns several bars; there is a plaque on a stone in the centre of the square dedicated to FC Barcelona by the local supporters club, which, by the way, has gained one hundred additional members in the past four years. The popularity of grass-roots football has grown to such an extent that the handball teams have dwindled. The children from the village only want to play football. And they will proudly tell you that they are from Pep Guardiola’s village: Santpedor.
So, there’s a bit of Pep in Santpedor, but there’s also clearly a lot of Santpedor in Pep. The whispered conversations you hear around here are in Catalan, along with signs and street names. The senyera – the Catalan flag – hangs from many balconies and graffiti on several abandoned buildings echo people’s sentiments for their nation and their strong sense of Catalan identity. The vilage even had the honour of being named ‘Carrer de Barcelona’, a medieval Catalan distinction with all the privileges and taxes that came with it. Santpedor was a ‘road to Barcelona’, the capital of Catalonia and Guardiola’s life-changing destination.
Pep is a very proud Catalan. An educated and courteous individual, he takes after his parents, the Guardiolas and the Salas, who are like any other parents in the village: modest and respectable. They sowed the seed. Or was it sown originally by Santpedor?
Pep
’s friend David Trueba thinks both of them did: ‘Nobody has paid any attention to the fundamental fact that Guardiola is a bricklayer’s son. For Pep, his father, Valentí, is an example of integrity and hard work. The family he has grown up with, in Santpedor, has instilled old values in him, values from a time in which parents didn’t have money or property to hand down to their children, just dignity and principles. When it comes to analysing or judging Guardiola, you must bear in mind the fact that underneath the elegant suit, the cashmere jumper and the tie, is the son of a bricklayer. Inside those expensive Italian shoes there is a heart in espadrilles.’
When Pep thinks back to his childhood in the village, to his parents, to the long games in the square, he doesn’t recall a specific moment, but a feeling: happiness. Joy in its purest, most simple form. And that sensation comes back to him whenever he returns to visit his parents, or his auntie Carmen or uncle José, or any of the relatives still living in Santpedor, and sits with them in the village square: until a legion of admirers gatecrashes his privacy and the moment is lost.
Back when he was a kid, and the sun had set on that village square, the young Pep would head home and set the ball in a corner of his bedroom, a modest space decorated by little more than a poster featuring Michel Platini: the face of football when Guardiola was ten years old. Guardiola had never seen him play – in those days television did not show much international football – but he had heard his dad and grandad talk about the ability of the Juventus player, his leadership and his aura. All that Pep knew about Platini were those wise words of his elders and that poster of the elegant Frenchman – caressing the ball, head up, surveying the pitch and picking his next pass. The attraction was instant. Five years later, a young Camp Nou ball boy named Pep Guardiola would earnestly try to get Platini’s autograph at the end of a match – but in failing he ended up learning a key lesson. That story will be told later.
Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography Page 4
