Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

by Balague, Guillem

  Unfortunately, the quality of the squad had deteriorated since that fateful night in Athens. With eleven trophies, Cruyff was Barcelona’s most successful manager (Pep would surpass him) and he still is the club’s longest serving; however, in his final two years until his departure in 1996, he failed to deliver any silverware and underwent a very public and acrimonious falling-out with club president, Josep Lluís Núñez.

  In his final season in charge (1995–6), Cruyff signed Luís Figo from Sporting Lisbon but results on the pitch did not improve substantially enough. The end was on the cards as soon as it became mathematically impossible for Barça to win the league: something that happened with two games remaining, just after they had been knocked out of the UEFA Cup by Bayern Munich in the semi-finals and beaten by Atlético de Madrid in the Copa del Rey final. Cruyff’s relationship with President Núñez had become untenable and it all came to a head on 18 May, just before the final training session ahead of FC Barcelona’s final home game against Celta Vigo when, following an extremely heated discussion between Cruyff and vice-president Joan Gaspart in the coach’s office at the Camp Nou, the man who had led Barcelona to the most successful period in their history was sacked.

  The Dutchman would not have continued beyond the end of that season, but had wanted to see out the remaining two games and leave with some dignity in the summer. The falling-out denied him that opportunity and his discovery that the club had already made a move to appoint Sir Bobby Robson as his successor heaped further humiliation upon him. Guardiola preferred, during that convulsive period, to act like most players would do – watch from a distance as everything fell apart.

  In the first game of the post-Cruyff era, the Nou Camp was filled with banners supporting the Dutch coach, thanking him for all the success he had brought to the club. The club was divided between supporters of Cruyff and those of Núñez. In the end, even the man who had changed the history of Barcelona cracked under the intense pressure at the club, the behind-the-scenes conflicts and his deteriorating relationship with the board. Cruyff was gone, yet one of his most enduring legacies remained in the form of Pep Guardiola, a spindly young central midfielder who became both icon and embodiment of the philosophies that the Dutchman had set in motion.

  After Cruyff came Sir Bobby Robson, a jovial sixty-three-year-old manager who rapidly earned the nickname ‘Grandad Miquel’ (the star of an advertisement for cheap wine) among the senior players. Robson never grasped the Spanish language or his players, but he suffered unfair comparisons to the Dutch master, whose shadow would have eclipsed anybody.

  One of Sir Bobby Robson’s first training sessions at the Nou Camp. Late morning, 1996

  One morning soon after his arrival, Sir Bobby Robson used a piece of chalk to scrawl his tactics on the dressing-room floor, with José Mourinho duly translating Robson’s English into Spanish. The players looked on and exchanged bewildered glances with each other as the old man knelt down before them making unintelligible squiggles on the floor. It was at that moment, right at the beginning of his tenure, that he lost the changing room and as the season progressed a form of self-management evolved among the players. Frequently, Mourinho would translate the words of Robson, then add extra, clearer instructions – quite a lot extra sometimes. Pep and José quickly identified each other as football people and the pair connected, talked and took coaching decisions among themselves. Quite possibly it was something that happened less frequently than José likes to admit it did, yet perhaps happened more often than Pep is prepared to own up to these days.

  Guardiola has written in My People, My Football: ‘Charly Rexach always said that in order to be a trainer you have to think 30% about football and the rest about everything surrounding the team: about the environment ... And I only understood it the year Robson was with us. I came from another school of football. I was so used to Cruyff’s methods that I assumed all the coaches were like him. Robson thought we had to be different and it wasn’t what I expected. He was right though, but in the process we lost three or four months. It was too late. In football you have to be brave. Always. If we just complain, we’re dead. Action must be taken, always bearing in mind commitment to the common goal. Both Robson and the players were fighting for the same cause: Barça. But by the time our thoughts and his met along the way, it was too late. That synchrony was interpreted as self-management.’

  Pep might call it a synchrony and claim that the suggestion that it was a case of ‘self-management’ was only one interpretation of what happened under Robson. But that is misleading, because that is exactly what took place. At half-time in the 1997 Spanish Cup final against Real Betis, Sir Bobby Robson sat in a corner of the changing rooms at the Bernabéu. The score was level at 1-1 and the Barcelona players wanted to seize the initiative and capitalise on the weaknesses the players themselves had spotted on the left of the Betis defence, while exploiting the gaps present between their opponent’s midfield and defence. The players, not the coach, gave each other the instructions combined with interventions from Mourinho. The game was won in extra time, 3-2, the third title – Spanish Cup, Spanish Super Cup and European Cup Winners’ Cup – in a season that remains etched in the memory by the images of Ronaldo powering past, round or through La Liga’s defences.

  Guardiola’s confidence was growing both in terms of asking questions (why are we doing this? Why don’t we start building that way, this way? Why don’t we move those players in that direction when the ball is in that other direction?) and advising his team-mates. ‘I was up to my balls with Pep, all day: this and that and this and that in the dressing room. He made my head spin!’ says Laurent Blanc who played for Barcelona in the team during Sir Bobby Robson’s reign, and at the time was not particularly impressed by Pep’s ‘perseverance’ – a polite way of describing his obsessive nature.

  The league title eluded Barcelona and celebrations were muted as the season drew to a close, the mood not helped by the fact that Sir Bobby Robson had learnt, as far back as April of that year, that the club had already reached an agreement with Louis Van Gaal to take charge at the Camp Nou the following season.

  For Guardiola, this represented an opportunity to learn from the architect of the extraordinarily successful Ajax team that he admired so much. But then a personal sporting tragedy struck.

  Early the following season, in an August Champions League encounter versus Latvian side Skonto FC, Guardiola picked up a muscle injury that went undiagnosed until it was far too late. He realised something was wrong when, on his way to a delicatessen, he struggled to sprint across the road before the traffic lights turned red. What had at first appeared a fairly innocuous calf muscle injury would eventually lead to Pep missing most of the 1997–8 campaign as he visited one specialist after another in a seemingly interminable quest to find out exactly what was happening. It was not until the end of that season – in which Barcelona won a league and cup double under their new manager – that Pep was finally able to receive the necessary treatment and underwent an operation in the summer that would also see him miss out on Spain’s disastrous 1998 World Cup campaign in France.

  The injury required a slow and arduous period of recuperation and it would not be until some fifteen months after that fateful sprint to the shops that Guardiola would be able to play an injury-free game of football for the Barcelona first team, almost halfway through the ’98–9 season, making his return at the Riazor stadium against Deportivo La Coruña on 5 December.

  There were those at the time who mischievously suggested that Guardiola’s prolonged absences and mystery injury that coincided with Van Gaal’s first season at the club were no mere coincidents and that the player was deliberately avoiding working under the Dutchman. While it is true that, despite winning two league titles and a Spanish Cup during a stormy three-year first spell at the club, Van Gaal often found himself at loggerheads with the local media, the assumption that the Catalan local hero, Guardiola, shared an uneasy relationship with the Dutch coach is incor
rect. Van Gaal quickly identified Pep as a natural successor to Guillermo Amor as club captain, with Pep eager to learn from the coach whom he greatly admired, and the pair constantly discussed football, tactics, positioning and training exercises. ‘He is, alongside Juanma Lillo, the manager whom I talked to most. Especially at the beginning, because in the end the contact diminished, both in quantity and content,’ recalls Pep.

  It is testimony to the mutual respect that the pair hold for each other that, when I approached Van Gaal to request an interview asking him to reveal as much as he could about his personal relationship with Pep, the Dutchman – operating under a self-imposed media embargo at that time – was more than happy to chat about Guardiola, his former player and pupil.

  According to Van Gaal, it quickly became apparent to him, back when Pep was a relatively inexperienced young player, that he possessed an innate ability to lead a group of his peers and superiors: ‘I made Guardiola captain because he could speak about football. You could see then that he was a tactical player. He could speak like a coach, even then – not many players can do that. Guardiola’s best position was as a number four, that is in the centre of the midfield, because from there he can see the game and he had the personality to dominate it. He was younger than Amor and Nadal, but he was my captain. I told him in a meeting that I had chosen him and he said, “It’s not how it happens at FCB, the oldest player in the team is usually the captain here.” But I insisted, “No, you are the only one I can speak to on my level, you are my captain.” He used to tell the other players like Figo where they should be: ahead of him, out wide, where he could play the ball. Pep is a very tactical guy and also a good human being, and because of that he could persuade his fellow players.’

  As the Barcelona captain and his coach’s relationship developed, Pep grew in stature and did more than just disseminate Van Gaal’s instructions to the other players out on the pitch, frequently suggesting an alternative approach if he felt it was for the benefit of the group.

  Van Gaal gives one such example of the way the pair would work together to try and achieve a solution: ‘Pep was always modest. Yes, we would talk and he would suggest ideas but always in a modest way. For instance, I will tell you what happened with Stoichkov. Hristo didn’t want to accept my rules. Discipline is key, very important. If there is no discipline off the pitch, there is none on it. I always had to tell the Bulgarian in front of the other players, “You don’t obey, I cannot keep you in the team.” I even forced him to train with the reserves. But the players thought that was not such a good idea, so Guardiola, already captain, told me I should give him a second chance. I said to him, “OK, it’s not about me, the team is more important. But he cannot fail again.” So Hristo trained with the first team but he failed me soon after and I had to correct him again. Pep came to me and said, “Go ahead, we have given him a chance and he didn’t take it.” He knew how important Stoichkov was to the side but also that there are rules, limits. That the team comes first.’

  That requirement, to put the team before the individual, was something that Pep would experience first hand when, during his second spell in charge of FC Barcelona for the 2002–3 campaign, Van Gaal edged Pep one step closer towards the end of his playing career and inched him towards the next phase in his journey from player to manager. ‘By the way, I put Guardiola out of the team for Xavi,’ explains Van Gaal. ‘I think Pep understood. Players must understand that you make changes not just because of talent but because of the future. You have to think about development and if you see a player dropping in form and the other improving, you have to act. That’s hard for a player to understand, maybe deep down Guardiola couldn’t. But it has turned out good for the club that Guardiola progressed, that he eventually moved aside as a player and returned as a manager. Everything goes full circle. The culture of the club, of any club, is essential; and it’s very important that the institution teaches the footballers the need to preserve that. You now have key players – Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol – who are applying to their leadership things they learnt from Pep as a player and leader.’

  Van Gaal’s legacy at FC Barcelona is perhaps one of the most misunderstood elements in the club’s history, largely a consequence of his uneasy relationship with the local press, which constructs and disseminates the popular memory of the club to the public, converting perception into fact for future generations. For example, the Catalan media frequently positioned themselves in favour of talented yet troublesome players like Stoichkov and Rivaldo, while simultaneously portraying Van Gaal as a cold, ruthless individual who completely failed to grasp what FC Barcelona stood for as a club and a national institution. Yet the reality is altogether different and, while it’s true that the blueprint for the club’s playing traditions was established by Johan Cruyff, it is Van Gaal who deserves much of the credit for building upon those foundations and advancing the methodologies and systems upon which much of Barcelona’s current success has been based. What Van Gaal might not be aware of is the influence his teachings had on Pep who today, as we shall see, recognises him as a key figure of the recent success of the side. ‘I am not sure he is the best coach in the world, as he keeps saying,’ Guardiola points out, ‘but certainly one of the best. I learnt a lot with him. I would have to ask him, though, would you do things the same way if you had to do it all over again?’

  His time under Van Gaal was not without problems, however, and Pep’s lengthy injury lay-offs led to some uncomfortable contract negotiations that distanced him from the board and afforded him some bitter experiences in just how unforgivingly and cruelly the football world can treat those who earn their living from it.

  It was while Pep was sidelined with injury during Van Gaal’s tenure that the club president, Josep Lluís Núñez, enquired as to the player’s well-being with one of the doctors – and when the physical report was positive, Núñez persisted with his enquiry, asking: ‘OK, but what about his head? How is his head? Isn’t he a bit sick in his head?’

  Pep found out that his president doubted him, but, worse still, there was a spiteful rumour circulating on the streets of Barcelona that Guardiola’s ‘mystery’ injuries were connected to the lamentable suggestion that he had contracted the AIDS virus. Pep has his suspicions as to the source of these unfounded rumours: they didn’t come from the squad, from colleagues or even from journalists; nor even from rival fans. Yet it was apparent that the board did nothing to silence the gossip and protect their captain.

  For Pep, it became difficult to enjoy his football at a club without the support and respect of the board. The atmosphere around the team became increasingly negative and the mood soured further when his close friend and Barcelona team-mate Luís Figo stunned the football world by moving to Real Madrid. It was a further symptom of the ruptures and divisions separating the club president and his board, the dressing room and the supporters. The club had gone from being an environment that celebrated football at the height of the Dream Team’s successes, to an institution enveloped by pessimism and recrimination. The supporters poured their frustrations into an overt expression of anger at what they perceived to be Figo’s ultimate act of betrayal and treachery, turning the Camp Nou into a cauldron of hate upon the Portuguese winger’s return to the stadium where, just several months earlier, he had been worshipped as a hero. The noise that greeted Figo as he stepped out on to the pitch in Barcelona wearing the white of Real Madrid was likened to that of a jet aeroplane and the hostility generated by the Barcelona supporters may have sent the desired message to Figo but did little to improve the mood at a club mired in negativity.

  Pep struggled to come to terms with the sheer force of hatred levelled at the Portuguese star, the godfather of one of his children, and the atmosphere surrounding the whole affair added to his growing sense of unease. He finally felt that enough was enough and took the decision, approximately twelve months before his contract ran out in the summer of 2001, that it was time to leave FC Barcelona. ‘When he has made his mind up
, there’s no changing it,’ says Pep’s agent, Josep María Orobitg, whom he instructed not to open negotiations with Barcelona regarding his contract renewal. Needless to say, it was not an easy decision: but as Pep described it, ‘I weighed up the bag of things I gain if I leave, and it was fuller than the one containing things if I stay.’

  Pep said goodbye two months before the season finished at an emotionally charged, packed Nou Camp press conference. He took his place in front of the microphone alone, without the customary presence of a representative of the board. The president at the time, Joan Gaspart, someone who seldom missed an opportunity to share the limelight, was conveniently away on business. Pep, his voice cracking with emotion, announced: ‘I came here when I was thirteen years old, now I am thirty and a father of a family. My career is slipping through my fingers and I want to finish it abroad, experiencing other countries, cultures and leagues. I feel quite liberated: a little calmer, a bit more comfortable.’

  On 24 June 2001, after eleven seasons in the first team, Pep Guardiola, Barça’s captain, the most decorated player in the club’s history and the last iconic symbol of the Dream Team still playing at the Camp Nou, walked away from the club he loved. He had played 379 games, scored just ten goals, but won sixteen titles, including six leagues, one European Cup, two cups and two Cup Winners’ Cups. He also departed as much more than just another great player: he left as a symbol of the team’s Catalan identity in an era defined by an influx of foreign players.