Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

by Balague, Guillem

  Manel Estiarte heard those words more than a few times, muttered along with the rest of Pep’s footballing theories during their long conversations at Manel’s house in Pescara, Italy, where the two friends and their families would spend a few weeks together almost every summer. Pescara might not be the most beautiful place in the world, but Estiarte, whose wife is Italian, has had a house there since playing for the Pescara water polo team in the mid-eighties. After he retired, Manel escaped to the house whenever he could.

  During those summers, the hot, fourteen-hour July days of sunshine would pass slowly for the two friends and their families who slipped into a simple daily routine: eight hours on the beach, home to freshen up before dinner, wine and hours of good conversation long into the night before finally heading off to bed for a good night’s sleep in preparation for doing the same thing all over again the next day. It’s what holidays were made for.

  Of course, these days it’s more complicated to remain anonymous, as other tourists can’t help but notice that the most popular club manager in the world happens to be sitting on the beach a few yards away from them, and they will inevitably approach him, perhaps to share their memories of a game. But until recently, Pescara provided a sanctuary where the friends could quietly share their dreams, plans and set the world to rights.

  At the start of their summer holiday in Pescara in 2007, Pep was out of work; the experience in Mexico and his Argentinian trip had finished and he had announced his retirement as a player. He and Manel were walking along the beach when Pep dropped a bombshell.

  ‘I’ve been offered a job at Barça, if I want it.’

  ‘Wow, Barcelona!’

  ‘Yeah, they want me to work as technical director of the youth categories.’

  ‘Well, you like to organise things and you’re great working with kids.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah; but I don’t know. I don’t know ...’

  ‘What do you mean you don’t know!? You are going back to FC Barcelona!’

  ‘It’s just that ... I want to work with the B team, the second team. I see myself coaching them. I want to start off there.’

  ‘But didn’t they just get relegated and are now in the third division!!??’

  Manel remembers that conversation vividly and recalls thinking that there was no point trying to convince his friend that it was, perhaps, a bad idea to start his coaching career with a team on the slide on the wrong end of the Spanish league system (four divisions below La Liga) because once Pep had made his mind up, there was no turning back. Nevertheless, in this instance it didn’t stop others from trying to persuade him he was about to make a mistake.

  From a little village square in Santpedor, football had taken Guardiola all over the world. It had been a lengthy education; starting with tears at La Masía, coping with criticisms and defeats, failed dreams, incredible highs and lows, periods of reflection, study; encouragement from family, friends, and mentors; lengthy coach trips around the Catalan countryside, a footballing odyssey that would take him to Wembley, to Italy, to the Middle East, to Mexico and Argentina. It involved a great deal of observing, listening, watching and playing an awful lot of football.

  By the summer of 2007, even though always learning, Pep felt ready – he wanted to coach and he knew how to do it and with which resources.

  Txiki Beguiristain, then director of football at Barcelona, had other ideas, seeing Pep as the perfect fit for a more logistical role than a hands-on coaching position, which is why he called Pep offering him the job as director of youth football at Barcelona. Txiki saw Pep as a coordinator, an ideologist, with a capacity for teaching and communicating the ‘Barça way’ to the youngsters coming through the ranks. As director of the junior categories, Pep would be responsible for organising the youth set-up, selecting the players and their coaches, overseeing training methods and playing a key role in designing the new systems and the building where they would all be based, replacing the old Masía. Beguiristain had wanted to leave the club that same summer, a year before his contract ended, but when he learnt that Pep might consider coming back to Barcelona, he was prepared to continue for another season, with Guardiola as his right-hand man and understudy, grooming him as his successor in twelve months’ time.

  Before Txiki could even think about proposing Guardiola’s return to Laporta and the board, Pep needed to build a few bridges, starting with some repairs to the two former Dream Team players’ own relationship that had been practically non-existent for at least four years. Pep and Cruyff were also distant for a while: the pair hadn’t quite seen eye to eye, back when Pep was still playing for the club, over an incident that occurred just after the Dutchman had left the team. Cruyff’s successor in the dugout, Van Gaal, had got rid of several home-grown players – Oscar and Roger García, Albert Celades, Toni Velamazán, Rufete – and Cruyff couldn’t understand how Guardiola, the captain, let that happen without saying anything. When he told Pep, ‘Come on, help out the guys from the youth teams’, Pep said he wanted ‘nothing to do with this managerial stuff’, that he couldn’t intervene in the decisions of the coach. Cruyff was not impressed.

  But there was something else that divided the former Dream Team coach and captain. When Pep accepted the proposal of Lluis Bassat to become his director of football should the 2003 election campaign be successful, it came as something of a surprise to a group of former Dream Team players – Txiki, Amor and Eusebio – who had made a pact, with Johan Cruyff’s blessing, that they would not publicly back any candidate ahead of the vote and would offer their services to the eventual winner. The former players were under the impression that Pep was part of the group and felt a degree of betrayal upon discovering that he had opted to publicly support Bassat. Laporta (with the backing of Cruyff behind the scenes) was victorious, leaving Pep somewhat isolated from the group and, as a result, he didn’t talk to Txiki or Johan Cruyff, or even Laporta, for a few years afterwards.

  But Pep had allies on the club’s board. On the day that his name was put forward, Evarist Murtra, a vocal director and friend of Guardiola, had a dental appointment. This meant that he arrived late to Txiki Beguiristain’s presentation in which he proposed certain changes to the management of the youth set-up: Beguiristain had considered Pep for the role of manager of all the youth team coaches, together with Alexanco; Luis Enrique would work for them as coach of Barça B. Laporta asked Beguiristain to sum up his ideas for Murtra’s benefit. The director listened. He was aware that at the time Guardiola had just got his coaching certificate and that what he really wanted to do was coach, not direct; put on a tracksuit and give orders on the pitch, not in offices. So, when Beguiristain left the meeting, Murtra followed him out, acting as if he was going to the bathroom. When the sporting director was about to take the lift Murtra told him, ‘Txiki, before confirming the job with Luis Enrique, do me a favour and give Pep a call first, just in case what he wants to do is coach.’

  So, in the summer of 2007, a meeting between Txiki and Pep was arranged in the Princesa Sofía Hotel near the Camp Nou in order to discuss Guardiola’s potential return to the club. Beguiristain walked into that hotel willing to forgive and to forget – and with a particular proposal and a position in mind for Pep. Despite the suggestion from Murtra, he wanted the former captain to become the future director of football.

  Guardiola: Thanks for the offer, but I want to be a coach.

  Beguiristain: Where? There is no vacancy for you in the first team, even as an assistant to Rijkaard ...

  Guardiola: Give me the B team, in the third division.

  Beguiristain: What?! You must be crazy. It’s a no-win. It’s easier to win the league with the first team than to gain promotion with Barça B.

  Guardiola: Let me have control of the B team; I know what to do with them.

  Beguiristain: But the job we’re offering you is much better than just the B team, on a financial level as well. Being in charge of the academy is more prestigious. The B team is in the third division!
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br />   Back in 2007 the B team was struggling and not considered the talent pool it now is: it had just suffered relegation to the English equivalent of League Two for the first time in thirty-four years.

  But Pep was insistent.

  Guardiola: I want to be a coach, to train. Let me work with whatever team, whatever level you want: the juniors, or the infants, anybody. I will even work with the toddlers on a potato field, but I want to become a ‘hands-on’ coach.

  Beguiristain: You could get your fingers burned trying to rescue that B team, you must be mad. And another thing; what will it look like if we dump Pep Guardiola, the club’s icon, in the third division side? It doesn’t make sense!

  Pep proceeded to explain what he wanted to do with the team in great detail, how he planned to design the squad, what kind of training sessions and what kind of regime he wanted to implement. ‘I want to work with these kids; I know they don’t ask for anything and give you everything. I will get that team promoted,’ Pep repeated.

  He took some convincing, but, eventually, Txiki was won over by Pep’s enthusiasm and ideas for the reserves. The director of football went away and started doing some digging around, gathering second opinions about Pep’s qualities as an actual coach. He spoke to members of the academy set-up who had been on coaching courses with him, his tutors, too, and they all agreed that Pep had been one of the most brilliant students they had ever worked with. So the decision was taken soon after that meeting.

  It was typical Pep Guardiola: a blend of boldness and genius. There can’t be too many former players who have turned down a director’s role overseeing an entire academy set-up, in order to beg for the chance to take over training a failing reserve side.

  ‘Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into, Pep?’ his friends would ask him repeatedly once they had heard what had happened that afternoon. ‘Four divisions down, that’s hell: it has nothing to do with the football that you know. You’re not in for an easy ride, more like a bumpy one! Are you really sure about this?’ Oh, yes, he was sure. ‘I just want to coach’ would be his answer. As David Trueba wrote, ‘Pep had always been very clear that life consists of taking risks, making mistakes – but wherever possible, your own mistakes rather than those of others.’

  However, there was another stumbling block to Pep’s wish that he be given the opportunity to coach and that was the fact that someone had already been chosen for that job: none other than Guardiola’s friend and former team-mate Luis Enrique. The former Spanish international had been told by an enthusiastic Barça director that his approval as B team coach for the 2007–8 season would be unanimously accepted by the rest of the board. Pep’s appearance on the scene suddenly changed all of that and Txiki had to let Luis Enrique know the decision had been reversed.

  So in many ways, life had now gone full circle for Pep. The boy from Santpedor who had been lucky enough to get a phone call from La Masía some twenty years earlier was now coming back to where it had all begun. In putting some distance between himself and the club in the interim, he had more to give than if he had stayed.

  On 21 June 2007, seven months after retiring as a footballer, Pep Guardiola was unveiled as the new coach of Barcelona B.

  Camp Nou. Press conference room, afternoon of 21 June 2007

  ‘I hadn’t had any other offers, nobody had phoned me. For this reason I am so grateful to the club, because for me it is a privilege to be able to train Barça B.’ That is what Pep told the media that had assembled for his presentation at the Camp Nou on that summer day in 2007. The season that was about to start turned out to be more than just a privilege; it evolved into a campaign that would define his abilities as a football coach.

  At that press conference, Joan Laporta, who at that stage was beginning to resemble what the Americans refer to as a ‘lame duck president’, had salvaged a degree of credibility with the appointment of a former player, symbol of the club and nation. At that moment in time, seated beside Guardiola, Laporta needed the benefit of Pep’s halo effect. The president’s tenure had previously been a success, making Barcelona a force in Europe again with two league titles and a Champions League trophy delivered in swashbuckling style; but as time went on, the president’s image had been tarnished by internal divisions at the club and accusations from a number of former members of the Laporta board – including Sandro Rosell, who had resigned – accusing him of becoming authoritarian and, some suggested, out of touch with reality. And of course, a trophyless 2006–7 season didn’t help. Power is a strange thing and Laporta was the perfect example of the way it can transform even the most idealistic individual.

  ‘All my life I wanted to be Guardiola,’ said Laporta that afternoon, basking in the reflected glory of an idol to a generation of Barcelona fans. Cruyff was nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that he approved Guardiola’s appointment, preferring to remain pulling the strings behind the Laporta era, just as he had always done.

  The level of risk that was being taken by the club with regard to Guardiola was on a par with his notoriety – but he wasn’t scared of a fall. His speech during his presentation to the media came like a cascade of words that he himself had repeated many times in bed, when in the pool in Doha or walking around the beaches of Pescara, daydreaming. ‘I am no one as a coach, that’s why I face this opportunity with such uncontrollable enthusiasm. I’ve come here prepared to help in any way necessary. I know the club and I hope to help these players and the idea of football that you all have to grow. In fact, the best way of educating the players is to make them see that they can win. I hope the sense of privilege I feel is felt by everyone in the team,’ he told a full media room.

  Guardiola likes to repeat that his real vocation is teaching: he dreams that, once he gives up the professional game, he’ll be able to train kids, youngsters who ‘still listen and want to learn’. It was to an audience of attentive youngsters eager to learn that he gave his first speech as a coach a few days after his presentation. He recalls that he chose a selection of ideas that represented, as well as any others, his footballing philosophy.

  He could live with them playing badly now and again, he told them, but he demanded 100 per cent on the pitch in every single game. He wanted the team to act as professionals even if they weren’t yet considered so and to be competitive in everything they did. ‘The aim is to gain promotion and in order to do that we have to win and we can’t do that without effort,’ he said to them. He also pointed out that the attacking players would need to become the best defenders; and the defenders would have to become the first line of attack, moving the ball forward from the back.

  And that no matter what happened, the playing style was non-negotiable: ‘The philosophy behind this club’s style of play is known by everyone. And I believe in it. And I feel it. I hope to be able to transmit it to everyone. We have to be ambitious and we have to win promotion, there’s no two ways about it. We have to be able to dominate the game, and make sure that we aren’t dominated ourselves.’

  The club had bagged a prize asset. He was useful for the institution, and not just because he won games but also because he understood and applied what La Masía had taught him; La Masía, the academy that had shaped him and made him strong, that had accentuated his strengths and hidden his weaknesses, ultimately leading him to success.

  Pep settled into his new role by surrounding himself with a team of assistants whom he knew he could trust, a group of colleagues who had been inseparable since the time they had first met at La Masía: his right-hand man, Tito Vilanova; the rehabilitation coach, Emili Ricart; and the fitness coach, Aureli Altimira. The group quickly became aware that the technical quality of the players they had at their disposal in the B team was never in doubt: because of the selection processes involved, every player at La Masía had above average technique after more than two decades favouring intelligent youngsters who could play the ball rather than being considered for their physiological characteristics. However, Pep realised that in ord
er to make the team a success he needed to add intensity and an increased work rate to their technical abilities.

  And, above all else, they had to learn to win. Instilling a fiercely competitive, winning spirit into a team, an academy already blessed with an abundance of talent, represented something of a watershed for grass-roots football at FC Barcelona.

  The B team’s relegation to the fourth tier of the Spanish league was symptomatic of a club that had prioritised its philosophy, but lacked the skill to implement it competitively at youth level. Pep set about disbanding the Barcelona C team, which had been playing in the third division, combining the pick of the players from the squads and taking the revolutionary step of allowing players over twenty-one to join the new B team structure for a maximum of two seasons before being sold. In allowing older footballers to play alongside the under-21s in the B team, Pep was breaking with tradition in the hope that he would raise standards and make them more competitive.

  In combining the B and C teams, Pep had to trim a group of fifty players down to just twenty-three, resulting in a great number of players being released from La Masía – an unenviable task, as described by David Trueba: ‘Pep wanted to find teams for the players he was letting go; he had to arrange meetings with their parents, holding back tears, dissolving the childhood dreams and vocations of those boys who thought that football was more important than life itself, who had put their studies on hold because they were boys who were called to succeed. Creating that squad was a “bricks and mortar” job, of intuition and strength, a dirty and thankless task. From one day to the next you had to decide if you were letting a lad called Pedro leave the club to go to Gavá or if you were keeping him.’ The decisions also had to be made quickly, after only half a dozen training sessions: a risky business, with the potential for mistakes. But, again, Pep could live with the mistakes, because they were his mistakes.