‘And let’s stick together when times are hard. Make sure that nothing gets leaked to the press. I don’t want anybody to fight a battle on his own. Let’s be united, have faith in me. As a former player, I have been in your shoes, I know what you are going through, what you are feeling.
‘The style comes dictated by the history of this club and we will be faithful to it. When we have the ball, we can’t lose it. And when that happens, run and get it back. That is it, basically.’
The squad, the group, was seduced. Not for the last time; far from it.
Upon leaving the room, Xavi commented to a team-mate that everything that they had needed to know was there in that talk. A breath of fresh air, order and discipline. A reminder of the style he wanted to reinforce. All that was established from day one.
There would be many more team talks, but the one at St Andrews laid the foundations for the new era at FC Barcelona.
‘There are talks that just come to you and talks that begin from a few ideas based on what you have seen. What you can’t do is study the talks, learn them by heart. Two or three concepts are all you need ... and then you have to put your heart into it. You can’t deceive the players, they are too well prepared, intelligent, intuitive. I was a footballer and I know what I’m saying. In every talk, from that one in St Andrews to the last one, I have put my heart into them. And when I don’t feel it, I don’t speak, it’s the best way. There are days when you think that you have to say something, but you don’t feel it, so at times like that it is better to keep quiet. Sometimes you show them images of the rivals, and sometimes you don’t show them a single image of the opposition because on that day you realise, for whatever reason, that in life there are more important things than a football game, you tell them other things, unrelated to the game. Stories of overcoming difficulties, of human beings acting in extraordinary ways. This is the beautiful thing about this job, because each rival, each situation, is different to the previous one and you always have to find that special something, to say to them “Guys, today is important ...” for such and such a reason. It doesn’t have to be tactical. When you have been doing it for three or four years it is a lot easier to find. When you have been doing it for four years, with the same players, it is more difficult.’
At St Andrews, Pep knew that his job would consist of reminding the players of some basic, fundamental truths and principles. He knew that many of them had lost their love for football, their hunger – and that it was necessary to create the best conditions for them to return to the pitch. Guardiola, after spending years asking so many questions, had learnt what he had to do from some of the greatest minds in the game.
In terms of the playing staff, after putting his faith in the home-grown players, the coach chose professionals he could trust. And the same principles were applied to his backroom staff, where he decided to go one step further and professionalise the entire set-up: introducing a hand-picked team of specialists to include technical assistants, fitness coaches, personal trainers, doctors, nutritionists, physiotherapists, players’ assistants, analysts, press officers, delegates and even handymen. The control and evaluation of training sessions and competitions was exhaustive, both at an individual level and as a group; recovery work was individualised and personalised.
All of them shared one thing in common: they were all culés (Barça fans). Xavi explains that this simple yet rare common attribute at a modern club was central to the group’s ability to unite and feel that they were pulling in the same direction from day one: ‘We’re all culés. We give it our all and we all share the glory.’
Pep’s right-hand man, Tito Vilanova, is a friend but also an exceptional match and team analyst. Notebook in hand, in the first season in the reserves he surprised people with his talent for strategies that turned out to be key to the team’s promotion to the Second Division B. Such was his rapport with Guardiola that there were no doubts as to his selection when Pep was offered the job with the first team. And they became a tandem. ‘I would mention something to Tito,’ Pep says. ‘If he keeps quiet, I know I have to convince him. If his face doesn’t change it is probably because I got it wrong.’ Always in the corner of the shot when the cameras zoom in on Guardiola during matches, Tito was there in his tracksuit, giving opinions and advising Pep on the bench. They complemented each other perfectly, as Tito points out: ‘I am really at ease with Pep because he gives me a kind of lead role, he listens to me and gives me a voice within the team.’
Watching the players train one morning while still in Scotland, Pep pointed at Puyol and asked Tito, ‘What do you make of what he did just then?’ ‘First, we need to know why he did it,’ Tito said. Pep halted play. ‘Not like that!’ Pep Guardiola, ‘the coach’, took over. ‘Puyi! You shouldn’t leave your marker until the ball is released for the pass.’ But Barça’s captain did what no one else did. ‘I did it because the other forward had managed to pull away from his marker,’ he replied, while inviting Tito to join in the debate: ‘Isn’t that right, Tito?’ Pep listened to the reasoning and then went on to explain: ‘You’re right, but ..., proceeding then to give Puyol a lengthy, profound talk about how he should position himself on the pitch. A talk like so many others he would give during his first pre-season at St Andrews.
‘We all know how to play football, but very few of us know the type of football that the coach wants us to play,’ Dani Alvés said at the time. ‘At first, he would halt many training sessions to correct us, to explain what he wanted from us,’ Piqué recalls; ‘but we are grateful to him for that because we’ll soon be coordinated and we will be able to transfer his ideas on to the pitch.’ With a special focus on Messi (Pep spent a great deal of time working on his defensive game), the new coach had one overriding message he wanted to transmit to the entire squad: ‘I want them all to understand that they can be much better as a team.’
Although he wanted an element of democracy within the group, with players using their initiative, making suggestions and keeping an open mind to new ideas, Guardiola did not delay in imposing a number of strict rules in his first few days in charge: such as insisting upon the use of Castilian and Catalan as the only languages spoken among the group, arranging a seating plan at meal times to encourage the players to mix and to prevent the team forming up into different cultural or national groups and cliques. However, his rules and the imposition of fines for those breaking them were not introduced as a measure to keep the players under strict control, but, rather, as a means to encourage a stronger sense of solidarity and responsibility. Two years later, Pep abolished his own system of sanctions and penalties, feeling that they had become unnecessary with the group exercising an impressive degree of self-discipline.
In life there are two ways of telling people what to do: either give them orders or set an example and encourage them to follow it. Pep is very much of the latter school of thought. In the modern game, if a coach does not know how to handle the different characters and varying individuals’ needs, then he will struggle to lead. Guardiola has a psychological edge, experience and intuition, which helps him detect any problem and in Barcelona’s dressing room he surrounded himself with people he could trust who were capable of helping him intervene at the right moment.
‘I didn’t know the boss or how he worked,’ Eric Abidal remembers. ‘The first month was difficult, because I’m a father, I’m thirty years old, and you don’t speak in the same way to a young player who has just started in professional football, as you would to a veteran. And he was doing exactly that! He made us change who we sat with at meal times and he made me speak in Castilian with Henry when we were with the group. I went to speak to the president, Laporta, to tell him that I wouldn’t tolerate it, that I wanted to leave, but he told me to calm down, that it was his way of doing things and that everything would go well. Now, I still laugh with the boss when we think about it.’
Pep continued the methodologies and practices introduced at St Andrews when the team returned to their ba
se in Barcelona, where he went even further in overhauling the daily habits of the players and the club. The new training complex was shaped very much according to Pep’s instructions, to such an extent that today it epitomises Barça’s philosophy. Guardiola changed things so that the players felt like employees of a football club and not Hollywood stars, in the knowledge that success was achieved through hard work, not just having fun. A dining room was designed to encourage all the players to sit down at meal times together, something commonplace in Italy but previously unknown in the first team at FC Barcelona.
Whereas previous training sessions that used to take place on a training pitch next door to the Nou Camp had a fairly high-profile feel about them because of their location, the Joan Gamper Training Ground, to which the first team had moved in January 2009, was strictly off limits to press and public on a daily basis. It was such a revolutionary step that the media christened it ‘La Ciudad Prohibida’ – ‘The Forbidden City’.
During their eleven-hour chats in Rosario, Argentina, Marcelo Bielsa told Pep all about his thoughts on the media – as well as everything else – and insisted that it was wrong to give priority access to a big television company over a small newspaper. Pep followed suit and introduced a new rule at Barcelona whereby he refused to give one-to-one interviews so as to avoid favouritism and getting drawn into media politics. From day one, Pep decided that he would speak to the press, but only at press conferences. He stopped taking calls from local journalists and avoided meeting them in private.
He also bucked the Spanish tradition of getting the team together in a hotel the day before a match. As Guardiola explained at the time, ‘People don’t spend the day before they go to work locked up in a hotel. We just try to make things the same for them. If they don’t rest, they’re not looking after themselves and that means they’ll play worse and lose their jobs. I judge my players on the work they do, not on their private lives. I’m not a policeman. I’m in bed at ten o’clock and I’ve got no urge to go and check up on my players. That’s why I’d rather have them at home and not cooped up in a hotel with nothing to do. We’re just trying to use common sense.’
Pep’s line of thinking was clearly the experience of a former top player at one of the world’s biggest clubs, now capable of empathising with the modern star as a manager, or so Xavi thinks: ‘For me, two of the most important novelties were the move to the training ground and getting rid of the hotel meetings. Working at the training ground gave us a lot of peace of mind and allowed us greater co-existence. It helped too that he made us eat together after training sessions. What is more, that way we watch our diet. I recognise that, at the start, it was a bit of a pain for me because I couldn’t make plans, but you get used to it straight away and you realise that it is of benefit to you. With the meetings it was the same. I wasn’t used to being at home a couple of hours before the match and at first it was very strange for me. I felt like I wasn’t well prepared. It felt like I was too switched off. I even thought that fate would punish me with a bad game for not giving 100 per cent of my time to it beforehand. But I soon realised that, with these new rules, I would also benefit. Thinking too much can put too much pressure on you; this turns into nerves and I have learnt to analyse what is really important. Minimising the meetings reduces our stress levels all year round.’
‘I can’t promise titles but I am convinced that the fans will be proud of us,’ he said on 17 June 2008 in the press conference at which he was presented as the new manager of FC Barcelona. ‘I give you my word that we will put in an effort. I don’t know if we’ll win, but we’ll persist. Fasten your seat belts, you are going to enjoy the ride,’ he said on 16 August 2008 at his presentation at the Camp Nou in front of a stadium full of fans.
Guardiola’s first competitive game as first-team coach of FC Barcelona had arrived. Because of the team’s third-placed finish the previous season, the opening game would be in the third qualifying round of the Champions League. Barça comfortably beat Polish club Wisła Kraków 4-0 at home. They then lost 1-0 in Kraków, but progressed with a 4-1 aggregate victory. The Pep era had begun with qualification for the Champions League proper.
‘I was an unknown quantity when I came in, and the first thing I asked the team to do was to put their trust in me,’ Pep remembers. ‘I told them everything would work out fine. I wanted the fans to see that the team was going to work hard, run, play good football, and take pride in their work on the pitch. People want to be entertained. They don’t want to be cheated. The fans can accept a poor performance but they won’t take it when you choose not to put in the effort. The team’s come on and we’ve made changes and tweaked a few things here and there. The idea is still the same as it has always been in this house, though: to attack, score as many goals as possible, and play as well as we can.’
A coach is everything and nothing at the same time: nothing, because without the right tools at his disposal he’s unable to achieve greatness. But he’s smart enough to know that his job is vital to create the right environment and conditions for his players to fulfil their potential; it is what makes the difference between converting a good group of players into an excellent team. And that was something that Pep managed to achieve from day one, without allowing nagging doubts and questions such as ‘what if it this doesn’t work?’ to interfere.
On one occasion Guardiola explained that there are two types of coaches: those who think problems solve themselves and those who solve problems. Guardiola belongs to the group that seeks solutions. That is his real passion.
The game. Seeing what the opponent does. Deciding the players you will use. That is the moment that ‘makes sense’ of the profession – the search for the solution, the decision that will change a game, that will win a game.
Often for Pep, the moment when it all becomes clear in his head occurs to him in a subterranean office in the Camp Nou. Pep’s office is not much bigger than four square metres, receives lots of direct light and contains a handful of books and a table lamp. There is also a plasma screen to analyse both his team’s and their rivals’ games, which he paid for out of his own pocket.
If, in the middle of the almost spiritual process, engrossed in his analysis, somebody knocked on the door of his office, they would find it impossible to get his full attention. Some brave soul might try to talk to him, but he would look through them rather than at them. He wouldn’t be listening. In his mind he would still be watching the videos of the rivals even if his eyes were not on the screen. ‘OK, let’s talk later,’ he’d say, politely ushering his visitor out. And then Pep would turn his attention to visualising the game that would take place a couple of days later. Searching for that flash of inspiration, that moment, the magical moment: ‘I’ve got it. I’ve got it. This is how we are going to win.’ If it were up to him, he would get rid of everything else in football except that spark.
For Guardiola, tactical concepts are taken in if the players have the right attitude and understand what they are doing. The essence that he transmits is that the team should be in order, and ordered, through the ball. He talks to the players about position, imbalance, balance, circulation – ultimately, the desire to win, working to be the best.
‘In the world of football there is only one secret: I’ve got the ball or I haven’t. Barcelona has opted for having the ball although it is legitimate for others not to want it. And when we haven’t got the ball is when we have to get it back because we need it.’
Since his coaching debut, Guardiola has never tired of repeating that Johan Cruyff was the inspiration for his approach and this sense of continuity has been a good thing for the club. It’s allowed several factors to become well established so that, in the future, projects won’t have to be started from scratch. ‘We are a little bit like disciples of the essence that Cruyff brought here,’ said Guardiola, who wrote more than a decade ago that ‘Cruyff wanted us to play that way, on the wings and using the wingers, and I apply that whole theory ahead of everything. It was
he, Johan, who imposed the criteria for quick movements of the ball, the obligation to open up the field in order to find space. To fill the centre of the pitch in order to play having numerical superiority, and, I don’t know, introduce a lot more things so that everybody knew how Barça played and, above all, so it would be known how to do it in the future. And that, in short, is the greatest thing that Cruyff left us. The idea of playing in a way that no team has done before in Spain seduces me. It is a sign of distinction, a different way of experiencing football, a way of life, a culture.’
But Cruyff was not the only influence upon Pep’s footballing philosophy. Louis Van Gaal’s Ajax was a team that hypnotised him and he admitted to applying some of their methods. ‘The question is that that Ajax team always gave me the impression that they tried to and could do all of the following: play, sacrifice themselves as a team, shine individually and win games. All the players, of different quality, without exception, were aware of their mission on the field of play. They demonstrated a tactical discipline and enormous capacity to apply all of that at just the right time.’
As Jorge Valdano says, Pep is ‘a Catalan son of the Dutch school of football’. But Pep isn’t a simple transmitter of ideas, as journalist Ramón Besa explains: ‘Rather, he takes the message, improves it and spreads it with greater credibility.’
According to Víctor Valdés: ‘He insisted a lot on tactical concepts, on the system of play. His philosophy is clear: first we should have the ball. With it, the opponent suffers and we have everything under control. Secondly, we try not to lose the ball in compromising positions since it could cause a dangerous situation. If they take the ball off us, it should be through the opponent’s own merits, not through our mistakes. The third aspect is the pressure in the rival’s half. We must bite, be very intense. We already did that with Rijkaard, but he put more emphasis on it. Each player has a zone in which they should apply pressure. We should all help each other. You can’t lose concentration ever. Guardiola says that these three concepts are our strong point, one of the things he repeats most in the dressing room. When we apply all three, everything works.’
Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography Page 14
