Pep was convinced the team was doing the right things, the success was obvious and he wanted to continue with the group’s logical progression. If he had placed Messi on the wing again for the next season, he would have had to deal with an exceptional player who would lose motivation, unhappy with being relegated to a less influential position. There was vast room for improvement from the Argentinian but there was only room for one ego.
When the season finished, Eto’o went to Paris during his holidays. Pep found out and wanted to travel to France to speak face to face with him, to explain the reason for his decision. But the coach also believed that he had made a real effort to connect with the player, something he felt had not been reciprocated. Pep never took that flight to Paris. That is what hurt Eto’o most: ‘As well as Guardiola and Laporta, many more people have disappointed me,’ he said.
Ibrahimović and Pep on a different wavelength
Ibrahimović had filled the gap left by Eto’o in Barcelona’s front line in a swap between Inter Milan and Barcelona. The Swedish star couldn’t have got off to a better start: he scored in the first five games he played. He also provided Guardiola with important alternatives. ‘Tactically, he is very good; physically strong, quick at getting away from defenders, and he plays well with his back to defenders. So he allows us to play with someone else with him,’ the coach pointed out in one of the first press conferences of the season.
The first half of the campaign was more than acceptable, but in the second half the Swede was less than effective. He gave the impression that he hardly knew his role in the club and he seemed to be getting in the way on the pitch, sometimes appearing to be yet another defender that Messi had to dribble past.
There were soon disagreements in which he showed his strong temperament, and further signs that a difficult season lay ahead. In a Barcelona–Mallorca league encounter (4-2), the referee gave a penalty for a foul on Ibra, who had had a fantastic game but hadn’t scored. Messi took it and scored. The Swede’s angry reaction was astonishing. ‘That penalty was mine!’ he shouted at the coach. There were more such incidents to follow.
Before playing Madrid in the league at the Camp Nou, Ibra suffered a muscle injury and his ultrasound scans were inconclusive in terms of his recovery. Pep didn’t want to take any risks. Zlatan was desperate to play in his first Clásico. ‘I will be fit for the game,’ he kept repeating. He was so tense that one day he went for Barça’s fitness coach Lorenzo Buenaventura and tried to grab him by the throat. The player had got wind of a rumour that Buenaventura was telling the player that he would be fit for the encounter, and Pep the opposite: ‘Don’t mess with me or I’ll rip your head off!’ Ibrahimović screamed. In the end, he didn’t start the match, but he came off the bench to score the winning goal.
The team continued channelling the ball to Messi during games and Ibrahimović didn’t understand what he had to do. There’s this public perception of the Swedish star, backed up by his revealing autobiography (I Am Zlatan) and his behaviour at times, of an arrogant self-opinionated young man who lacks humility. Yet the real Ibra is somewhat less black and white. Before Christmas, Ibrahimović wanted a discussion about his role and met Pep and director of football Txiki Beguiristain. ‘Both me and Messi would be a lot better with a bit of support from everyone else; but I don’t feel like anyone is trying to help me out here,’ he told them. ‘I need Xavi and Iniesta to pass to me, but it’s as if they can only see Messi ... and I’m twice the size of him!’
Pep thought he could have a word with the two midfielders, and address the situation. However, that would potentially mean taking the team in a direction that differed from the one he had envisaged.
Nevertheless, Guardiola tried to maintain harmony with Ibra in the squad.
Txiki Beguiristain found out that the player was becoming increasingly frustrated and, worse still, showing it in front of other players. He told Pep the next morning and that same afternoon Pep took Ibrahimović for lunch. The coach tried to explain what he wanted from him, how much the team needed him and vice versa. He asked Ibra not to give up trying.
But the Swedish player couldn’t help feeling misunderstood. For him, lunch with the coach was not enough. So there was a change after Christmas, and Pep noticed. The humble and responsive Ibra, trying hard to behave and be more like the ‘schoolboys’ – his slightly patronising term for Pep’s loyal home-grown students like Xavi and Iniesta. ‘This is not Zlatan, he is pretending. You just wait,’ people close to Pep were warning.
No, that was not him. During the Christmas holiday, as he confessed in his autobiography, he got ‘depressed’, even considering abandoning football because he was bewildered by the lack of understanding between himself and the coach. After the break, the player’s arrogance and inner tension began to emerge.
The New Year didn’t get off to a good start: Ibra turned up with burns on his face. The club found out that they were caused by the cold, riding his snowmobile without enough protection. A double breach of club rules that warranted a fine. Finally, everything changed, in February, when Pep moved Messi from the wing to the centre. Ibra thought Guardiola was asking the same of him as had been asked of Eto’o the previous season, and he was no Eto’o.
The striker suspected that it was Messi who was not pleased with him being the star during the first part of the season and that the little Argentinian had complained to Pep. On one occasion, according to the Swedish player, Messi sent a text message along those lines to Pep while the team was travelling back from a game. And if Ibrahimović feels you have hurt him or are against him, he will never forgive and forget.
The reality was, nobody wanted to listen to Ibra because the team was moving in another direction and meanwhile, using the words of the player, ‘the Ferrari that Barcelona had bought was being driven like a Fiat’. Often, Ibrahimović would start tactical discussions during training sessions and would no longer hide the fact that he didn’t accept many of the coach’s instructions.
Pep was beginning to lose patience, too close to that breaking point where there is no turning back, and sometimes he showed this openly, in front of his players. The relationship between player and coach turned sour and Zlatan started to see Pep as an enemy. ‘He should be careful with me. Perhaps in training I’ll lose control of my arm and give him a smack,’ he said at the time, and later wrote in his book: ‘I felt like crap when I was sitting in the locker room with Guardiola staring at me like I was an annoying distraction, an outsider. It was nuts. He was a wall, a stone wall. I didn’t get any sign of life from him and I was wishing myself away every moment with the team.’
The line had been crossed.
A cold war ensued, the coach and the player stopped speaking to one another and nothing motivated Ibrahimović. ‘Then Guardiola started his philosopher thing. I was barely listening. Why would I? It was advanced bullshit about blood, sweat and tears, that kind of stuff. I would walk into a room; he would leave. He would greet everyone by saying hello, but would ignore me. I had done a lot to adapt – the Barça players were like schoolboys, following the coach blindly, whereas I was used to asking “why should we?”’
‘Has he looked at you today?’ Thierry Henry used to ask him. ‘Nope, but I have seen his back,’ would answer Ibra. ‘Ah, it’s getting better between the two of you then ...’
At the beginning of April, Ibra had a mini revival as a player but then he got injured before the Real Madrid–Barça match at the Bernabéu. In that Clásico Messi successfully exploited the false nine position and scored the first of the two goals in the 0-2 win. That muscle injury made Ibra go into the final stretch of the season at a different pace from the rest, but Guardiola used him in the semi-final of the Champions League against Inter, a decision that was damaging for the player, the coach and the team. And one that Pep wouldn’t forgive himself for.
Ibra’s pitiful contribution in those two games was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After the 3-2 scoreline in the first leg, he co
nsidered leaving Ibrahimović on the bench for the second leg in the Camp Nou to free up that space so that Messi could move around freely. But Pep listened to his head, instead of his heart. Ibra started the match but his minimal involvement meant that he was substituted in the sixty-third minute. Barcelona were incapable of winning the tie and Guardiola decided that never again would he let his head rule his instincts. That turned out to be one of Ibra’s last games for Barcelona as Pedro and Bojan were selected ahead of him: players who were key to winning the second Liga title under Guardiola.
A few days after going out of the Champions League to Milan and after coming on as a substitute against Villarreal, Ibra lost it completely. In his biography he explains that he gave Pep a piece of his mind in the el Madrigal dressing room, and that, a prisoner of his own rage, he sent a three-metre-high locker crashing to the floor. ‘[Guardiola] was staring at me and I lost it. I thought “there he is, my enemy, scratching his bald head!”. I yelled to him: “You have no balls!” and probably worse things than that. I added: “You are shitting yourself because of José Mourinho. You can go to hell!” I was completely mad. I threw a box full of training gear across the room, it crashed to the floor and Pep said nothing, just put stuff back in the box. I’m not violent, but if I were Guardiola I would have been frightened.’
After the Champions League exit, Guardiola decided once again to change his number nine for the following season. In reality, Pep had to admit the Swede’s presence in the team delayed setting the scene for Messi’s role in the centre as a false number nine. Pep also knew he had betrayed himself in not sticking to his own ideas, not just in the game against Inter, perhaps the whole season. In order to adapt both the Argentinian and the Swedish players together, he had spent the season adjusting small details to try to rescue something from an unsalvageable situation: right up to the point of partly abandoning the path the team had started to follow the previous year. Ultimately, that campaign reinforced the conviction that everything had to go through Messi.
It was a difficult time for Guardiola. To sell a player who had been signed at huge cost to the club could and should be seen as a mistake. But it was a decision that had to be taken.
Pep’s second season in charge of the team was reaching its end and the moment arrived for Ibrahimović and Guardiola to have a frank and honest conversation. It finally arrived before the final league game. Pep called Ibra to his office. The atmosphere was very tense. Neither of them had spoken since the day the Swede exploded at Villarreal. Guardiola sat edgy, rocking in his office chair.
‘I don’t know what I want with you,’ he told Ibra. ‘It’s up to you and Mino [Mino Raiola, his representative] what will happen next. I mean, you’re Ibrahimović, you’re not a lad who plays one out of every three games, are you?’
The Swede didn’t say anything, he didn’t even move. But he understood the message perfectly: he was being asked to leave. Pep kept talking nervously:
‘I don’t know what I want with you. What do you have to say? What’s your opinion?’
‘Is that all? Thank you.’
Ibrahimović left the office without saying another word.
That was the last contact between player and coach that season.
After the summer holidays another chat took place. Surprisingly, having calmed down during the summer, Zlatan wanted another chance, failing to understand that bridges couldn’t be rebuilt and that another striker, David Villa, had been brought in to replace him. He had been convinced that he was part of one of the most admired clubs in the world. Worthwhile giving it a second go, then.
On the first day of pre-season, Ibra hadn’t even put his boots on when Pep called him to his office. Once again, the situation was uncomfortable. According to Ibrahimović, the conversation went like this:
Pep: How are you?
Ibra: Very well. Anxious.
P: You must be prepared to be on the bench.
I: I know. I understand.
P: As you’ll know, we have signed Villa.
I: Good, I’ll work even harder. I’ll work like an idiot to win a place in the team. I’ll convince you that I’m good enough.
P: I know, but how are we going to continue?
I: As I said, with hard work. I’ll play in any position that you tell me. Up front or behind Messi. Wherever. You decide.
P: But, how are we going to carry on?
I: I’ll play for Messi.
P: But, how are we going to carry on?
The striker didn’t think that it was a question of whether he was a good player or not: ‘It was something personal. Instead of telling me that he couldn’t handle my character, he tried to conceal it in that vague sentence. And so I decided: I will never play under Guardiola’s orders again.’
Ibrahimović didn’t understand anything that happened to him at Barcelona. Pep made a mistake in signing him because he underestimated his strong personality and his high self-esteem. If someone annoys Ibra, his reaction is intense and inescapable. If someone annoys Pep, the emotional connection disappears and he treats the player like just another professional, nothing more. That relationship could never go far.
When Pep was asking ‘How are we going to carry on?’ he was opening the door for Ibrahimović who would have preferred a more direct approach.
When his last-minute transfer to Milan was in the balance, Ibrahimović took one Camp Nou vice-president aside and warned: ‘If you make me stay I’ll wait till I’m together with the coach in front of the media and then I’ll punch him ... I’ll do it, I will!’ When Sandro Rosell became Barcelona president that summer, the first issue he had to deal with was the Swede’s exit. ‘I regret this situation,’ he told the president. ‘Which club would you like to go to?’ ‘To Madrid,’ Ibra replied. ‘It’s not possible. Anywhere apart from there,’ said Rosell.
This is how Ibrahimović describes the moment he signed for Milan. ‘Rosell, Galliani, Mino, my lawyer, Bartomeu and I were present. And then Sandro told me: “I want you to know that this is the worst bit of business I’ve ever done in my life.” To which I replied: “That’s the consequence of terrible leadership.”’
Ibrahimović had cost €66 million (Eto’o, who went the other way, was valued at €20 million and Inter paid the outstanding €46 million in instalments) and he moved to AC Milan, at first on loan and then in a permanent move the following season for €24 million. At Barcelona, Ibrahimović won four trophies, scoring twenty-one goals and making nine assists.
After his sale, the Swede didn’t hold anything back. ‘My problem at Barça was the philosopher. Pep thinks that he has invented Barça’s football ... Mourinho stimulates me, he is a winner; Guardiola isn’t perfect. I was at Barcelona, the best team in the world, but I wasn’t happy.’ And there was more: Ibra accused Guardiola of never having wanted to iron out their differences. ‘If you have a problem with me, it is up to you to solve it. You are the team leader, you are the team coach. You can’t get on well with twenty people and then, with the twenty-first, look the other way.’
Guardiola’s authority had been challenged, and also his vision for the team. The emotional distance between him and Ibrahimović made the decision to get rid of him a bit easier but it came at a cost. He had let himself down by not following his instincts, and he also felt that he had let Ibrahimović down by not getting the best out of him. He just hoped his choice to allow Messi to emerge as the main axis of the team would pay dividends.
Messi, the man-eater
For Messi, football is everything and everything is football. His happiest moments were when he was little playing on a makeshift pitch with thirty others, dribbling and weaving his way past them all. ‘I don’t know what would have become of me without football. I play in the same way as when I was a little boy. I go out there and I have fun, nothing more. If I could, I would play a match every day,’ Messi says.
There’s something incredibly child-like about Messi. He acts in the same way on and off the pitch, always dista
ncing himself from the cameras and the attention, and what you see is pretty much what you get. The club has allowed him to live as he would do at home back in Rosario, Argentina, with his family around him. Unlike others at Barcelona, he’s never been forced to speak Catalan or represent the club off the pitch more than is necessary. He doesn’t talk to journalists, nor does he have a manager whom he can ring directly; he’s not acting out his life as part of some carefully managed PR campaign. It’s all about what he does on the pitch.
At the World Club Cup in Tokyo, when Barcelona played against the Brazilian club Santos, Pep pointed something out to a friend of his, to illustrate the difference between a star and a professional. He told his friend to take a look at Neymar. The Brazilian had a special haircut for the final, he had bought a big fancy watch and had some Japanese inscription added to his boots. ‘Now, look at Messi. Best player in the world. Perhaps in history. But still just Messi.’
According to Pep: ‘Messi doesn’t compete to appear in magazines, attract girls or appear in adverts, but to win the match, the title, the personal challenge. He competes against the rival, against Cristiano Ronaldo, against Madrid, against Mourinho. Rain or shine, whether they foul him or not, basically he competes against himself to show that he is the best. He’s not interested in the rest of it. Our obligation is to give the boy the ball in the best conditions. The rest is a case of sitting down and watching how it turns out.’
The Argentinian, who will never be able to illuminate for us the secret to his success, doesn’t need to have things explained to him twice when talking about football, nor receive messages via the press, a trick that Pep quickly abandoned. He understood what Guardiola wanted from him and he applied that to his game. He’ll switch wings in order to help Barça gain superiority, he will hold back or he will almost disappear from the game only to reappear again by surprise. As Pep told the Argentinian coach Alejandro Sabella, ‘You don’t need to talk much to him, just protect him and listen to the very things he says. And don’t take him off, not even for an ovation.’ Unlike the foreign players who are signed as stars, he has grown up in La Masía, immersed in the culture of the club. ‘He can participate in the “musical theory” side of things, accompanying Xavi and Iniesta – and then finish off with an exceptional solo’, as Ramón Besa describes it. ‘He usually does what the move demands of him.’ He only does his fancy tricks to solve a problem.
Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography Page 25
