And if things got complicated, he would always step up to the challenge. You simply have to be clever in the way you ask things of him. So Pep would sometimes tell the players just before a game: ‘You should know that Leo is going to pressurise high up and will commit himself to the cause every time we decide to press.’ Indirectly, Leo, that is your order. While manager of Swansea, Brendan Rodgers said, ‘Leo Messi has made it very difficult for footballers who think they are good players. If you have someone like him doing the pressure without the ball, then I’m sure my friend Nathan Dyer can do it. It is an easy sell.’
Messi has a certain freedom in attack, yet he is well aware of his responsibilities in defence. If he is distracted, the midfielders remind him of that, because the great success of teamwork is having shared responsibilities. The Argentinian knows that he can miss one or two defensive movements, but not a third. In one game against Arsenal, Xavi and Iniesta, who generally act as his guardians, had to tell him off for disappearing from the game, for not tracking back, overshadowed by Ibrahimović who had scored twice and was playing as a centre forward.
From day one, Guardiola took an holistic approach, overseeing every level of his team’s preparation: physical, medical and dietary. And when he discovered that Argentinian beef – arguably the best there is – formed the basis of Messi’s diet, the player having never eaten fish, the coach insisted that a special diet was drawn up for him, banning cola, popcorn, pizza, and – Messi’s favourite – conguitos (chocolate peanuts).
The effort to understand and accommodate Messi is justified not only because of his talent, but primarily because of his behaviour; his commitment. Leo works his socks off in every training session; his team-mates see that. He has never said: ‘I am Messi, you have to do this for me.’ He generally recognises that there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’. For that reason, there were occasions when Guardiola gave Messi permission to go on holiday earlier than the rest of the squad or allowed him to return later. The logic was straightforward: he was often asked to do more than anybody else and frequently Messi played more. And scored more, and won more games.
During the process of determining Messi’s ideal partner in attack, Guardiola had made some big decisions but he did also have some footballing doubts: where did he want to take the team? Barcelona was experiencing unprecedented success but Pep had changed his footballing criteria from one year to the next and he needed to find, once again, the right path after deciding that Eto’o and Ibrahimović were not the right options.
Upon his arrival, Pep decided to play with a ‘punta’, someone like Eto’o: a quick and incisive, highly mobile striker who is always looking to make runs behind the defenders. Then he realised that that type of play, with small midfielders and Eto’o, created problems in terms of aerial defending. With Ibrahimović’s arrival another system was established with different possibilities: a more fixed forward who allowed long-ball play, depth, arriving up front from the second line. But that new idea disappeared after just one year and a third way was established. Or was it the first? He went from having the space of the forward occupied to having it free; no one would be a fixed number nine. Messi would appear there whenever he thought it convenient.
It had been seen before, that ‘false striker’ role, as Alfredo Relaño recalled in a memorable editorial in AS newspaper: ‘From Sinclair’s Wunderteam to Messi and Laudrup’s Barça, not forgetting Pedernera’s River Plate, Hidegkuti’s Hungary, Di Stéfano’s Madrid, Tostao’s Brasil, Cruyff’s Ajax.’
Those changes up front could have caused doubts, but the quality of the squad and a style that combined possession and defined positional play allowed the team to win titles while a way of attacking was being mulled over. The formula was reinvented following Ibra’s departure and the arrival of David Villa. With Messi as a false nine – and Villa as a left winger. The result and the success were instant: Leo went from winning the Ballon d’Or to the Golden Boot. He proved himself to be an extraordinary goalscorer, a unique passer of the ball and a player who could open up defences when necessary: he scored in six of the eight finals he played in under Guardiola.
Pep explains what his role was in the process: ‘Messi is unique and a one-off. We have to hope that he doesn’t get bored, that the club can give him the players so that he can continue feeling comfortable because when he is, he doesn’t fail. When he doesn’t play well it is because something in his environment isn’t working, you must try and make sure that he maintains the calmness that he has in his personal life and hope that the club is intelligent enough to sign the right players to surround him.’ And that is one of the main reasons why FC Barcelona awarded José Manuel Pinto, Messi’s best friend in the Barcelona dressing room, a new contract.
Of course, there is a lot more to it than making Messi comfortable. If the great teams in history are measured in the crucial moments, Barcelona were going to become one of the most reliable ever. The team was not only stylish, but competitive in the extreme – their players were insatiable, little despots. As Pep would say, they are easy to manage because that attitude is the foundation for everything. Among all of them, Messi symbolises that spirit better than anyone – an icon of world football but one who still cries after a defeat.
Messi’s hunger to succeed brought him to tears in the dressing room in Seville when Barcelona were eliminated in the last-sixteen round of the Copa del Rey in 2010. It was the third highest priority of the campaign and, in Pep’s era that was in its second year, the first trophy that Barcelona would fail to win. Messi played spectacularly and could have scored a hat-trick if it hadn’t been for Palop’s sensational performance in goal for the opposition.
After the final whistle, the Argentinian could not hold back; he sat on the floor hidden away from the world and started to cry like a little boy, the way he did in private, in his house, during his first months at the club, when he felt alone, small and was suffering growing pains and the side effects of the growth hormones with which he was being injected.
As Guardiola soon came to understand, there is nothing in life that the Argentinian enjoys more than playing football (perhaps his daily siestas come close); why take that away from him by making him rest? He didn’t need to take Messi out for a meal; their relationship was based on the field of play, on the matches and training sessions. They communicated through gestures and silences, hugs and brief talks. Sometimes just an ‘Everything OK?’ and a thumbs-up and a smile in response was all it took.
But the best footballer on the planet has the odd frustrating moment that Pep knows all too well. There are many times when Leo is on top form out on the pitch, but others when he struggles to score – and the first thing Pep used to do when he saw that Leo wasn’t functioning at 100 per cent was to have a good look at him after the game. If the player’s head had dropped, he focused on picking him back up.
Those frustrating games bring a moody Messi. He’ll stare at the ground in silence, unsmiling, sulky. Under that angelic, innocent exterior there is a predator; behind his ambition and record-breaking feats, there is also a child. And children are often unable to hide their feelings.
On one occasion, Messi took to the training pitch with a teaspoon in his mouth and kept it there throughout much of the session. He normally has a coffee or yerba maté (an Argentinian herbal drink) before training and has a habit of sucking on the spoon until he reaches the pitch, throwing it away before starting his exercises. That day he chewed on it while they warmed up doing a piggy-in-the-middle drill. His behaviour in training coincided with him having been subbed in the match the night before. On other occasions where he was rested or substituted, he wouldn’t talk to his manager for days.
When Ibra received the plaudits during his first few months at the club, Messi spoke with Pep and said either he played as a number nine or he didn’t play at all. ‘And what am I supposed to do with Ibrahimović?’ said Pep. Messi was adamant: ‘I play here, or I don’t play at all; stick the others out on the wing.’
At the end of the 2010–11 season, Barcelona drew 0-0 in the Camp Nou against Deportivo, but, with the Liga title in the bag, the celebrations started at the end of the game. Messi had been named as a substitute but hadn’t played a single minute, with a Champions League final against Manchester United looming; he wanted to distance himself from the celebrations of a Liga title that belonged to him almost more than anyone else. He had found out that two goals from Ronaldo in Real Madrid’s encounter with Villarreal had almost put him out of the race for the Pichichi and he wanted to go home. Juanjo Brau, the team physio, had to go and get him, but by then the official team photo had been taken without him. Upon his return, the photo was retaken.
In Pep’s last year, Messi gave his worst performance, coming from the bench against Real Sociedad for the last half-hour. The next day he didn’t turn up to training and he didn’t get over his anger at being left out until the next game: since that encounter, at the start of September, Messi played every minute of the season. If you take football away from him, you’re removing his life’s motivation. You just leave him with eating and sleeping.
Had Guardiola created a monster in Messi? The Argentinian had absolute power in the coach’s final season, and his behaviour was sometimes out of place. He would get annoyed if young players such as Cuenca (‘Lift your head up!’ Messi once shouted at him against Granada) or Tello (‘Cross!’ he shouted at him against Milan, when he went for goal, looking for Abbiati’s near side) didn’t pass him the ball. Even David Villa wasn’t forgiven for having shots at goal if he had the option of passing to Messi.
Like all forwards, this shrewd and determined individual wanted to keep his place and he fought for it.
‘Messi learnt to make choices depending on the requirements of each game,’ Argentinian César Luis Menotti stresses, and he is right. But his influence went far beyond the pitch: the club asked Messi’s circle what they would think if Barcelona signed Neymar. Messi knows the young star through Dani Alvés and the three have played online football on PlayStation. The club got the answer it was looking for: ‘Go ahead, sign him.’
Did Pep feel that he had given Messi too much power? When he spoke about leaving the club so as not to ‘hurt each other’, many interpreted that as a reference to, among other players, Messi. Would staying mean for Pep readdressing the balance of power somehow and avoiding one player scoring seventy-three goals and the rest evading responsibility?
There is an argument to be made that Pep Guardiola started his coaching career at Barcelona developing the team’s collective play but that in his last season he gave in to individual quality. It is something that all managers do because the footballers are ultimately the ones who decide games and especially if the individual in question is Messi.
Getting the right balance between an exceptional player and the team ethic is very difficult and yet Pep somehow managed it for the majority of his time as a coach. But was it necessary for Pep to say so clearly and so often that Messi was special? Was that the start of something that would eventually culminate in Guardiola leaving the club, conscious of the imbalance that had been created? The coach is the equilibrium. And if he gives in to a player, according to the unwritten rules of football the scales need to be realigned.
Other victims of Messi
Fernando Parrado was one of the sixteen survivors of an event known as the ‘Andes Tragedy’. In October 1972, a squad of Uruguayan rugby players was flying from Montevideo to Santiago de Chile when they crashed in the snow-bound Andes. The survivors, in a story dramatised in the Hollywood movie Alive, waited seventy-two days to be rescued. Low on food, with friends dying around them and the feeling that there was no hope, they eventually cannibalised the bodies of the dead in order to stay alive. Parrado crossed the Andes with his friend Roberto for ten days in search of help, traipsing through deep snow wearing a pair of training shoes. In Guardiola’s last year in charge, Fernando gave a motivational talk to the whole Barcelona squad.
‘It helped us realise that awful things happen that can destroy anyone, but there are people who rebel against it and fight for their lives,’ Gerard Piqué commented on the talk. Later, Parrado gave an account of his impression of the Barcelona players on Uruguayan television. ‘They’re sensitive young men, they were like an amateur team. And Guardiola told me that if there is a hint of disharmony within the group he removes it, as he did with Eto’o and Ibrahimović, who wanted to be stars in a team where no one feels a star.’
In Pep’s first season in charge, Barcelona had missed a clear opportunity on goal in a key moment during a crucial game – the coach doesn’t want to remember which game nor who had the chance. But immediately after the miss he turned around to look at the bench. Some footballers had leapt from it in anticipation of the ball nestling in the back of the net, while others neither moved nor reacted. Pep is guided by many details such as this to understand the thinking of his group, and this one probably stayed in his memory. It ended up being more than an anecdote. The following summer all the players who had failed to react had left the club.
At the start of Pep’s fourth season in charge of the first team, another striker had to move on. It wasn’t David Villa, signed to replace Ibrahimović and with whom Guardiola was very publicly delighted. It was Bojan, the amicable, baby-faced and shy-looking boy, who won the hearts of everyone after debuting in Rijkaard’s team at just seventeen when he was heralded as one of the most promising players to come out of La Masía.
Bojan was hardly given a chance to shine under Pep and a loan move to AS Roma followed. The youngster was clearly upset at not being able to triumph at his boyhood club, but he was even more hurt by how Guardiola managed his departure. ‘I didn’t say goodbye to Pep, only those who treated me well,’ he said shortly after leaving. ‘The relationship with Pep wasn’t a very good one.’
Those words troubled Catalan commentators. The Barcelona sports daily El Mundo Deportivo wrote, ‘When Pep comes down to earth, walking on the same ground as we mere mortals, he puzzles us. This is what Bojan’s comments have done: revealing a side to our coach that we didn’t want to discover. The tale from our young player from Linyola has shown us a cold, unflappable manager, protected by an enigmatic and impeccable image, capable of keeping complete control of his feelings.’
At the heart of that debate lay the persona of Pep, untouchable, almost mystical, for the Barcelona fans and media, a persona challenged by a former player, with emotive words that came straight from the heart. ‘If Pep were to phone me asking me to return, I would tell him no,’ said Bojan, in an emotional television interview made on his departure. ‘It would be difficult for me to trust him. I’m not saying that our paths won’t cross again, but if he phoned me I would tell him no. I’ve not had a good time. It wouldn’t be a good idea to be under his orders again.’
Bojan had left ‘primarily because I wasn’t playing’ and ‘I wasn’t happy’, but also because of ‘the way [I] was treated’ by Pep. ‘Not playing is one thing, but another is not feeling part of the group; I felt that whatever I did, he didn’t see it,’ Bojan said, touched by a painful sadness, powerless and resigned. ‘My parents, my friends, my girlfriend, they all told me: “Speak to him” but the words just didn’t come out. Perhaps because I was thinking: “Whatever you do, very little is going to change ...”’
The emotion was visible in the boy’s eyes. Distressed, he confessed that in the last stage of the season he ‘wasn’t psychologically well’, he ‘had no desire to train’ in a successful team. ‘I didn’t feel loved by my team-mates and a large section of the public.’ It all came to a head in the Champions League final at Wembley. ‘There I saw that I had no role to play and that I had put up with not playing for a long time.’ He gave himself some hope to take part in the final for a few minutes, since he saw that ‘we were winning 3-1, Manchester couldn’t do anything and there was still a substitute left’. But Pep preferred to reward Afellay.
After that he didn’t even spea
k to his manager. ‘I didn’t think there was anything to say, and I still think that. He didn’t approach me either.’ Nor did he do so before going to AS Roma. ‘I said bye to the people that treated me well, [between Pep and me] there was no farewell, neither on my behalf nor on his. Nor were there phone calls during the summer.’ It was that raw. ‘I always say that Pep is the best trainer there is. But I have been unfortunate to not form part of his plans and to receive that treatment from him as a player.’
Nobody has the God-given right to play for Barcelona, not even those who come from the lower ranks. So perhaps Guardiola should have been clearer. Bojan’s difficult period at AS Roma, where he never managed to have a good run of games, suggested that it was his limitations and not a personal caprice of the manager, that stopped his career at Barcelona.
The problem with all the strikers was clear: Messi was devouring them. But in the process of improving the team, while its identity was being established other players fell by the wayside. The Belarusian Alexander Hleb was another to find himself on the outside looking in and he also believes that, in the end, things could have been handled better. ‘The important meetings to decide any weighty issues were made up solely of home-grown players. Guardiola was a very young coach and in some ways his lack of experience was noticeable in some situations,’ he explained. ‘For example, Arsène Wenger is someone who always tries to establish very close contact with each and every one of his players. I mean that when a coach talks to you and looks you directly in the eyes, it really improves the player’s perception of the coach. So you listen to him and you say to yourself, “OK, he’s right. I need to work on this for myself, I need to give more.”’
Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography Page 26
