Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

by Balague, Guillem

  Before Euro 2012, del Bosque wanted to add to the voices that were saying farewell to Guardiola: ‘My regards to my colleague. It is impossible for anybody else to repeat what he did in four years. I am happy and proud that we have Spanish coaches with that much human quality. He has all my appreciation. His story is unique.’

  At the successful 2012 tournament in Poland and Ukraine, del Bosque applied solutions that were successful at Barcelona, including the false striker role that became the only tactical innovation of the summer competition. And it was effective, too, despite the criticisms. Spain had been facing similar problems to Barcelona: teams defended deep, closed down spaces and tried to prevent the ball circulating quickly. It was time, then, to reinvent themselves – when Spain played with no striker, the opposing centre backs did not know whom to defend. The maximum expression of that style was the wonderful final against Italy, that explosive 4-0 that killed off so many debates.

  An interesting conundrum would appear if Guardiola were offered the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of del Bosque in the future. As a player, he was once asked what national team he would choose, if he could, between Spain and Catalonia. ‘I played with Spain because at that time there was no possibility of doing it for Catalonia and because I was happy to join Spain and play as well as I could as the professional I was. I was ecstatic to be able to participate in World Cups and European Championships, and I wish I could have played more. But I was born in Catalonia and if possible I would have played for Catalonia; the question answers itself.’ Given the chance to coach Spain he would probably do it with the same passion he would coach Argentina or Qatar, the difference being that some of the players he will have under his orders are also Catalan or from FC Barcelona.

  Guardiola was voted best coach in the world in 2011 by FIFA. ‘But don’t let him deceive you, he never thought all this would arrive so suddenly, so quickly,’ his friend Estiarte jokes. When he received the trophy, Pep wanted to share the moment with the other two candidates, Alex Ferguson and José Mourinho. ‘It is an honour to be your colleague,’ he said. That was the day Sir Alex was asked if Pep could replace him at Manchester United: ‘Why? If I was in his place, I would stay at Barça.’

  The trophy recognised the titles but also left a question hanging. What he had done at his club: was it revolution or evolution? Changing an answer is evolution; replacing the question is revolution. Guardiola didn’t start from scratch, but has evolved the style by reinforcing the idea and introducing subtle and not so subtle variations. And he did so in the middle of a successful era, which is a brave thing to do. ‘He gave the team a touch more of intensity, virtue, effective. He used extremely well a great generation of players,’ adds Rafa Benítez.

  But Guardiola also replaced the question with a touch of boldness and imagination – no striker, sometimes defending with two, no pre-match hotel stays, moving to the new training ground, training behind closed doors, travelling the same day, analysis of players’ diets and rearranging meal times and places and so on and so forth.

  Never before have the ideas of one individual had so much influence at FC Barcelona. Pep was more than Messi, more than the president. The challenge for the Catalan club had always been to convert their irregular access to success into a methodology that guaranteed its continuity. Not only the continuity of success – that can often depend on things beyond your control – but mostly of the integral working of the club.

  And with Guardiola the club became stronger. He converted an idea into method and planning, always with a flexible point of view, always based upon the central philosophy: as he repeated hundreds of times in the corridors of the Camp Nou, of the training ground at Sant Joan Despí, ‘if we have doubts, we attack, we get the ball and we attack.’ He knew better than anybody that he didn’t know everything about modern football, so he showed the need for a powerful group of specialists who helped deconstruct the complex puzzle of this game. Another legacy: the many pairs of eyes.

  Under Pep, football became entertaining for his players, too. Every job, when it becomes professional, loses the essential amateur feeling, the ludic sense that every occupation should have. His footballers, though, enjoyed playing as they used to as kids. Pep reminded them that the person who thinks ‘I am going for a few hours of training and that is it’ will fall much earlier than those who enjoy what they are doing. ‘Being amateurs at their job is what makes them special,’ Pep says. But it was he who made them fall in love with football again, helped them create that Corinthian spirit.

  On one occasion, English midfielder Jack Wilshere revealed that the former England coach Fabio Capello had prepared a special video session: ‘We paid attention to Barça and how they put pressure on.’ Similar videos have been viewed in dressing rooms of Championship teams, and other of Leagues One and Two, and clubs of first and second and third divisions everywhere.

  That is the big inheritance Pep has left us with. But there are small legacies, too.

  At the beginning of the press conference at Stamford Bridge prior to the first leg of the semi-finals against Roberto di Matteo’s Chelsea, a translator asked Guardiola if he could have a minute with him at the end of the media proceedings. When all the questions had been answered, this slipped his mind and Pep hurriedly left the press room. The translator, a young Spaniard living in London, ran after him: ‘Can I have a minute with you?’ ‘Ah, yes, sorry, forgot.’

  ‘I am a coach here at Chelsea, Pep.’ And Guardiola listened to him for a minute, two or three even, looking into his eyes, attentively. ‘I understand now why you translated so well the tactical concepts,’ Pep told him. That minute will last a lifetime for the young trainer.

  The value of a minute, of a gesture.

  Guardiola mixed, as Mascherano said that night, work with feelings. He wanted to transfer the indescribable pleasure of caressing the ball. Outside Catalonia, Guardiola was seen as someone who breathed life back into a game that had become stagnant and soulless.

  In his last day in his office at the Camp Nou, Pep Guardiola gathered up a bunch of personal objects he had been accumulating over four years. It is the place where, on so many occasions, that magic moment appeared before him, where so many videos have been watched. Where he studied the words he would utter to the press.

  The laptop, books, CDs, photos of Maria, Màrius, Valentina, Cristina, all placed in cardboard boxes. Should he leave behind the wooden table lamp, the paper one by the sofa, the rug?

  As the last item went in the box, a thought. ‘We have made many people happy.’

  And a memory: his son Màrius repeating his gestures in the technical area on the day of the Camp Nou farewell, when all the spectators were on their way home and Pep was watching him from the bench – an arm outstretched, the hands on his little face, shouting unintelligible orders to create an imaginary attack, celebrating with similar eloquence a fantasy goal. If your son is going to copy anybody in football – and he will – Pep Guardiola is not a bad place to start.

  ‘It was a real privilege to be under your orders. And that is so absolutely true’ – Andrés Iniesta.

  Part IV

  APPENDICES: Pep Guardiola for Beginners

  Appendix 1

  LA MASÍA

  The modern FC Barcelona with an idea, a philosophy, a way of playing, a particular type of footballer, started as far back as the mid-seventies.

  In 1974 Laureano Ruíz became general coordinator for youth football and one of the first things he did was to tear down a notice next to the entrance of his new office that read: ‘If you are coming to offer me a youngster who measures less than 1.80 metres, you can take him back.’

  ‘Laureano prioritised the technical quality of a footballer, reaction times and, above other factors, intelligence, to learn and understand the game,’ explains Martí Perarnau, former Olympic highjumper, journalist and now the leading analyst of the Barcelona youth system. ‘He wanted players who controlled the ball with their first touch, who had quick
feet, who retained the ball and created superiority from individual technique and group work. He said that if you pass the ball well, you receive it well and have good control; then you have far more possibilities. He stood against the established rules, which emphasised tall and strong players even if they were clumsy. Winning one battle after another, he steadily planted the first seeds of that philosophy in the club.’

  The training sessions were based on the use of the ball and not on the physical exercises and continuous running that were fashionable at that time. When asked why Laureano’s kids ran so little, he would explain, ‘If we spend all our time running, when will they learn to play with the ball?’ After all, footballers never run constantly in a game, do they? They do short sprints, stop, change direction, long sprints … Emphasis on physical exercise alone isn’t necessary; it should be incorporated into training and practice with the ball.

  In Perarnau’s fascinating book The Champions Path, Laureano explains how he introduced the drills known as ‘rondos’ (a form of piggy-in-the-middle, also known as Toros) that would encapsulate and instil the essence of a club philosophy still practised by the kids at La Masía endlessly, even today: ‘No one else did it in Spain, it was the fruit of hours and hours of reflecting about football. I started with 3 against 2. I saw that way two of the three moved wide and there was always one free. I thought, why not do 4 against 2? Or 9 against 3?’

  The Barça of the 1970s had an English trainer, Vic Buckingham, who asked the president Agustí Montal to close the academy and invest the money in buying top-class players for the first team. Thankfully, Montal refused, so Laureano Ruíz persisted with the idea of organising and establishing a unique style of play and a common methodology throughout the club.

  When Johan Cruyff said, just after becoming manager of Barcelona in 1988, ‘This is what we are going to do: the ball will be the starting point, I want to dominate possession and I will always go out to win, which means it forces my players to conquer the ball, to have it and not lose possession of it’, it sounded familiar to those at La Masía because they had heard Laureano saying similar things twenty-six years earlier. Despite the fact that all big clubs are under pressure to win and prioritise the short-term goals over long-term gain, those ideas didn’t fall on deaf ears.

  Cruyff had become synonymous with ‘Total Football’, the playing style honed by Ajax coach Rinus Michels, who also went on to coach Johan at Barcelona. It is a system whereby a player who moves out of his position is replaced by another, thus allowing the team to retain their intended organisational structure. In this fluid system, no footballer is fixed in his intended outfield role; anyone can move seamlessly between playing as an attacker, a midfielder and a defender all in the same game. As a player, Cruyff quickly won over the Barça fans when he told the European press that he had chosen Barça over Real Madrid because he could not play for a club associated with the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. He further endeared himself when he chose a Catalan name, Jordi, for his son. And in 1974, just to seal the deal, Cruyff helped the club win La Liga for the first time in fourteen years, defeating Real Madrid along the way in an historic 5–0 victory at the Bernabéu that is still remembered as one of Barcelona’s best ever performances. Needless to say, he had enough credit and charisma to ensure there was little resistance to his Total Football vision when he landed the job of manager in 1988.

  ‘The biggest problem was the Catalan character and when you try to do something new, they always have doubts: they prefer to wait and see how it goes,’ says Johan Cruyff who today understands better than most the conservative and pessimistic mentality of the Catalans. He also knew that once they were convinced (by the team’s continuity and success) those same people would also become the most loyal disciples of his ideas.

  Cruyff introduced some passing drills into Barça’s ‘arterial’ system. And since then, the rondos have been not just a method but a symbol of the club’s playing style: of dominating possession and never losing the ball. Cruyff blended several ideas and concepts and converted them into a philosophy – the seeds of which were planted throughout a club in urgent need of a footballing identity. Until then, the first team of Barcelona had been comfortably living in a world of excuses and enemies, content with their role as victims when faced with Real Madrid, an institution seen from Catalonia as the club of the Establishment.

  Xavi Hernández describes the style in its purest form: ‘I pass the ball and move, or I pass the ball and stay where I am. I make myself available to help you; I look at you, I stop, I keep my head up and look, and, above all, I open up the pitch. Whoever has the ball is running play. That comes from the school of Johan Cruyff and Pep Guardiola. This is Barça.’ Or, as Pep Guardiola put it succinctly in a press conference after one of the impressive victories against Real Madrid: ‘I have the ball, I pass the ball; I have the ball, I pass the ball. We have the ball, we pass the ball.’ T-shirts bearing that slogan can be seen in the streets of Barcelona.

  Having the ball required technical ability, being able to control it quickly and place it well (the difference between a good and bad footballer, according to Cruyff, is how well you control the ball and where you place it with your first touch, accommodating it for yourself in the right direction or sending it accurately to your team-mate). It needed players who were able to be in the best positions to receive the ball, capable of constantly assisting, of one-twos, of keeping their heads up, of looking for the next pass before receiving, of anticipating play. But, more importantly, they had to be footballers capable of understanding the game. If they had a brain, Cruyff was able to explain to them not just how but why things were done. From the moment the Dutch coach had an influence on the work and methods of the academy, there was a definitive change in the selection process of young players.

  ‘Why do we open up the field?’ Cruyff would explain. ‘Because if we have the ball and we are open, it is more difficult for the opponent to defend.’ Or: ‘People criticised me because I played with three at the back, but those criticisms were really ridiculous: what we did was fill the zones on the field where the game required it. If the opponent played with two up front, which was common then, and my team went out with four defenders, I had one too many, so I moved him forward towards the midfield.’ Or even: ‘There are people that say it is very dangerous to have a corner against you. I think that the solution is not to give the corner away.’ Sublime common sense.

  Cruyff demanded changes at the academy and La Masía began regularly producing the players he wanted as well as providing the kids with a sound education, dual ambitions of the Dutch coach and the club. ‘The player who has come through La Masía has something different from the rest, it’s a plus that only comes from having competed in a Barcelona shirt from the time you were a child,’ says Guardiola. He is talking not only about the understanding of the game and their ability, but about human qualities. The players who go through La Masía are taught to behave with civility and humility. The theory being that, not only is it pleasant to be unassuming, but also if you are humble, you are capable of learning – and the capacity to learn is the capacity to improve. If you aren’t capable of learning you won’t improve.

  Since his arrival, Johan had tried and succeeded in convincing the club to train all the junior teams in the same way as the first eleven – and to favour talent over physique. Naturally, there were remnants of the traditional way of perceiving youth football and occasionally old habits persisted: ‘Little by little’ – said Cruyff – ‘we tried to change things. In the junior categories we wanted to mould the player. You must know what his strengths and weaknesses are, work on them and correct them. Depending on how you progress, you could start your time at the club playing in one position and end up in another. The most important thing is being prepared to make the jump, understanding the game. Halfway through this process that was transforming the club, Pep appeared before us.’ Cruyff called him up to the first team.

  Pep, Xavi, Puyol and
Messi: they all know there is a reputation to live up to, an extremely high standard of expectations to meet and an institution, a nation even, that they represent. And from the moment they walk through those doors, even the very youngest players are constantly reminded of that. When they travel to another city, when they are taken for dinner, when they go for a walk as a group, the kids are told to be respectful and have good manners every single day. Guardiola summed up those principles for the B team players when he delivered his introductory speech at the Mini Estadi: ‘I like to win. I like to train, but above all, I want to teach people to compete representing universal values: values based on respect and education. Giving everything while competing with dignity is a victory, whatever the scoreline suggests.’

  Appendix 2

  THE STATS

  Four wonderful years in which FC Barcelona has become a reference point for world football: 3 Liga titles, 2 Champions League, 2 Copa del Rey, 3 Spanish Super Cup, 2 European Super Cup and 2 World Club Championships are testament to one of the greatest football teams of all time.

  2008–9 Season: Liga, Copa and Champions League