Pep Confidential (52 page)

MP: ‘But when your attacks end with ranks of banked defenders in front of them and the goal won’t come, what should the team do: shoot more, cross better? What are the solutions when you are blocked off?’

PL: ‘We have to be completely focused because every pass matters. The quicker the ball moves, the less time the opposition have on the ball, the better your chance of breaking them down and of course your precision of movement is important to leave space for your team-mates to help break down the defence. What’s decisive is when the team reaches the final third of the pitch, near the opposition goal. It’s important how you organise and use the little space that’s available. You need players who understand that, who are extremely good technically and who always want to have the ball.’

And so, I give you Højbjerg and Lahm, the symbols of Pep’s philosophy, the 18-year-old midfielder who has played the DFB-Pokal final at full-back and the 30-year-old full-back who has become the undisputed midfielder of the season.

EPILOGUE

A LAST WORD FROM PEP

Munich, May 20, 2014

BY THE TIME you read this book, season 2014-2015 will be well underway and Bayern will have competed in their first competition of the new footballing year – the German Super Cup. Once again the Westfalen Stadion will have been the setting for the start of this new phase of the club’s endless cycle of competition; Guardiola battling the same opponent with whom he started and ended his first season: Jürgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund.

In Pep’s first season Bayern played 56 official matches, resulting in 44 wins, 6 draws and 6 defeats. In other words, 78.5% of their games ended in victory, a figure which becomes 85.3% in Bundesliga fixtures. They scored 150 goals (an average of 2.67 per game) and conceded 44 (0.78 per game).

From set plays, Bayern scored 28 goals (14 corners, nine indirect free-kicks and five direct free-kicks). From the same situations they conceded eight (five from corners, including ‘second ball’ and own-goals, one from an indirect free-kick and two direct). They also played 14 friendlies as well as having completed 279 training sessions in the 326 days between June 26, 2013 and May 17, 2014. In this time they had had two weeks’ holiday, which effectively meant that they completed their 349 sessions (70 matches plus 279 training sessions) in 312 days.

Most of the players had also played an average of eight games with their national teams in preparation for the World Cup. Technical development and practice was a central element in all 279 sessions and these were divided into: heavily tactical; demonstrably physically based and aimed at quantity [such as strength and resistance, or stamina]; physical but aimed more at quality of a specific component, like explosive force; preventative – focused on mobility and stretching; the remaining number were specific sessions where the squad was broken down into separate groups for a variety of reasons.

Nine players stand out for their consistent appearances across the 39 weeks of competition, of which there were only six without a midweek match. The list of players who exceeded 4000 minutes – or a figure close to that – and took part in at least 90% of training, includes: Neuer, Lahm, Boateng, Dante, Alaba, Kroos, Müller, Mandžukić and Robben. Müller is the player who missed fewest sessions through injury (just two days), followed by Alaba (three days) and Kroos (four days).

Statistics aside, several key developments epitomise Guardiola’s first year: Pep’s process of adaptation to German football and the Bayern players; the epidemic of injuries; his teaching of the basic concepts related to positional play (Bayern’s new language); outstandingly competitive performances in all tournaments and better results than expected.

At the end of the season, a new list of priorities were being compiled: the need to evolve in tactical terms so as to avoid becoming stuck with out-of-date formulae; the importance of new players learning to speak the language of the game more fluently; the renovation and management of a group of footballers who had been at the elite levels of European football for five years and the laying of the foundations for another successful campaign.

But the last word surely belongs to Guardiola himself, and we get together for a chat in his office on Tuesday, May 20. His players pop in from time to time to say goodbye. Some of them are off to the World Cup whilst others, like Thiago, Neuer and Lahm, are still working with the physios. Pep played golf with Cristina on Monday, but today he is right on time for our appointment. The report on the Borussia Dortmund game is still lying on his desk and there on the whiteboard I can see the scribbled plans for their 3-6-1 in Berlin, Maria’s sweet message and two phrases written in green. One is a quote from the film, Moneyball: ‘I know that they’re giving you a hard time. But the first one through the wall always gets bloody. Always.’

The other is a quote from Pep himself: ‘Ego is the source of the majority of a team’s problems.’

MP: ‘Pep, what is your analysis of your first year? You’ve experienced success, defeat, drama and joy. Are you happy here?’

PG: ‘I’ll need a bit more time to be absolutely sure that the team is mine [he says this after a pause which at the time seemed to go on forever, but which in fact lasted only eight seconds]. We’ve won a lot and everyone is delighted because winning titles buys you the time you need to start building the future. But real satisfaction comes when you start to feel that the team is really yours and is playing the kind of football you want. That’s why I need more time. The team isn’t completely mine yet. Am I going to get that time? Truly great teams need to keep winning, but if I get the time I need, we can really plan where we want to go. I’m trying to implement something that flies in the face of the culture here. I’m from Santpedor and the players are from Munich, Greifswald, Rosenheim or Gelsenkirchen, so I have to convince them. And there has to be a mix of give and take. I can’t and wouldn’t want to try to persuade Beckenbauer to my way of thinking and neither would he be able to convince me. So we have to meet somewhere in the middle. It has been a clash of cultures which has taken place immediately after winning the treble and with the same basic group of players. If you win a treble and then seven new guys join the team, it’s easier to change the way you play. But that’s not what happened here. When I joined Barça there were eight new players in the team and the club had just had a disastrous season. Bayern were fresh from an outstanding season and there were only two new players [Thiago and Götze]. That’s just the reality of the situation, but it hasn’t been an easy situation to manage.’

MP: ‘Have you felt disorientated at times?’

PG: ‘It has certainly been challenging. At Barça I was in charge of revitalising a team which had lost the league by 18 points. Here I came in just after they won the treble. That’s a huge difference. But each time I have managed to get the right results which, at the end of the day, is the litmus test for any president or director general. In that sense this year has been a success – four out of six possible trophies. We lost the Champions League, but it was the way we lost that left the bitter taste in our mouths, not the fact that we went out in the semi-finals, which was completely logical. There is no justification for the way we lost to Madrid. I just need to hold up my hands and accept it. But I did well otherwise. I had come to a new country to take charge of the treble winners, with only two new players, and all of it in a new language. That bit was tricky because it’s one thing to be able to express yourself, but it’s quite another to do it well enough so that you really communicate with the players, make them grasp fully what you are saying. You need a really good vocabulary for that and mine isn’t quite there yet. If you can imagine, just a year ago if someone had said Guten Abend to me I would have had no idea what it meant. I wouldn’t have known if they were talking about night or day. But it’s not easy to improve your vocabulary quickly enough so that you are sure you can reach the players.’

MP: ‘Succeeding Heynckes was a huge challenge.’

PG: ‘Yes, but many of our wins were thanks to Jupp’s work last year, and to the team’s competitive attitude. They saw themselves as winners. That’s why it was so important to win the Cup and the league. It really boosted the players’ confidence. They saw that they could keep winning after having won everything already. If we had lost the Cup, the following months might have been much harder. I was in charge of Barcelona, too, just after they had won the treble, but they had done it with me on the bench and here I was taking over from Jupp. It’s definitely been a challenge, but I wanted to test myself by coming to a different country, where I’d have to learn a new language and take on another coach’s super-successful team. I knew it would be difficult. I’ve won four titles this season, but for me that’s not the most important thing. The crucial thing is to create something that is genuinely mine in terms of playing style, like we did for the Telekom Cup last summer, in the City game and in Leverkusen against Bayer.’

MP: ‘Surely anything you do away from Barcelona will be a clash of cultures?’

PG: ‘That’s true because I am a fan of positional play, hemming the other team in their penalty box and not letting them leave it. Very few teams play like that. Barça do, as does Paco Jémez [the Rayo Vallecano coach] but almost nobody else. Most teams prefer to wait for the chance to counter-attack. Positional attacking is also very difficult because your players need a large dose of humility. It means essentially that an individual player has to realise that he might not be in the heat of the action for a while but he is still helping the team by what he is doing. But when he does intervene on the ball, he alone can be decisive. To fulfil that role a player needs a highly developed sense of humility, of self-sacrifice. You have to accept that you are not always in the action, that your job is to open up space for your team-mates. If instead you play eight or nine well co-ordinated players in defence, there are other difficulties but it’s more straightforward and it’s also how most games are played. If you’re the only one employing positional play and are working with players who have won everything using a different model, well…

‘The great thing is I have guys like Thiago and Philipp who hold back and wait for their chance so that we can then have a 3 v 2 in a key area. Or great players like Robben and Ribéry who accept the fact that they won’t be directly involved for 15 minutes or so because their job is to wait while we construct the play in a manner which will finalise with a dangerous attack which involves them.’

MP: ‘Has there been a process of mutual adaptation between coach and players?’

PG: ‘Of course. And I, too, have made an effort to show humility by adapting to the players. When we have played badly it has been because you can’t adapt this playing style to individual players. The players have to adapt to positional attacking. For example, I’m a fan of wingers and here I’ve got two magnificent examples of that breed. But in order for them to have an advantage when they get on the ball we have to build up right from the back so that they have an advantage over the rival from the instant they receive the ball. And that’s a long, complicated process. It requires patience. Then there are the central defenders, who now play 50 metres ahead of their keeper. Of course it’s a risk but we conceded only 13 goals in the 27 games we needed to win the league. Xavi, Messi and Iniesta have been playing this way for 10 years, so of course it has been a clash of cultures!’

MP: ‘The players have given you enormous support.’

PG: ‘I particularly appreciate all the effort made by players who find this playing style difficult, who are not naturally suited to it. I think that all of them, whether or not they took to it easily, saw the value of our positional play as well as all the tactical work, our emphasis on not running for running’s sake. I can’t believe that anyone would not like this kind of work. And remember, it has not been easy for the players to come back from a treble-winning season and stay mentally or physically at peak.’

MP: ‘Isn’t it frustrating to play attacking football knowing that just one counter-attack could destroy all your work?’

PG: ‘Yes, that’s true. But it’s also very satisfying to stop your opponent’s counter-attacks. The first concept to make clear is that when you attack properly in this way you ensure you are protected against losing the ball, wherever or however that happens. That was our big mistake in the Madrid disaster. I could see it right from the start but it was too difficult to change the system on the hoof and I had to wait for the break, and by then it was too late. I changed to a 4-3-3 and in the second half the problems didn’t re-occur and we didn’t suffer counter-attacks. In Germany the players are accustomed to having space. Look at our second goal in the DFB-Pokal final, for example. Müller had that space which he loves. But to generate it you have to drop back because if you have the opponent corralled in their own penalty area then there’ll be no space at all and it’s much tougher to create dangerous football.’

MP: ‘A few months ago you said to me: “We’ll play better next season but we’ll lose more games.”’

PG: ‘It was just a turn of phrase. In fact I believe that if we play better we’ll lose less. I hope to have more players who are fit the whole year round, so that I have more reserves and can ensure that we play better and keep winning. I think we will play better. We won’t be comparing ourselves with Jupp’s treble, but with our own achievements this season. It was completely normal and natural that after all that Heynckes had done, everyone wondered why we needed to change. I thought the same thing myself at times.’

MP: ‘But surely it was vital to make changes after the treble because in football if you don’t evolve you stagnate.’

PG: ‘I suppose we’ll never know how it would have turned out if we hadn’t made those changes but football is evolution and successful change depends on the kind of players you have. I had to use a style I wasn’t committed to many times this season but that adaptation was also to allow the guys to regain match sharpness and tempo. You need to make mistakes if you want to make progress. And you need to know your opponents, and the league. I have now played against all our opponents here, I know their stadiums, the coaches and I know and understand my own club. And whilst I was learning all of this we managed to win four trophies, which in turn will spur us on to make more progress and keep evolving. The trophies will be a real boost for my team’s confidence as they start next season. They were not easy to win, but neither did we consider it enough just to make it to the finals. You have to win. After winning there is usually a period of decompression. Kalle [Rummenigge] was always saying to me: “We always have a disappointing year after winning the league or the Champions League.” But we continued to perform like champions and broke records by winning the league so early, with 25 wins and two draws. A brilliant performance.’