Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

To my brother Gustavo (
culé
),

my sister Yolanda (new-born
culé
),

Luis Miguel García (who will never be
culé
)

and Brent Wilks (who reminds us constantly football is not about life and death)

Cover

Title page

Dedication

I Why Did He Have to Leave?

II Pep: From a Santpedor Square to the Camp Nou Dugout

III Pep, the Manager

IV Appendices: Pep Guardiola for Beginners

By the same author

List of Illustrations

Copyright

by Sir Alex Ferguson

I missed out on signing Pep Guardiola as a player back at the time when he realised that his future no longer lay at Barcelona.

Although there wasn’t any apparent reason for him to leave his club, we spoke to Guardiola and I thought I had a good chance of getting him: maybe the timing I chose was wrong. It would
have been interesting; he was the kind of player that Paul Scholes developed into: he was captain, leader and midfield playmaker in Johan Cruyff ’s incredible Barcelona Dream Team and
displayed a composure and ability to use the ball and dictate the tempo of a game that made him one of the greatest players of his generation. Those were the kinds of qualities I was looking for. I
ended up signing Juan Sebastián Verón for that reason. Sometimes, you look back at a really top player and you say to yourself: ‘I wonder what it would have been like if
he’d have come to United?’ That is the case with Pep Guardiola.

I can understand Pep’s situation as a player. When you’re at a club like Barcelona, you would like to think you have a place for life. So when we approached him he probably thought
he still had a future at the club even though he ended up leaving that season. It is a shame, because nothing is for life in football: age and time catch up with you and the day comes when both you
and the club have to move on. At the time I thought we were offering Pep a solution, a different road in his career, but it didn’t work out. It reminds me of Gary Neville. Having had Gary at
Manchester United since he was twelve years old, he became almost like family: like a son, someone you depend upon and trust, who was part of the whole structure of the team. But one day it all
finishes. In Pep’s case, the realisation that all that was coming to an end must have been difficult. I could understand his
doubts, his delay in committing, but it got to
a point where we had to look somewhere else and that opportunity disappeared.

One thing I have noticed about Guardiola – crucial to his immense success as a manager – is that he has been very humble. He has never tried to gloat, he has been very respectful
– and that is very important. It is good to have those qualities and, looking back, it is apparent that he has been unassuming throughout his career. As a player he was never the type to be
on the front pages of the papers. He played his game in a certain way; he wasn’t tremendously quick but a fantastic, composed footballer. As a coach he is very disciplined in terms of how his
team plays, but whether they win or lose he is always the same elegant, unpretentious individual. And, to be honest, I think it is good to have someone like that in this profession.

However, it seems that he reached a point in his coaching career where he was conscious of the importance of his job at Barcelona while experiencing the demands attached to it. I am sure he
spent time thinking, ‘
How long is it going to last? Will I be able to create another title-winning team? Will I be able to create another European Cup-winning team? Can I maintain this
level of success?
’

If I had arrived in time to advise him, I would have told Pep not to worry about it: a failure to win the Champions League is not an indictment of his managerial abilities or of his team. I
understand the pressure, though: the expectation was so high every time Guardiola’s team played, everyone wanted to beat them. In fact, I think he was in a fortunate position in a way,
because the only thing he had to worry about was how he was going to break down the opposing team to stop them winning.

Personally, I think it’s about keeping going. So, why go? It might be a question of controlling the players, of finding new tactics because teams have started working out
Barça’s style of play. Or a question of motivating them. In my experience, a ‘normal’ human being wants to do things the easiest possible way in life. For instance, I know
some people who have retired at fifty years old – don’t ask me why! So the drive that most people have is different from that of individuals like Scholes, Giggs, Xavi, Messi and Puyol
who, as far as I am concerned, are exceptional human beings and motivation is not an issue for them
because their pride comes before everything. I am sure Pep’s squad was
full of the types of characters who were an example to others and a source of motivation: not types who wanted to retire too early.

I know Gerard Piqué from his time here at United. I know his type of personality: off the pitch he can be a laid-back, easy-going guy, but on the pitch he is a winner. He was a winner
here and we didn’t want the boy to leave, and he is a winner there at Barcelona. The players Pep had under him needed less motivation than most. Perhaps Pep underestimated his motivational
abilities? You could see what he consistently achieved with that Barcelona team and you need to have a special talent to keep them competing at that level and with such success for so long. But I
am convinced he has enough weapons to do it again. And again and again.

What Guardiola achieved in his four years at the first team of Barcelona betters anything that previous coaches at the Camp Nou have done – and there have been some great ones: Van Gaal,
Rijkaard and Cruyff to name a few; but Guardiola has taken certain areas to another level – such as pressing the ball – and Barcelona’s disciplined style of play and work ethic
have become a trademark of all his teams. Pep created a culture where the players know that if they don’t work hard, they won’t be at the club. Believe me, that is not easy to do.

Whatever Pep’s next move may be after he has taken some time out, whether he moves to the Premier League or not, there’s always going to be a lot of speculation surrounding his
future. He was at a fantastic football club at Barcelona and it is not going to get any better for him wherever he goes. Going to another club will not take any pressure off him or reduce the level
of expectation surrounding him. In fact, wherever he goes he is going to have the same experience: he is a manager; he has to decide what is best for his team, about choosing players and their
tactics. It is that simple. In that respect it is the same wherever you go, because all managers’ jobs come with pressure. I’ve been successful at Manchester United for many years and
it’s not without its problems – every hour of every day you have to deal with something. It comes down to the fact that you are dealing with human beings in the world of football.
There’s a plethora of things to worry about: agents, family, form, injuries, age, profile, ego, etc. If
Pep were to go to another club the questions would be the same as
those he has faced so far. The expectation would follow him around.

So, why? Why would he decide to leave? When you asked me before Pep announced his decision, I did say that it would be silly not to see the job through. If you look at Madrid, who won five
European Cups in the late fifties and early sixties, there’s no reason to think that he couldn’t have done the same with Barça. That to me would be a personal motivation if I had
that team. And if I were Pep, leaving would have been the most difficult decision to make.

Sir Alex Ferguson

Spring 2012

Rome. 27 May 2009. UEFA Champions League final

It is the eighth minute of the match. Barcelona yet to find their rhythm. The players are all in the right positions, but none of them willing to bite, to
step forward and pressure the man on the ball. They are playing within themselves, showing too much respect to Manchester United. Ronaldo has a shot saved by Víctor Valdés. Another
shot. United are getting closer. Cristiano fires just wide of the post. Centimetres. That’s the difference. Centimetres away from goal.

Centimetres away from changing the way the world judges Pep Guardiola and his Nou Camp revolution.

Giggs, Carrick, Anderson are moving the ball around at will between the lines. Something has to be done. Pep leaps from the bench and barks rapid-fire instructions, his voice
carrying to his players above the cacophony of noise in a packed Olympic stadium in Rome.

Messi is told to take up a position between the United centre backs, as a false striker – and Eto’o is shifted out wide, to occupy his place on the right wing.
Ferguson, on the bench, impassive. Delighted with the outcome so far, feels in control.

But the tide changes. Imperceptibly at first. Messi finds Iniesta, who finds Xavi, who finds Messi. Suddenly, Carrick and Anderson must react quickly, decide who to mark,
which pass to break, space to cover. Giggs is tied up with Busquets and cannot help.

Iniesta receives the ball in the centre of the pitch. Evra has lost Eto’o and Iniesta spots the opportunity opening up on the right flank. He dribbles the ball forward
and then, at precisely the right moment, finds Eto’o on the edge of the box with an incisive, inch-perfect pass. He receives the
ball. Vidi
ć
is making a last-ditch attempt to cover him but Eto’o jinks past him, and, in the blink of an eye, relying on his pure assassin’s instinct, fires in a shot at the
near post.

The destination of that shot, that instant, the culmination of a move, would help convert an idea, a seed planted forty years earlier, into a footballing tsunami that would
transform the game for years to come.

Pep left Barcelona and all he had shaped because, Sir Alex, he is not like most managers. He walked away because he is, quite simply, not your typical football man.

You could already see it in your first encounter in the dugout, in the Champions League final in Rome in 2009. For that final, Guardiola had made a compendium of his thoughts and applied his
club philosophy to everything related to that game, from preparation to tactics, from the last tactical chat to the way they celebrated the victory. Pep had invited the world to join him and his
players in the joy of playing a huge European Cup final.

He was confident he had prepared the team to beat you, but, if that was not possible, the fans would take home the pride of having tried it the Barça way and, in the process, of having
overcome a dark period in their history. Not only had he changed a negative trend within the club, but he had also, in only twelve months since his arrival, started to bury some powerful unwritten
but fashionable commandments that talked about the importance of winning above anything else, the impossibility of reconciling the principle of reaching the highest targets with playing well,
producing a spectacle. Or the one that considered obsolete the essential values of sportsmanship and respect. Who came up with those rules, who started the fashion? Since day one of his arrival in
the dugout at Barcelona, Pep was willing to go against the tide because that was all he believed in.