Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (32 page)

‘Henry isn’t a problem,’ Guardiola kept repeating at press conferences, but during the difficult start to Guardiola’s first season the French forward was criticised more
than any other player. His price, wages and prestige – along with his lack of empathy with the press – took their toll. And even though the team improved, the former Arsenal star was
not producing his best. Two factors influenced Henry’s poor form: his back injury and the position in which he was forced to play. In the summer that Eto’o was on the market, after Pep
had told him as well as Deco and Ronaldinho that they were not wanted, Guardiola promised Henry, who under Rijkaard played uncomfortably on the left wing, that he would be moved into the central
striker’s position. However, when it transpired that Eto’o was to stay at the club for another season, Thierry had to carry on playing wide, a position in which he found it difficult to
impress as he was lacking the pace and stamina of his earlier years.

When Henry was at his lowest, Pep took him out to dinner to cheer him up and tell him that he had every faith in his ability. Henry appreciated the gesture. In the following game against
Valencia, ‘Tití’ was unstoppable and scored a hat-trick in the 4-0 victory. In the end,
together with Messi and Eto’o, he formed a devastating front
line during what would be an historic treble-winning season (Copa del Rey, Spanish League and Champions League). The trio scored 100 goals between them – Messi 38, Eto’o 36 and Henry,
who ended up playing fifty-one games, 26. At the end of that campaign, Henry went into the 2009 summer break knowing that he had had a spectacular season.

But the following summer, after a personally disappointing campaign, unable again to return to the lead striking role in the centre – or to the form that had terrified so many Premier
League defences – at thirty-two and with an offer from the MLS, Henry left Barcelona.

Samuel Eto’o and the lack of ‘feeling’

Pep had given his affection, time and effort to his players in a process that began during pre-season at St Andrews. Most of it was intuitive and came naturally to him. In
exchange he demanded very high standards of work but something else too, something much bigger, something we all look for: he wanted them to love him back. And if they didn’t give him that
love, he suffered immensely.

It was the boy in Pep who, logically, never entirely went away, that kid who wanted to impress during his trials for La Masía. The kid who, once accepted by the youth academy, needed to
be liked, selected by his coaches, approved of by Cruyff. The youngster who would respectfully decide to follow the politics that came with the Barcelona philosophy because he believed in them, but
also to take up a role that helped him get close to the majority of the fans: leadership with emotion again.

That need to be liked might doubtless lie dormant for a while, perhaps hidden under the shield that elite football forces you to arm yourself with. But the little boy doesn’t disappear,
along with the fragilities that lie at the core of every human being and which can so often be the bedrock upon which genius is built.

That kid in Pep the man found it very difficult to accept rejection, disapproval, from the people close to him, from his players. In fact, there is nothing that hurt him more than one of his
footballers not
looking at him or not talking to him when they crossed paths. It killed him. And it has happened.

‘The most unbearable drama: I try and manage a group where everyone is a person; that comes before everything. I demand them all to think something in common, if not, you can’t win
it all. And that common feeling is like that of any human being: being loved. Having a job that we like and to be loved for having it. For example, how do I convince a player whom I don’t
love and whom I don’t pick to play, that I love him? That is where the drama lies: ups and downs, ups and downs. Or do you think that all the players love me?’ Dealing with the
footballer and with the person behind the player, is for Pep the hardest job.

He knows that his decision-making is invariably a barrier to everyone’s affection. It is certainly easier to handle this build-up of feelings when you’re winning, but you don’t
always win. And when you lose, players tend to look for scapegoats. And in football, the guy who always gets the blame in the end is sitting on the bench.

Asked if he regrets having let Samuel Eto’o, young Catalan Bojan Krki
ć
or Zlatan Ibrahimovi
ć
go, Guardiola let his guard
down and admitted the difficulties of dealing with it. ‘Every day I regret a lot of things. The sense of justice is very complicated. Those who don’t play feel hurt and you need them to
have a lot of heart in order to avoid arguments. The closer I get to players, the more I get burned, I need to distance myself.’

On the day he announced to his players he was leaving Barcelona, he was clear: ‘If I had continued we would end up hurting each other.’

But, irrespective of the emotional implications, the decisions regarding those three particular players, all strikers, were taken for the good of the group, especially to stimulate Messi’s
relentless progression. Guardiola’s admiration for ‘
la Pulga
’, and his further decision to organise the team so as to benefit the player, was something that increased
with time. It wasn’t just a romantic question; it had its foundations in the laws of football. Guardiola remembers that, shortly after taking over the team, during the fourth training
session, Messi subtly approached him and whispered in his ear: ‘
Mister
! Always put Sergio in my team.’
La Pulga
was instantly
taken with
Busquets’s tactical sense and he wanted him on his side in every practice, every game. Guardiola was pleased that Messi read football in the same way that he did and his faith in the
Argentinian was renewed.

Pep Guardiola’s players often talk highly of their coach, but still, every rose has its thorn. Eto’o, Ibrahimovi
ć
and Bojan left Barcelona and not
happily. All three had the same role at the club and all three ended up leaving Barcelona in order for Messi to improve. The ‘number nine topic’ is an extremely sensitive one in
Guardiola’s plan. In the Cameroon forward’s case, he came within an inch of winning the Pichichi (the award for the league’s top goalscorer) and was a decisive player in the
League and Champions League, where he scored the first goal in the final in Rome. At the end of the season, Pep decided he wouldn’t continue with him the following season. What went
wrong?

After Pep effectively put Eto’o up for sale in his very first press conference, the forward completed a very impressive pre-season and once again quiet, friendly, almost unnaturally
modest, had won the respect of the dressing room and of Guardiola, who spoke about him with his captains (Puyol, Xavi and Valdés): the decision was reversed; Samuel Eto’o was staying
at Barça.

As the season progressed, Samuel was back to being the untameable lion, the footballer with a hunger for titles; a player who on the pitch pushes his team-mates in a very positive way and, as
happened against Atlético de Madrid at the Nou Camp, is capable of body-slamming his coach to celebrate a goal. Guardiola was shocked but ‘Samuel is like that’.

That version of the Cameroonian didn’t last all season.

Eto’o could be inspirational at times, in training and in matches, but with the occasional temper tantrums, his impulsive nature and his inability to wholeheartedly accept Messi’s
leadership, led Guardiola to conclude once again that for the sake of balance among the group it would be better to move him on. An incident in training at the start of 2009 confirmed Pep’s
intuition. And another event later that same season, made the decision to sell Eto’o non-negotiable.

This is how the Cameroonian explains the first incident, an
insight into a brief moment that exposes what both men stood for and precisely what separated them. It is one of
those instances that brought to Pep, with a rush of blood, the sudden realisation that their relationship was never going to work: ‘Guardiola asked me to do a specific thing on the pitch
during practice, one that strikers are not normally asked to do. I was neither excited nor aggressive, but I always think like a forward, and I saw that I was unable to do what he was demanding. I
explained to him that I thought he was wrong. So then he asked me to leave the training session. In the end, the person who was right was me. Guardiola never played as a forward and I always have.
I have earned the respect of people in the world of football playing in that position.’

The day after that incident, Pep asked Eto’o to go for dinner. Eto’o didn’t feel he needed to discuss anything with his manager and rejected the invitation. There is a switch
in Guardiola’s mind that clicks on or off – if you are not with me, you shouldn’t be here. Loyal, devoted, when on the same wavelength, and the coldest, most distant person if the
magic disappears, if someone switches the light off. It happened with Eto’o. And later with others.

Guardiola regularly started asking him to play wide right while Messi was accommodated in the space normally occupied by a striker. During one game with those tactics, Samuel was replaced and
afterwards Pep broke with his rule to give the players their sacred space in the dressing room to explain to the Cameroon striker his thinking behind the decision. Eto’o refused even to look
at Pep. He ignored the coach and carried on talking in French to Eric Abidal, whom he was sitting next to.

There was no way back for him after that. The team was going to progress giving freedom to Messi, a battle lost by Eto’o. Following that clash, the forward even began celebrating the goals
on his own.

Three matches before the end of the domestic season, Barcelona won the title and Pep decided to rest players from the usual starting eleven in the run-up to the Champions League final. This
collective need went against Eto’o’s individual interests to play in every game in order to have a chance of winning the Ballon d’Or for the best European goalscorer of the year.
Samuel Eto’o pressured the coach to
play him against Mallorca and Osasuna. Pep didn’t like his attitude and had to bite his tongue when Samuel complained that, with
Iniesta injured, and Xavi and Messi being kept away, who could make passes and set up goals for him? Eto’o was slowly losing it, his rage confusing the real targets of that season. In his
mind, the explanation was simple: if Messi had been in need of those goals, the decisions would have been different.

Samuel started the game against Osasuna. During half-time, he had a heated argument with Eidur Gudjohnsen, almost leading to an exchange of blows: the striker thought the Icelander hadn’t
passed to him for a clear opportunity on goal. In the end, scoring was becoming an obsession that prevented him from winning the Spanish League’s and Europe’s top scorer trophy for the
second time, the same thing that happened to him four years earlier in the last game of the campaign.

Despite Eto’o’s decisive contribution in the Rome Champions League final in 2009 – with a goal that gave Barcelona the lead against Manchester United – and the words of
Guardiola at the end-of-season lunch he organised for the squad, in which he thanked Eto’o for his commitment to the club, the Cameroonian was traded for Ibrahimovi
ć
that summer.

Pep had to admit he didn’t have much coaching expertise in dealing with strikers of that magnitude. Each player has a personal goal, a dream – and the coach didn’t forget that.
So Pep tried to find the right balance to accommodate the individual’s ambitions within the team. Thierry Henry dreamed of winning the Champions League and signed for Barcelona to do so; and
after he won it, his level dropped and he was happy to move on. Eto’o’s vision was not just the Champions League but also the Ballon d’Or. He had sacrificed some personal goals in
order to continue helping the team, but, like every striker in the world, he had the need to satisfy his ego. To a point set by the manager.

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.

Ibrahimovi
ć
and Pep on a different wavelength

Ibrahimovi
ć
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.