Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (43 page)

But Pep knew that the accumulation of success had a logical progression: the more you win, the less you are desperate to win. At the highest levels in sport, a moment’s relaxation can
expose you. The side let their guard down after three years of unprecedented success and it cost them. That war of attrition, that need to continue to fuel a competitive group under any
circumstances was a lost cause that took its toll on the manager, and was possibly the fight that burnt him out more than any other: more than the exchanges with Mourinho, even. In contrast, while
José was competing with Pep in Spain, the Madrid coach did not need to spend a single moment trying to deal with that same psychological problem: because his players grew hungrier for
trophies the more they saw Barcelona winning.

In the end the pendulum had swung the other way.

‘Two Picassos in the same period’ is how Arrigo Sacchi describes Mourinho and Guardiola. The legendary Italian manager – a man who pushed football to another
dimension in the eighties – feels that Pep’s departure from Barcelona was a bad day for football. ‘It is a shame for all those who like the beautiful game. He made football evolve
and still win. I would like to congratulate him for his fourteen titles in four years. I think that everyone will remember the Barça side in twenty years’ time because they
revolutionised the sport.’ Sacchi also reserves high praise for José: ‘He is a rare guy to find. So distinct from Guardiola. You have to study Mourinho as a whole. His teams play
excellent football.’

Listening to José after Pep’s departure, is it possible to read between the lines a sense that he also wished Pep had stayed, that he will probably never find a more formidable
opponent? ‘If I say today that I am tired and I stop training for ever, my career would be perfect. I
have won everything I had to win in the most important
countries.’ Perhaps that’s only wishful thinking on our part.

Pep wanted to operate in a footballing utopia: a place where Carlo Mazzone joins him for coffee, Batistuta argues about not having a striker, where Marcelo Bielsa, as happened on that trip to
Argentina, lines up Pep’s friend David Trueba as man-marker for a chair in the middle of the living room of the Argentinian’s house. Pep wanted perfection, in a footballing dream world
that existed on a higher plane: a place from which he was brought crashing back down to earth by Mourinho.

‘Prepare yourself, Pepe,’ Ferguson had told Guardiola when they met in Nyon. ‘Mourinho is on his way to you!’ Pep wasn’t that concerned: ‘It won’t be so
bad.’ Sir Alex replied: ‘I live happier now.’ The Manchester United manager was right. The fight with José’s Madrid was, according to Manel Estiarte, ‘draining,
because the dark arts of the Portuguese were tiring, infuriating and so often unfair – despite the fact that they were simply a tactic for defending his own team and club’.

Those ‘arts’ had tainted Pep’s recollections of the Clásicos: ‘I don’t have particularly happy memories of those Barça–Madrid games of the past
few years; they’re not games I enjoyed, neither in victory nor defeat: there was always something that left a very bad taste in the mouth.’

Pep dreamed of a competition in which football decisions were all that mattered.

‘When you play as many times against each other, it becomes like the basketball play-offs. You do one thing; they respond with another, you answer in another way. I remember the first game
against Mourinho: Inter played with a 4-4-2 formation. When they came to the Camp Nou in the second leg of the group stage, they had a diamond formation and we beat them. When we went back to Milan
for the semis, we played against a 4-2-3-1 where there was no passing; it was all direct play from them. When José came back here with Madrid, they wanted to play more and lost. They lost in
the Champions League even though they went back to playing directly. They have tried to play deep, leaving space behind. In the Super
Cup, the games in the Nou Camp, they had
almost lost the tie but they closed us down. The guessing, the changing, the preparing, the switches during games; guessing what formation they will play, how we can surprise them too: that is what
makes everything enjoyable, what gives meaning to everything. It is the thing that made those encounters fascinating. It is, in fact, the only thing that stays with me.

‘The rest? Not so much. With Mourinho, so many things have happened, so many things ...’

Pep took it all personally. For José it was all part of the job.

‘Our relationship has been good, is good and will be good,’ Mourinho said in his first season at Madrid. ‘If ever Pep and I have a footballing problem, it will never become a
problem between José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola: only ever a problem between the coach of Real Madrid and the coach of Barcelona. It’s something completely separate. Totally different.
I respect him as much as I believe he respects me and there are no personal issues between us, quite the opposite. Right now, I can’t wish him luck because we are competing for the same
thing, but apart from that, there’s no problem.’

Pep would never see it that way.

First Leg of the Champions League Semi-Finals. Stamford Bridge, 18 April 2012. Chelsea 1 Barcelona 0

In London, and, as expected, Barcelona fielded their strongest side possible with Alexis, Cesc and Messi upfront. From very early on, the team created chance after chance:
Alexis hit the bar, Ashley Cole cleared off the line, Adriano hit the post. Once, twice, three, four times the blue wall of Chelsea blocked the way. Barcelona, Pep, Messi discovered that the
English club had found a way to frustrate them.

The team insisted on looking for answers through Messi, always in his central position.

The little genius then lost the ball, way too close to his own goal, almost on the halfway line. Lampard found Ramires and the Barcelona players tracking back made a crucial mistake. The two
centre backs (Mascherano and Puyol) followed Drogba as he was trying to find space on the right of the attack. One of them should have covered the back of Xavi who was desperately following
Ramires.

Xavi was on his own defending Ramires, who put in the cross for Drogba. There were gaps across the Barcelona defence. It led to a goal, in injury time before the break.

Based on the result and not the performance, many reached the conclusion that Chelsea had defended well.

Barcelona had twenty-four shots on goal. Chelsea scored one goal from their only shot on target.

Their dependence upon Messi and their lack of alternatives was clearly becoming a problem. But Pep told the players if they had created twenty-four chances at Stamford
Bridge, they would do the same at the Camp Nou.

And then, in the press conference, the coach decided to reduce the pressure on a team that had lost its cutting edge and felt the heavy burden on their shoulders of trying to win again. It was a
novelty on the part of the manager, perhaps a warning. At that point, it was difficult to comprehend Guardiola’s reasoning: instead of demanding more from his players, about to take on Real
Madrid in the league and Chelsea at the Camp Nou for the most crucial clashes of the season, Pep seemed to take his foot off the gas.

‘In sport, only those that win stay in everybody’s memory. I don’t know what will happen next Saturday against Madrid or next Tuesday against Chelsea. But I have the feeling we
have won this season already. After four years competing at this level and having arrived at this point with injuries, the illnesses … I have the feeling we have won, it doesn’t matter
what happens next.’

Second Leg of the Champions League Semi-Finals. Camp Nou, 24 April 2012. Barcelona 2 Chelsea 2

Football is a percentages game. By defending deep Chelsea had a small chance of going through that increased slightly if they attacked every now and again with intelligence. But
still the percentages, in principle, were very unequal and in Barcelona’s favour: they were going to have the ball more often and spend more time in Chelsea’s final third.

But that game had been played before. Against Mourinho. Against Inter in 2010. And in the first leg.

It was, effectively, a replay.

Pep asked the team to play in wide positions, with double false strikers Messi and Cesc roaming freely, and to move the ball from side to side until the gaps appeared. Barcelona were patient,
and
when the spaces were created they were attacked by the home side like piranhas.

Twice Barcelona scored. In any other season, that would have been enough, especially after the dismissal of Chelsea’s captain John Terry following a rash off-the-ball incident.
Barça were battling a formidable group of strong players, proud professionals who had a last chance of glory in Europe and the task of destroying everything proposed by their opponents: a
completely legitimate proposal. Cahill got injured. Yet Drogba was immense, including his stint as a second full back, and Cech was a giant in the Chelsea goal. But they couldn’t stop
Barcelona creating chance after chance.

Pep’s team hit the post twice, had twenty-three shots on goal and six on target, Messi missed a penalty. Any other season …

And Chelsea scored, again in injury time before the break. Similar lapses in concentration that had cost Barcelona a defeat in the first leg were to hurt them again. Ramires lobbed the
goalkeeper to make it 2-1. Barcelona needed another goal with twenty minutes remaining, but it felt as if the Catalans had run out of ideas, of belief. Possession was lost often, they lacked
penetration, width.

The goal never came. And then, in injury time, Torres delivered the killer blow to Barcelona’s dreams.

Chelsea had cashed in on their percentages.

Guardiola, his team, had run out of answers.

As Pep’s Barcelona progressed, celebrated their successes and grew in stature during the previous four years, so did the personalities of the players. Or, better said, it
became increasingly difficult to harness their instincts for the team’s benefit: only natural after all. Xavi and Puyol had become the elder statesman, World Champions and a massive presence
in the game – and the acceptance of all of it is always an issue that some deal with better than others. Gerard Piqué transformed himself into a multinational star with a superstar
girlfriend and while not necessarily a bad thing, it certainly meant he was not the Piqué who had joined the club from Manchester United. It wasn’t easy for a big name like
Piqué to accept that Javier
Mascherano had become the regular centre back while he was forced to sit out some important games. As the team grew, Pep’s management
decisions became more complex. It is quite different giving orders to an emerging and promising young Messi as it is to a double Ballon d’Or-winning megastar acknowledged as the best player
of his generation.

At the end of that final season, one decision became crucial. A player can take being rested against Racing de Santander or Levante, but it is a different proposition being on the bench against
Real Madrid – the match that serves as the barometer of every campaign. Any player seemingly ‘dropped’ for el Clásico becomes the focus of negative press no matter how many
times Guardiola tries to tell everybody that they all have the right to play, that they were all equal, that it’s about options, resting players, etc. They were games marked in
everybody’s calendar and the final selection would have repercussions upon the balance and well-being of the squad. In Rome, at Wembley, the only doubts in the line-up were related to
injuries or suspensions and in those games it was always going to come down to twelve or thirteen key players. But in Pep’s last season, there were always doubts and tough decisions to be
taken before the naming of his eleven ahead of every big game.

Creating and maintaining an atmosphere of suspense and introducing players still not versed in the most intricate games was a way of shaking the squad up and keeping everybody on their toes as
Pep perceived their crucial competitive edge was being blunted. However, the uncertainty also became difficult to control and – unlike his masterly ability to smooth things over in previous
years – Pep’s desire to keep everybody guessing led to a sense of disquiet, anxiety and uneasiness in the players’ minds and in his own.

And, let’s not forget, Pep’s biggest fear since the day he travelled to St Andrews for pre-season those four long years ago was that he might one day lose the group, be unable to
connect with them.

Perhaps the lack of attention to details and the conceding of injury-time goals were some of the warning signs he had been dreading. And when he felt not all was in order, he started pressing
buttons at key moments in the season. And often, he did not hit the right ones. Yes,
they remained faithful to their style against Madrid; granted, they did not have the luck
against Chelsea. But ... there was something in the way the English club neutralised Barcelona in the last twenty minutes of the Camp Nou tie that again suggested something had been lost.

In that second leg of the Champions League semi-final, Pep had decided to use the youngster Cuenca down the left flank, leaving experienced players like Pedro, Keita and Adriano on the bench. He
had done something similar against Madrid with Tello, who started the Clásico while Piqué, Alexis and Cesc started on the bench. In the club offices, the analysis was a list of
question marks. Those decisions reminded some of Johan Cruyff’s when, towards the end of his tenure, he started to apply a very peculiar logic that suggested to his critics that he was
clutching at straws. Others argued that, perhaps, Pep felt some form of ‘paternal instinct’ for La Masía boys Cuenca and Tello – which blurred his judgement. Could two
incredibly inexperienced kids really be chosen ahead of internationals for such monumentally important games?

It also meant that the bigger names left on the bench, incapable of challenging a decision made by someone they admired, adored and respected – with a proven track record for making so
many correct decisions – started doubting themselves: ‘there must be something wrong with me if I am not playing’. Doubts create fear. And fear is a bad companion when you have to
take responsibility if things are not going your way. The sudden absence of a familiar eleven – an element so clearly defined in previous campaigns – meant many were struggling with
confidence issues. Pedro, for instance, went from the great discovery and hope for the future to the great forgotten man. Cesc, frequently, the match-winning goalscorer, went from saviour to
sub.