Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (45 page)

How do you go from the humility of that Barcelona team, their constant prioritising of the principles they based everything on (work ethic, respect, collective effort) to the fanaticism of some
of their followers, and even the cottage industry created around the figure of Guardiola? It is a fashion that seems to have transcended Catalonia:
AS
newspaper carried a study in 2012
that showed there were more Barcelona than Madrid fans in Spain – a first.

Sometimes, Catalan society, generally shy and allergic to role models, saw Guardiola as a throwaway Dalai Lama, a guru for the Catalan masses. Pep often joked about the articles that praised
him, as if they were part of a competition to see who could be more sycophantic. And he always wondered if virtues become defects in defeat, if the praise wasn’t a tool to sharpen the blades
for when it was time for the slaughter.

In the VIP area at the Camp Nou after the Barcelona derby, Zubizarreta was on his feet, red-eyed and clearly emotional, but deep down scared. The leader was leaving his job so
that the club could
continue shaping it and Tito would follow in his footsteps. Massive, daunting footsteps.

Still on the pitch, away from his players who had gathered a few steps from him to listen to his words, Pep was checking his microphone. It wasn’t working and he was nervous, wanting the
moment to finish, that funeral for his public persona. Out of the ashes was going to appear the other Pep, the familiar one. But before that he had to address the fans.

‘We’ll do this quickly, the players need to get to the showers,’ he began. And in his words there was a hidden homage to Bielsa who started his own farewell speech to the Chile
national team in the same way: ‘Life has given me this gift. In these five years we have been able to enjoy the spectacle produced by these guys.’

‘You have no idea of the love that I’ll take home with me, these past five years, you have no idea of the feeling of happiness I take with me. I am just as lucky as all of you, I
hope you have enjoyed watching them play.

‘Know that I will miss you all. The one who loses is me’, a last reference to his admired Bielsa, words used too by the Argentinian manager in his last day as Chile manager.

And with a reference to the same metaphor he had used at his presentation as Barcelona manager, he said, ‘The seat belt got a bit too tight, so I took it off. But the rest of you
needn’t do so because this will continue. I leave you in the very best hands. Stay with them. I wish you the very best, good luck. See you soon, because you will never lose me.’

Pep’s mum, Dolors, advised fans, via radio interviews days later, to get hold of those last words, to treasure them. They weren’t said by chance.

That final message hinted and foretold of a return; the ball boy, the youth team player, the captain, the coach and the man who made Messi the best player in the world, maybe of all time, would
surely be back. The only thing we can’t guess yet is in what capacity. After spending some time abroad to distance himself from the club, the next logical step in Pep’s Barcelona career
would be a return as sporting director or even president.

When Pep finished speaking, the players applauded and ran towards him to throw him up in the air, the way they had done in Rome and at Wembley. Then, they all stretched out
their hands to make an enormous ‘
sardana
’ ring of bodies – the traditional Catalan dance – and ran around the centre circle. It was another of the symbols that this
Barça team will leave behind, this example of unity, spinning to the music that had started a unique cycle: Coldplay’s ‘Viva la Vida’, the exhilaration and enthusiasm of
the first year, those first tentative steps of the new project that began to take shape despite the voices of the sceptics that were gradually and systematically silenced with each victory.

Soon after that Pep needed to become reacquainted with the old Pep, to resuscitate himself even.

So when the lights went out and the public had disappeared, Pep made his way down on to the pitch with his family, brothers, sisters, cousins and friends to take photos.

That Guardiola knew that life was much more than football. That Pep was curious to discover new worlds, literary worlds, cinematographical, theatrical, musical worlds; and others geographical,
at the other extreme of the globe, and some even closer to home.

Throughout the whole night, Pep was half smiling – it was the end of an era but also the start of a new one. What he had wanted since the previous October: a rest. A reunion with his other
self and other dreams. It was time to enjoy things away from his consuming passion after a seemingly interminable four years.

How different from when, eleven years earlier, he had played his last game for Barcelona and, after the game, ended up being carried off the pitch by his team-mates Luis Enrique and Sergi
Barjuan. Not everybody stayed behind to see that. That night, there were no post-match celebrations, eulogies or speeches, no emotional grandfathers or excitable youths taking pictures of the
moment. He had also walked around a dark, empty stadium with Cris and his agent.

As a player, he had received harsh criticism for leaving the club at the end of his contract, whistles from an unforgiving crowd unjustly accusing him of trying to cash in. It counted for little
that he was the captain, an icon and thirty years old at the time. For the club
that you have adored and served since childhood to turn on you in such a cruel way, and without
any apparent motive, isn’t something that is easy to deal with and less so for someone like Pep, sensitive to criticism and who never forgot the lesson that leaving at the right time is
crucially important: just as he did as a manager.

His latest farewell at the Nou Camp, beyond its implications, was the most sensitive, most heartfelt and honest experienced on a stage that, all too often, had been unable to say goodbye to its
heroes or managers. Guardiola left in a way that both Cruyff and Rijkaard were unable to, who ended their careers in sporting decline and without the unanimous consent of the fans. Strong
criticisms were heard when Louis Van Gaal, twice league winner, dared to return for a second stint as manager.

‘The legacy? For me, the memory I have of these people, I hope it lasts for ever,’ Pep said some days later. A banner at the Villamarín, in Pep’s final league game,
spoke for the fans who adored him: ‘Pep, your football has shown us the way.’

Guardiola had defended the club’s values and taught people a special way to support and feel part of Barça. Would it be the new way to be a
culé
? Or just a momentary
lapse in a culture that seemed to relish the role of victim? Pep had already warned, during his final season, in a moment of doubt: ‘This won’t last for ever. Sooner or later we will
stop winning and that is when we will have to see if we really do have faith in the way we are and the way we play. I’m not putting my hand in the fire, I have to see it. If the club is firm
in its convictions, it will always progress.’

But while certain sectors remained tied to their old ways, the Camp Nou, the fans, showed signs that this team has changed history, going far beyond just the titles. The final reaction in the
Clásico defeat was an impressive message. Rather than surrender and start to doubt, thousands of Catalans raised their voices to make sure Pep and the team knew that they were with them,
that they deserved recognition and loyalty ahead of a result.

Perhaps the fans have changed, but the environment was still harmful. Pep’s departure was enough for a sector of Barcelona to fall back upon old ways, indifferent to the massive change
that the club
had undergone at a sporting level. With Guardiola present, nobody dared disrupt the harmony. And he himself had always made an effort to remain equidistant from
all sides – he always spoke well of former presidents Laporta, Núñez and even Gaspart – and he had always been amicable with Rosell, with whom he had a cordial
relationship without ever managing to have a particularly high level of trust.

‘I’m stepping aside, I don’t want my name to be mentioned. I’m leaving and I want to be left in peace,’ Guardiola warned. But before the last game of the season,
Joan Laporta resurfaced: ‘the current board is obsessed with destroying when what we did was build, including Pep … they could have done more for him to stay.’ Johan Cruyff was
asked for his opinion, as was Carles Rexach. Rosell’s strength was tested, Guardiola’s steps were controlled. All sorts of rumours began to circulate: clashes between Valdés and
Messi, separated by Keita; rumours of the Argentine star getting angry; the alleged rift between Pep, Tito Vilanova, and even Pep and Andoni Zubizarreta.

Did Guardiola leave at the right time? Would the same things have happened if he had stayed one more year? Luis Aragonés was the only football man who questioned Pep’s reasons for
leaving the club. ‘I don’t understand him,’ the former Spain national coach told
AS
newspaper. ‘I don’t believe him when he says he is tired. I agree with
Mourinho. He has only been at the job four years, he has just started. It must be something else. Don’t get me wrong – what he has done has a huge merit. But I don’t know why he
is leaving. People will forget what he has done very quickly.’

When they meet, and Xavi Hernández has insisted to Pep they should, as he considers them two of the best brains in the game, Guardiola will be on the receiving end of some stern words
from Luis and will have to hear a few home truths.

But on that line, was Pep’s decision to quit really for the good of the club? Some might say that he abandoned his players and colleagues at the time when they needed him most. His
nemesis, after all, was on top. The movie doesn’t usually end with the arch enemy winning – not unless they’re preparing us for a sequel. And the suggestion is that Pep’s
legacy, his bequeathing of his powers to his sidekick,
Tito Vilanova, could provide us with a sequel. But has he really left his successor in an ideal situation or a no-win
scenario where every victory will be heralded as another win for Pep, every defeat as the fault of whoever follows him?

Whatever the answers, nobody in Catalonia was ready to question his motives or his timing. He was protected, as José Mourinho has always said and envied, by the press, who enjoyed his
successful era with that combination of devotion and blindness that often goes hand in hand.

One thing is certain. Without Guardiola, without the spiritual leader, Barça is facing a new situation, and Tito, Guardiola’s best friend, a mammoth task. Does Guardiola-ism make
sense without its most charismatic leader, without Guardiola? Will Tito be able to control it in the way Pep did for four years?

That is, though, another story, one still being written.

‘Today, you all let me down.’

That is what Pep Guardiola told his players at the end of the last league game of the season in Seville, at Real Betis. Barcelona had managed to scrape a 2-2 draw in the last few seconds of the
game after a poor performance, a reminder of the worst trips of the campaign, especially in a second half where they ran less, worked less, pressured less and just seemed generally apathetic.

Fifteen days later the team would play in the Spanish domestic cup final and that level of performance and attitude could not be accepted.

As soon as the players entered the dressing room, the manager asked for the door to be closed behind them. ‘Quiet! Today you let me down,’ he grievously pointed out in what probably
was the worst telling off of his entire time at the helm. He didn’t want to personalise the mistakes in one or two players but he couldn’t ignore the signals.

The farewells, the endless rumours about dissent, the speculation about the future of certain stars had distracted and softened his team. He felt responsible.

At first nobody responded. They all listened in silence, this time looking at the floor, like scolded children: reminded that the season had not finished yet.

Then Dani Alvés asked to be allowed to speak.

The Brazilian had lost focus during the season, more than most, and he had been sent off in that match with most of the second half still to be played and with the team winning 1-0. Betis scored
two goals after that.

‘Forgive me. I am sorry, it was a stupid sending off,’ he told his colleagues.

That game, that performance, even the sending off, was not mentioned again by anybody in the following two weeks that preceded the cup final in Madrid against Athletic de Bilbao – the
message had been received.

That title could become the fourth of the season after the Spanish Super Cup, the European Super Cup and the World Club Cup.

Pep had won his first trophy as manager of FC Barcelona against Athletic de Bilbao in 2009, his first final played and won as a manager. Now, it was going full circle in 2012,
247 matches later.

His last ninety minutes as a Barcelona coach were lived with the usual passion and intensity the public had grown accustomed to seeing, something that had been missing in previous weeks.

At the start of the match, Pep gave few instructions as he enjoyed a spectacular first half an hour; with his side hungry, aggressive with the ball, not conceding an inch to the admirable
Marcelo Bielsa’s team.

The night marked a return to common sense, a return to basics. Even Guardiola was once again more Guardiola than ever, with his energy and determination recovered, contagious.

Guardiola shyly celebrated the first goal, scored in the sixth minute. Pedro was the scorer, tapping in a rebound in the box. And the coach went back to his seat on the bench where he
didn’t move till five minutes later when he stood up to clap young Montoya, the right back for the night, after erring a cross from the wing.

Messi got the ball, around the twentieth minute and Pep, back to his privileged seat, shouted to nobody in particular, ‘Look at him, look at him.’ The
Argentinian scored after receiving a pass from Iniesta.

Guardiola jumped from the bench, arms raised, clapped, turned around and gave Tito Vilanova a big hug.