Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography (47 page)

He needs the new club to offer him
cariño
, an expression that doesn’t exist in English, a concept between friendship and love, respect and commitment. Affection is perhaps
the closest.

After a few months away from football, after some long walks in New York, Guardiola will start thinking about what happens next – and he will recover the capacity to want to imagine what
happens next. What he wants to do when he grows up.

As a player, Guardiola learnt to hide his private life; most players do. Discovering what they like, what they do, is a little step away from
using it
against them. ‘Public opinion is cruel, but I like the same as everybody: wine, reading, the family.’ Success, extreme success, had allowed the public to think that Pep, his image, his
private life, were public property. Sometimes he dreams of having failed, or tries to imagine what that would be like, even how healthy that could be.

‘From failure you learn ten times more. Victory gives you ten minutes of peace, but then it makes you stupid. In victory you have to realise what is not going right. I have many fears and
insecurities, I don’t like people that can and offer to sort everybody’s life. I want to be happy in my microcosm.’

‘It can be put very simply,’ argues one of the people who has had the greatest influence on Pep: ‘Guardiola fights against himself in the same way that Barça fights
against Barça. The club is never happy with itself, is it?’ Until recently, Barcelona has always had only very brief moments of stability; the rest of its history is a succession of
cycles: success, crisis, success again. The fight has been to bring about a degree of stability. Pep was cast from the same mould. He wants to be, and demands of himself that he be, the same coach
who made his debut in 2008, but instead of finding answers he finds more questions, a victim of his own dedication and perfectionism, and also of his own torments and the difficulty he has in
allowing people to help him.

Managing: one of the hardest and most solitary professions. Rich in victory; orphaned in defeat.

Guardiola treated defeat and victory with equal respect, but always kept a healthy distance from both. But no matter how he wants the epitaph of his career at Barcelona to read, nobody is about
to usurp him from the most prominent place in Barça’s roll of honour and that of world football.

Ramón Besa uses some wonderful words to describe Pep’s legacy. ‘The football put in practice by Guardiola stemmed from childhood romanticism, from the shots in the main square
of Santpedor, and is based on a cold and detailed analysis. It is consumed by the passion of returning to his childhood and it is carried out with the precision of a surgical knife.’ As his
friend David Trueba wrote, ‘Guardiola is always looking for “the perfect match”, that certain “El Dorado”, that
paradise that isn’t
conceived without his impeccable conduct on and off the pitch.’

It is simplistic to reduce Pep’s influence to mere numbers, but the stats are extraordinary: 177 victories, 46 draws, 20 defeats. He gave twenty-two kids from the lower ranks the chance to
make their debut in the first team. He was the youngest coach to win two Champions League trophies; the sixth to win it as both player and coach.

Without doubt, the best coach in the history of FC Barcelona.

The style, criticised in the past for being too baroque, irregular, unbalanced and often ineffective, was still enjoyable and now also successful.

And Pep’s decision-making affected the Spanish national side as well. National coach Luis Aragonés decided to give the team’s leadership to the midfielders and Vicente del
Bosque introduced little change, paving the way for the Barcelona idea to be at the core of the national team. Eventually the side that became twice European Champions and World Cup-winners was
based upon the principles introduced by the Barcelona players. It was a style Guardiola had shown could be effective, but also an astonishing cocktail which incorporated the strong characters of
Real Madrid, represented by Iker Casillas, Sergio Ramos, the resilient emigrants (Alvaro Arbeloa, Xabi Alonso, Fernando Torres, David Silva, Juan Mata) and the brushstrokes of the periphery
(Jesús Navas, Fernando Llorente).

Before Euro 2012, del Bosque wanted to add to the voices that were saying farewell to Guardiola: ‘My regards to my colleague. It is impossible for anybody else to repeat what he did in
four years. I am happy and proud that we have Spanish coaches with that much human quality. He has all my appreciation. His story is unique.’

At the successful 2012 tournament in Poland and Ukraine, del Bosque applied solutions that were successful at Barcelona, including the false striker role that became the only tactical innovation
of the summer competition. And it was effective, too, despite the criticisms. Spain had been facing similar problems to Barcelona: teams defended deep, closed down spaces and tried to prevent the
ball circulating quickly. It was time, then, to reinvent themselves – when Spain played with no striker, the opposing centre backs did
not know whom to defend. The
maximum expression of that style was the wonderful final against Italy, that explosive 4-0 that killed off so many debates.

An interesting conundrum would appear if Guardiola were offered the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of del Bosque in the future. As a player, he was once asked what national team he would
choose, if he could, between Spain and Catalonia. ‘I played with Spain because at that time there was no possibility of doing it for Catalonia and because I was happy to join Spain and play
as well as I could as the professional I was. I was ecstatic to be able to participate in World Cups and European Championships, and I wish I could have played more. But I was born in Catalonia and
if possible I would have played for Catalonia; the question answers itself.’ Given the chance to coach Spain he would probably do it with the same passion he would coach Argentina or Qatar,
the difference being that some of the players he will have under his orders are also Catalan or from FC Barcelona.

Guardiola was voted best coach in the world in 2011 by FIFA. ‘But don’t let him deceive you, he never thought all this would arrive so suddenly, so quickly,’ his friend
Estiarte jokes. When he received the trophy, Pep wanted to share the moment with the other two candidates, Alex Ferguson and José Mourinho. ‘It is an honour to be your
colleague,’ he said. That was the day Sir Alex was asked if Pep could replace him at Manchester United: ‘Why? If I was in his place, I would stay at Barça.’

The trophy recognised the titles but also left a question hanging. What he had done at his club: was it revolution or evolution? Changing an answer is evolution; replacing the question is
revolution. Guardiola didn’t start from scratch, but has evolved the style by reinforcing the idea and introducing subtle and not so subtle variations. And he did so in the middle of a
successful era, which is a brave thing to do. ‘He gave the team a touch more of intensity, virtue, effective. He used extremely well a great generation of players,’ adds Rafa
Benítez.

But Guardiola also replaced the question with a touch of boldness and imagination – no striker, sometimes defending with two, no pre-match hotel stays, moving to the new training ground,
training
behind closed doors, travelling the same day, analysis of players’ diets and rearranging meal times and places and so on and so forth.

Never before have the ideas of one individual had so much influence at FC Barcelona. Pep was more than Messi, more than the president. The challenge for the Catalan club had always been to
convert their irregular access to success into a methodology that guaranteed its continuity. Not only the continuity of success – that can often depend on things beyond your control –
but mostly of the integral working of the club.

And with Guardiola the club became stronger. He converted an idea into method and planning, always with a flexible point of view, always based upon the central philosophy: as he repeated
hundreds of times in the corridors of the Camp Nou, of the training ground at Sant Joan Despí, ‘if we have doubts, we attack, we get the ball and we attack.’ He knew better than
anybody that he didn’t know everything about modern football, so he showed the need for a powerful group of specialists who helped deconstruct the complex puzzle of this game. Another legacy:
the many pairs of eyes.

Under Pep, football became entertaining for his players, too. Every job, when it becomes professional, loses the essential amateur feeling, the ludic sense that every occupation should have. His
footballers, though, enjoyed playing as they used to as kids. Pep reminded them that the person who thinks ‘I am going for a few hours of training and that is it’ will fall much earlier
than those who enjoy what they are doing. ‘Being amateurs at their job is what makes them special,’ Pep says. But it was he who made them fall in love with football again, helped them
create that Corinthian spirit.

On one occasion, English midfielder Jack Wilshere revealed that the former England coach Fabio Capello had prepared a special video session: ‘We paid attention to Barça and how they
put pressure on.’ Similar videos have been viewed in dressing rooms of Championship teams, and other of Leagues One and Two, and clubs of first and second and third divisions everywhere.

That is the big inheritance Pep has left us with. But there are small legacies, too.

At the beginning of the press conference at Stamford Bridge prior
to the first leg of the semi-finals against Roberto di Matteo’s Chelsea, a translator asked Guardiola
if he could have a minute with him at the end of the media proceedings. When all the questions had been answered, this slipped his mind and Pep hurriedly left the press room. The translator, a
young Spaniard living in London, ran after him: ‘Can I have a minute with you?’ ‘Ah, yes, sorry, forgot.’

‘I am a coach here at Chelsea, Pep.’ And Guardiola listened to him for a minute, two or three even, looking into his eyes, attentively. ‘I understand now why you translated so
well the tactical concepts,’ Pep told him. That minute will last a lifetime for the young trainer.

The value of a minute, of a gesture.

Guardiola mixed, as Mascherano said that night, work with feelings. He wanted to transfer the indescribable pleasure of caressing the ball. Outside Catalonia, Guardiola was seen as someone who
breathed life back into a game that had become stagnant and soulless.

In his last day in his office at the Camp Nou, Pep Guardiola gathered up a bunch of personal objects he had been accumulating over four years. It is the place where, on so many
occasions, that magic moment appeared before him, where so many videos have been watched. Where he studied the words he would utter to the press.

The laptop, books, CDs, photos of Maria, Màrius, Valentina, Cristina, all placed in cardboard boxes. Should he leave behind the wooden table lamp, the paper one by the sofa, the rug?

As the last item went in the box, a thought. ‘We have made many people happy.’

And a memory: his son Màrius repeating his gestures in the technical area on the day of the Camp Nou farewell, when all the spectators were on their way home and Pep was watching him from
the bench – an arm outstretched, the hands on his little face, shouting unintelligible orders to create an imaginary attack, celebrating with similar eloquence a fantasy goal. If your son is
going to copy anybody in football – and he will – Pep Guardiola is not a bad place to start.

‘It was a real privilege to be under your orders. And that is so absolutely true’ – Andrés Iniesta.

The modern FC Barcelona with an idea, a philosophy, a way of playing, a particular type of footballer, started as far back as the mid-seventies.

In 1974 Laureano Ruíz became general coordinator for youth football and one of the first things he did was to tear down a notice next to the entrance of his new office that read:
‘If you are coming to offer me a youngster who measures less than 1.80 metres, you can take him back.’

‘Laureano prioritised the technical quality of a footballer, reaction times and, above other factors, intelligence, to learn and understand the game,’ explains Martí Perarnau,
former Olympic highjumper, journalist and now the leading analyst of the Barcelona youth system. ‘He wanted players who controlled the ball with their first touch, who had quick feet, who
retained the ball and created superiority from individual technique and group work. He said that if you pass the ball well, you receive it well and have good control; then you have far more
possibilities. He stood against the established rules, which emphasised tall and strong players even if they were clumsy. Winning one battle after another, he steadily planted the first seeds of
that philosophy in the club.’

The training sessions were based on the use of the ball and not on the physical exercises and continuous running that were fashionable at that time. When asked why Laureano’s kids ran so
little, he would explain, ‘If we spend all our time running, when will they learn to play with the ball?’ After all, footballers never run constantly in a game, do they? They do short
sprints, stop, change direction, long sprints … Emphasis on physical exercise alone isn’t necessary; it should be incorporated into training and practice with the ball.