Football is not a process where I can just come along with an idea and carry it out in a short time. No, the process involves trying a player out here, another one there … and you need time for that, in a world where time is at a premium.
Barcelona travelled to Gijón with a certain amount of apprehension.
Matchday 3 (21 September 2008) Sporting Gijón1–6 Barcelona
Barcelona: Valdés; Alvés, Márquez, Puyol, Abidal; Xavi, Busquets (Cáceres, 81st minute), Keita (Gudjohnsen, 71st minute); Messi, Eto’o (Bojan, 67th minute) and Iniesta. Subs not used: Pinto; Piqué, Pedro and Touré.
Sporting Gijón: Sergio Sánchez; Sastre, Gerard Autet, Jorge, Canella; Andreu, Matabuena (Michel, 45th minute); Maldonado (Kike Mateo, 62nd minute), Carmelo, Castro; and Bilic (Barral, 59th minute). Subs not used: Pichu Cuéllar; Colin, Iván Hernández and Camacho.
Goals: 0–1. 26th minute: Xavi puts away an Iniesta cross. 0–2. 32nd minute: Eto’o heads home a Puyol header on the goal-line from a corner. 0–3. 48th minute: Jorge, own goal. 1– 3. 50th minute: Maldonado finishes in the area. 56th minute: Gerard Autet sent off for fouling Messi.
Gerard Autet, former Barcelona youth player, was making his league debut for Sporting that day. At the age of 30. A dream come true for the centre-back, a mere detail in the context of the game. Sporting were aware of the pressure on Barcelona and tried to take advantage of it. Autet and the other centre-back and the full-back tried to come up with a plan to stop Messi: we will have to try to put two men on him and keep an eye open to give support. But Barcelona were on fire from the start of the match, especially Iniesta on the left wing, and Leo, who was everywhere up front. It was impossible to keep two men on him; when he received the ball he would turn and face the opposition without the defenders having had much time to react. Autet and Messi had crossed paths on a couple of occasions in the first half, but, with the score 3–1, a long but imprecise goal kick by the Sporting goalkeeper ended up at Messi’s feet. He was facing the debutant centre-back. An ominous one on one for the defender.
Autet had thought about just such a moment. What to do? He came to an interesting conclusion: it is Messi, therefore you have to accept the challenge with as much focus as possible, but also without extra pressure as the normal outcome would be for Leo to go past him. Problem is at 3–1 down, Sporting still had a chance. As is so often the case, the theory for such a moment was easier said than done. The foul Autet committed deserved a red card. And Barcelona were not in a forgiving mood.
1–4. 70th minute: Iniesta makes the most of a chipped Messi through ball after an exquisite piece of play. 1–5. 85th minute: Messi hammers home a deflected Iniesta cross on the volley. 1–6. 89th minute: Messi heads home.
El País: Barça played the whole game in opposition territory. ‘It was crucial to press high,’ explained Guardiola, ‘because, thanks to the pressing of the attackers, many balls were recovered.’ Messi agreed with him: ‘We played with a very fast tempo from the start. This is the current Barça, this is how we want to play, although we must keep growing.’
That emphatic victory marked the point of no return for Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona. ‘We really started to click when we beat Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League and then Gijón. Leo felt at ease, was enjoying himself,’ remembers Gerard Piqué. The criticism disappeared, Samuel Eto’o stopped playing leader off the pitch (he was not even captain) and he focused on linking up with Leo and giving the team depth. And Messi started to establish himself as the focal point of the team, although at the time it was from the right wing. There was no let-up from the ever meticulous Pep, who stuck to his guns and asked him to perform a series of defensive duties, which he did – at least to begin with.
GB: You all decided that the leader on the pitch had to be Leo but at the time he is still on the right wing. Were you already planning on pushing him into the middle?
PG: No, no, no. Not at that time. We had Eto’o, who is the best centre-forward I’ve ever coached. No, I didn’t put him on the wing to then bring him into the middle. That was a different process. What I learned from Leo at that time was that he would vindicate himself on the pitch. That’s where he did the talking. He does it through actions, when he gets on the pitch it is as if he were saying ‘now I speak’, scoring two or three goals, every single day. This is something important he has learned as a sportsman: with all the noise in football, we all speak more than usual; the place where Leo talks is on the pitch. This is what he teaches us, this is his great value: he demonstrates that he doesn’t have to be anything else apart from a footballer. Unfinished business is settled there, on the pitch. I get the impression that is how the greats are, they don’t look for excuses: whether the coach has done it better or worse … Leo doesn’t play to please you. Leo won’t say to you ‘it’s your fault’ when things go really badly: the greats don’t look for excuses such as the coach played him out of position or it didn’t work out for me here or there. The perception I’ve always had of Leo is that he thinks: organise a team for me so I can get on the ball a lot and I’ll take care of the rest. Others would ask for that place, the one Leo has earned on the pitch for being important in the key, decisive moments; but then, unlike Leo, the moment of truth arrives and they fail. And they fail over and over again. And then make excuses. Leo doesn’t, you give Leo the ball, he takes a risk and wins you the match. That could be the clearest definition of what this guy is. He thinks: ‘If you don’t organise the team well, it’s your fault. If we have to get angry, we will, because I’m here to become known, to reach a much higher status, a status that only the greats from history reach. Therefore I don’t play to please you, nor do I play to please the fans, nor do I play for anybody … I play to improve every day. I will do it, but you have to give me the raw materials, you have to create the perfect situation for me to succeed. I’ll take care of the rest.’
Pep Guardiola described how the relationship between footballers and coaches is built to Albert Puig in his book La fuerza de un sueño (‘The Strength of a Dream’). ‘However professional they are, they are also scared of losing, and look for a figure to give them the key, to say to them: “Listen! Come this way …” This is what we coaches have to do. We have to transmit confidence and assurance through our decisions.’ Messi recognised that the new coach was not only demanding, but also capable of finding solutions that not even the players were capable of seeing. Guardiola was creating the conditions in which he could be at ease, and Leo was willing to be taken down that path.
But Pep had not arrived alone: he introduced dieticians and nutritionists to the first team to change the squad’s habits. The objective was to improve output and prevent muscular injuries by eating well. In a nutshell it was also to modernise training, at a time when more and more work was being put into the personal analysis of footballers.
Messi’s tears after tearing his femoral biceps against Celtic had been imprinted on Guardiola’s memory. The injury to the muscle that enables an individual to sprint was the Argentinian’s eighth in two years with the first team, more than half of them affecting that same muscle: in Rijkaard’s last season he was out for a total of two and a half months because of physical problems.
‘At a certain time eating habits change,’ says Juanjo Brau. ‘As you increase the demands, the fuel must be equally refined. As he grew both physically and as a footballer, he gradually had to make a few adjustments to his life. To go at fifty miles an hour, a normal lifestyle suffices; but to go quicker you need to function perfectly, and that requires refinements in your lifestyle.’
A holistic, global study of Messi’s physical condition was conducted, and deficiencies were revealed. ‘Leo started to see that Pep worried about improving his output, his nutrition,’ remembers Joan Laporta. ‘Back then he was still a boy who ate, as youngsters do, frankfurters, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and the like. We detected it and assigned him a nutritionist who did a spectacular job, and remember that Leo hardly got injured during the Guardiola era. I
’m of the opinion that Leo really valued that.’
Guardiola made all the players eat together at the training ground, breakfast before training and then lunch before going home. It was as much to do with the need to build a team spirit as it was about controlling their diets: out of three meals, the club provided two.
For Leo, that was the end of his favourite sweets, the end of fizzy drinks, Argentinian barbecues, pizzas, the Milaneses from Las Cuartetas, which he stopped going to after Pep’s arrival. He discovered fish, which he had always refused up to that point. Almost nothing fatty, lots of glucose, fruit, vegetables … Pep applied the tactics he’d learned earlier to communicate with Leo: he ‘recommended’ Leo follow the instructions. ‘From what I can see, this would be good for you …’ And Leo accepted with a certain ‘reluctance’, because of the obligation to vary his routine: we know that man is an animal of habit. But the results were decisive: free from injury, Messi saw the benefit of those strict changes and they ended up becoming a lifestyle. Leo gradually learned how to look after and listen to his body, as Frank Rijkaard had asked him to do years earlier.
Leo would hydrate himself and tone up as requested, he would rest as much as demanded – he was always a fan of the siesta but they were going to be taken at a regular time and not for long periods; one hour would do. With Juanjo Brau he would follow a personal training routine that he had already started under Rijkaard. ‘At the end of the day he is a different player and different players must be treated differently,’ insists Brau. ‘As long as it doesn’t affect the stability of the group, of course.’ The group accepted the difference: they knew it was going to help them win.
Since then, Brau has been with Leo before matches to do specific warming-up exercises and stretches, so that he can then join his team-mates on the pitch for some group work. Juanjo hardly speaks to him during these sessions. He just gives him short, snappy orders: ‘Control this. Pay attention.’ If there’s danger of injury but it’s an important match, one of those in which it is necessary to play, Brau will remind him that he must be aware of how his body is feeling. ‘Don’t drive yourself mad, only make the necessary runs, listen to yourself, your body will tell you, if you notice anything, raise your hand …’ Footballers have to follow much more than tactical instructions.
At the end of training or a match, Brau goes up to him again and asks him about his muscular requirements. ‘Should we do anything today? We should warm down your legs.’ It is a question of asking him for a translation of what his muscles demand from him and working the miracle of readjusting his body to prime settings on the treatment table. If strength and speed are worked on with the team, injury prevention is in the hands of Brau and down to Leo’s lifestyle. Those are the keys to physical preparation.
The study of Messi’s morphology also produced a change on the pitch. He is often accused of resting during matches, of not pressing and of drifting. There was a scientific explanation for this that Pep asked him to apply to his game after a particular condition was identified. Leo has a muscle typology with a very high energy consumption; his muscles empty themselves of energy very quickly and recover almost as swiftly. But the gap is extreme and that means a period of rest before another effort. ‘He can’t be up and down all the time because his muscular typology is not suited to such physical demands,’ explains Juanjo Brau.
Messi was asked to expend his energies more sparingly. It was explained to him that, as they are all so finely tuned and so physically demanding, he could not permanently be looking for excellence in every passage of play. Not that he would be unable to find it, but it was better for his body for him to choose the moments. ‘Leo has a professional and footballing maturity level which helps him make his efforts fruitful,’ concludes Brau.
And so a fragile body gradually became a top athlete’s physique. From that injury against Celtic in March 2008 until Guardiola’s departure four years later, ‘the Flea’ was only out from injury for ten days. He played 219 games in those seasons. Guardiola, almost like a sergeant major on such issues, was constantly monitoring him so that his good habits were maintained.
If the youth team gave Leo collective mentality and formation, and Rijkaard gave him confidence, Pep Guardiola added order to his life. When he arrived in Barcelona, Leo was 1.43 metres tall and weighed 35 kilos. With Pep he stabilised at 1.69 metres and 69 kilos, but, more importantly, he discovered body language.
‘There is one thing that I’ve repeated many times in the conferences I’ve given on leadership,’ adds Ferran Soriano. ‘Messi described Pep Guardiola to me in one short sentence: “He’s awesome, because he’s strict but right.” He added work to the group following a period when nobody worked much.’
After the win over Sporting Gijón, a cycle began which required all the elements of the Camp Nou dressing room: the local hero, Pep, who found footballers who were fed up with the best players’ poor discipline, a group of home-grown players who established very high standards, and Messi, who was reaching his peak.
The perfect storm was brewing.
3. 4–0 VICTORY OVER BAYERN MUNICH. BUT ISSUES REMAIN
Martín Souto: Why do you never get taken off? Why never? There are games that you’re winning 3–0 and it’s clear that you don’t stay on just so you can score goals, but if they want to take you off, you get angry.
Leo Messi: Because I don’t like going off. I like finishing games, no matter how they are going. I prefer coming on to going off. I want to play. I don’t like the idea of things happening while I’m stuck on the bench.
Martín Souto: And one day you got angry, is that right? You were taken off, you didn’t like it and didn’t go to the following training session supposedly because you had a temperature but you were really irritated about being taken off, in the Pep era, right?
Leo Messi: Yes, against Valencia. We were 4–0 up.
Martín Souto: 4–0? You’re nuts!
Leo Messi: Yes, it was stupid. I got over it afterwards.
(Leo Messi interview with Martín Souto, TyC Sports, March 2013)
Pep Guardiola discovered one of Leo’s pressure points early on in his tenure. As he admitted to Martín Souto, Messi got annoyed because he was replaced in the eighty-first minute by Pedro. With the match already wrapped up with an emphatic 4–0 lead, Pep wanted to give him a rest in preparation for the Real Madrid match seven days later. Thierry Henry had scored a hat-trick but Leo was quiet. According to Catalan radio station RAC1, ‘the Flea’ turned up at the training ground the following day but did not get changed and was clearly mad about the match and substitution.
Messi gets angry when he is replaced and also when he is not given the ball when he thinks he should get it. But, as Estiarte once said to Leo, other footballers simply do not see the game as he does: ‘I used to be like you. I would see it clearly, but the thing is it is not that obvious to the others. They aren’t as good as you.’
‘Look, I also get annoyed when they don’t pass it to me, if I see an opening and I don’t get the ball,’ explains Gustavo Oberman, the Argentine international who won the Under 20 World Cup alongside Messi. ‘Maybe his anger is more noticeable with so many cameras on him. But it is something that every player does, from the best in the world to the village boys having a kickabout with friends. I do it because I think the best option is down my side and there are times when I don’t pass because I can’t see the other openings. It isn’t out of selfishness or personal ambition, because he provides many assists, too, he doesn’t just score.’
That was the same Leo whom Pep discovered to be competitive to the extreme, even in friendlies. Diego Milito tells of how Messi used to shout: ‘Pass to me, I’ll sort it out’ if his team was losing in a kickabout in training. He also followed football codes that he had learned in Argentina: in the book When We Never Lost Juan Villoro tells of a training session in which Sergio Busquets went hard in on the ball and gashed Messi’s leg. The session continued and in the dressing room the midfielder went to ap
ologise to him. ‘The victim answered in a measured voice,’ Villoro continues, ‘pointing to the wound: “it says Sergio Busquets here”.’ Leo was not going to forget that; he owed him one. ‘Days later, the incident apparently forgotten, he tackled Busquets very hard and smiled with almost childish glee: it had been payback time.’ Villoro explains that in a game against Espanyol, the city rivals, at their stadium in Cornella, he celebrated the 5–1 victory by patrolling the wing nearest to the benches, occasionally throwing sidelong glances at the rival coach, fellow Argentinian Mauricio Pochettino.
And every now and then if a winger or forward, those around him, didn’t pass him the ball, he would also show his disgust. Guardiola understood that those were two faces of the same coin. And he was learning how to handle it.
Since starting his career in the game, Pep has always known there are footballers who have to be treated differently. He saw it in the Barcelona dressing room as a player with Hristo Stoichkov and Romario. When he started to think as a coach, he reflected on how such supposed favouritism could be applied without affecting the group. While at Brescia in 2003, he decided to call the Argentina volleyball coach Julio Velasco, a two-time world champion, for advice.
‘There is an Argentine coach, Julio Velasco, who revolutionised volleyball in Italy and won absolutely everything,’ explained Guardiola in a Banco de Sabadell interview. ‘One day I was very keen to meet him, and when I did he told me that he had always got other coaches to repeat to him: “all players are the same, for me you are all the same.” That is the biggest lie in the sport, Velasco told me. They are not all the same, nor do they all have to be treated the same; with the same respect, yes … To get the best out of someone, you might have to invite him out to eat away from the workplace; or you might have to summon him to your office; or maybe you should never speak to him about tactics; or you might speak to him about what he does in his free time all day long. You have to find the way with each one, that is the fascinating part of our job; what to say to him, or what to do to him, or how to trick him or how to seduce him to bring him to your field and get the best out of him. We appear to be above them, that is how they see us. In reality we are below, because we depend on them and we want to “trick them” to get the best out of them, to get what we hope for.’
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