‘Pepe,’ you said to him – and he was too respectful to correct you about getting his name wrong – ‘you have to make sure you don’t lose sight of who you are. Many young coaches change, for whatever reason – because of circumstances beyond their control, because things don’t come out right at first or because success can change you. All of a sudden, they want to amend tactics, themselves. They don’t realise football is a monster that you can only beat and face if you are always yourself: under any circumstance.’
For you, it was perhaps little more than some friendly advice, satisfying a fatherly instinct you have often had for the new faces on the scene. Yet, unintentionally perhaps, you revealed to Pep the secrets of your enduring resilience in the football profession, your need to continue and your strange relationship with the sport, where sometimes you feel trapped and at other times liberated.
Your words came back to him more than once while he was agonisingly deliberating his future. He understands what you were talking about, but, nevertheless, he could not help changing during his four years leading the Barcelona first team. Football, that monster, transformed him.
You warned him against losing sight of his true self, but he changed, partly due to the pressure from a grateful and adoring fanbase, who forgot he was only a football coach; partly because of his own behaviour, eventually being unable to take decisions that would hurt him and hurt his players – the emotional toll ended up being too much, became insurmountable, in fact. It reached the point where Pep believed the only way he could recover some of his true self was to leave behind everything that he had helped create.
It turned out that, as much as he wanted to heed your advice, Pep is not like you, Sir Alex. You sometimes compare football to a strange type of prison, one that you in particular don’t to want to escape. Arsène Wenger shares your view and is also incapable of empathising with or understanding Guardiola’s decision to abandon a gloriously successful team, with the world’s best player at his disposal, adored and admired by all.
On the morning that Pep announced his departure from Barcelona, three days after Chelsea had shocked the football world by dumping them out of the Champions League in the semi-final, Wenger told the media: ‘The philosophy of Barcelona has to be bigger than winning or losing a championship. After being knocked out of the Champions League, it may not be the right moment to make this decision. I would have loved to see Guardiola – even going through a disappointing year – stay and come back and insist with his philosophy. That would be interesting.’
Guardiola’s mind is often in turmoil, spinning at 100 rpm before every decision – still questioning it even after he’s come to a conclusion. He couldn’t escape his destiny (as a coach, going back to Barcelona) but he is incapable of living with the level of intensity that would eventually grind him down. His world is full of uncertainty, debate, doubts and demands that he can never reconcile or satisfy. They are ever-present: when he is golfing with his friends; or sprawled on the sofa at home, watching a movie with his partner Cris and their three children; or unable to sleep at night. Wherever he is, he is always working, thinking, deciding, always questioning. And the only way he can disconnect from his job (and the huge expectations) is to sever his ties completely.
He arrived full of life as a novice coach with the B team in 2007. He left as first-team coach, drained, five years – and fourteen titles – later. Don’t take my word for it; Pep himself said how exhausted he felt in the press conference when he confirmed that he was leaving.
Remember when, before the 2011 Ballon d’Or event, you were once asked about Pep? You were both at the press conference that coincided with your lifetime achievement award and Pep’s recognition as manager of the year. You were frank in your response: ‘Where is Guardiola going to go that will be better than at home? I don’t understand why he would want to leave all that.’
That same day, Andoni Zubizarreta, the Barcelona director of football and long-time friend of Pep, aware of the influence of that chat in Nyon and the esteem he holds you in, referred to your words in conversation with Guardiola: ‘Look what this wise man, Alex Ferguson, full of real-world and football experience, is saying …’, to which Pep, having already told Zubi that he was thinking of leaving at the end of that season, replied, ‘You bastard. You are always looking for ways to confuse me!’
Sir Alex, just look at the images of Pep when he first stepped up to take charge of Barcelona’s first team in 2008. He was a youthful looking thirty-seven-year-old. Eager, ambitious, energetic. Now look at him four years later. He doesn’t look forty-one, does he? On that morning in Nyon, he was a coach in the process of elevating a club to new, dizzying heights, of helping a team make history. By the time of your brief chat overlooking Lake Geneva, Pep had already found innovative tactical solutions, but in the following seasons he was going to defend and attack in even more revolutionary ways, and his team was going to win almost every competition in which they took part.
The problem was that, along the way, every victory was one victory closer to, not further from, the end.
A nation starved of contemporary role models, struggling through a recession, elevated Pep into a social leader, the perfect man: an ideal. Scary even for Pep. As you know, Sir Alex, nobody is perfect. And you might disagree, but there are very, very few who can endure the weight of such a burden upon their shoulders.
To be a coach at Barcelona requires a lot of energy and after four years, now that he no longer enjoyed the European nights, now that Real Madrid had made La Liga an exhausting challenge both on and off the pitch, Pep felt it was time to depart from the all-consuming entity he had served – with a break of only six years – since he was thirteen. And when he returns – because he will return – isn’t it best to do so having left on a high?
Look again at the pictures of Pep, Sir Alex. Does it not now become clearer that he has given his all for FC Barcelona?
Part I
Why Did He Have to Leave?
1
THE ‘WHYS ’
In November 2011, just before the last training session ahead of the trip to Milan for a Champions League group game, Pep, who was in his fourth year with the first team, asked the players to form a circle. He started to explain the secret that he, Tito Vilanova and the doctors had kept from the squad, but he couldn’t articulate what he wanted to say. The enormity of the moment left him lost for words. He was anxious and uncomfortable. His voice wobbled and he moved aside. The doctors took over and explained the gravity of the situation to the players while Pep kept looking at the floor and drinking from his ever-present bottle of water that was supposed to prevent his voice from quavering. It didn’t work on that occasion.
The medical staff explained that the assistant manager, Tito Vilanova, Pep’s right-hand man and close friend, would have to undergo emergency surgery to remove a tumour from his parotid gland, the largest of the salivary glands – and therefore he would not be able to travel to Italy with them.
Two hours later the Barcelona players left town in a state of shock. Pep appeared distant, isolated, wandering separately from the group, deep in contemplation. The team ended up beating Milan 3-2 at the San Siro to top the Champions League group in a thrilling game in which neither side concentrated on defending, treating the fans to an end-to-end encounter with lots of chances. But, despite the result, Pep remained understandably melancholic.
Life, as the saying goes, is what happens when you are busy making other plans. It is also that thing that slaps you in the face and makes you fall when you think you are invincible, when you forget falling is also part of the rules. Guardiola, who accelerated his inquisition of everything when he found out his friend was ill, went through a similar thought process when he was told that Eric Abidal had a tumour on his liver the previous season. The French left back recovered enough to play a brief part in the second leg of the semifinals of the Champions League against Real Madrid in what Pep would describe as the ‘most emotional night’
he could remember at the Camp Nou. Abidal came on in the ninetieth minute, when the game was 1-1 and Barcelona were on the verge of another Champions League final, having beaten Madrid in the first leg. The stadium gave him a powerful standing ovation which was something of a rarity. For Catalans are very much like the English: they have a safety-innumbers approach to showing their feelings, until a collective wave of public emotion lets them release much of what they innately repress.
Weeks later, Puyol, unbeknown to Pep or anybody in the squad, would give Abidal the captain’s armband to allow him to receive the European Cup from Platini. Almost a year later, the doctors would tell the French left back that the treatment had failed and he needed a transplant.
The health problems of Abidal and Vilanova left Guardiola shaken; they hit him very hard. It was an unforeseen, uncontrollable situation, difficult to deal with for someone who likes to predict and micromanage what happens in the squad and to have a contingency plan when things come out of the blue. But with them he was helpless. There was nothing he could do. Much more than that – the lives of people he felt responsible for were on the line.
After that victory in Milan, Barcelona had to travel to Madrid to play a modest Getafe side. Defeat meant that neither Guardiola nor the team, who dominated that game but failed to make an impact in front of their opponent’s goal, could dedicate a victory that night to Tito Vilanova, who was on the road to recovery following a successful operation to remove the tumour.
Barcelona lost the game 1-0 in a cold, half-empty stadium, in the kind of ugly match in which it was becoming increasingly more challenging to inspire a group of players (and also the manager) who had been the protagonists on so many glorious nights. Pep was upset at dropping three points, as their League campaign seemed to be faltering far too early in the season. Real Madrid, who had beaten their city rival Atlético de Madrid 4-1 away, were now five points ahead and they seemed unstoppable, hungry for success and with a burning desire to bring Guardiola’s era to an end.
La Liga wasn’t the only reason for Pep feeling low – and his appearance after the game worried members of the team. On the flight back to Barcelona, in the early hours of Sunday 27 November 2011, Pep had never looked more isolated, down in the dumps and untalkative: far more bitter than he would have been had it just been a case of dealing with a defeat. There was a space next to him on the plane, an empty aisle seat – and nobody wanted to fill it. It was where Tito Vilanova would have sat.
It would be difficult to pinpoint a lower moment for the Barça coach’s morale.
‘It would be silly not to see the job through.’ That is what Sir Alex Ferguson would have told Pep before he made his decision. But the Manchester United manager might have thought differently had he had seen Pep, alone, on that flight.
Andoni Zubizarreta had witnessed first hand the effect of Tito’s illness on Pep; he’d seen it on the trips to Milan and Madrid and in the way the coach behaved at the training ground around those games. It was as if he’d had a puncture and all his energy was leaking out through the hole. He seemed deflated, thinner, stooped, suddenly older and greyer.
Zubi wished now he’d known then what to say to Pep, how to comfort and support him. It might not have changed anything, but the feeling of regret persists.
Of course, Tito pulled through, but that week confirmed Pep’s worst fears – he was not ready for more: more responsibility, more searching for solutions, more crisis avoidance and endless hours of work and preparation, more time away from his family.
It confirmed a nagging doubt that had persisted since October, when just after the Bate Borisov Champions League game, he told Zubi and president Sandro Rosell that he didn’t feel strong enough to continue for another season: that if he was asked to renew his contract right then, his answer would be ‘no’. It was not a formal decision, but he was making his feelings known. The reaction of the club was instant: he would be given time, there was no need to rush.
Zubi, a lifelong friend and colleague, understands Pep’s character – and knew that it was best not to put pressure on him. The director of football hoped that Pep’s revelation could be attributed to him feeling a little tired, understandably low: something of an emotional rollercoaster that he had seen Guardiola riding on a few occasions when they were team-mates.
Yet Zubizarreta also recalled a meal he had with Pep in his first season with the first team. It was a meeting between friends. Zubi wasn’t working for the club at that point and Pep was still very excited about what he was doing with the side and how well everything was being received. His enthusiasm was contagious. Yet he reminded Zubizarreta that his job at Barcelona came with an expiry date. It was a defence mechanism for Pep, because he knew as well as anybody that the club could chew up and spit out managers mercilessly. Pep was insistent that one day he would lose his players, his messages wouldn’t carry the same weight, that the whole environment (the media, the president’s enemies, talk-show panels, former coaches and players) would be impossible to control in the long term.
A friend of Pep’s, Charly Rexach – former player, assistant manager to Johan Cruyff and Barcelona first-team coach, an icon of the Catalan club and legendary public philosopher – always said that a Barcelona manager dedicates only 30 per cent of his efforts to the team: the other 70 per cent is spent dealing with the rest of the baggage that comes with such a huge institution. Pep sensed this when he was a player, but as a coach he quickly experienced that interminable pressure – and that Charly’s calculation was correct.
Johan Cruyff, who regularly shared long meals with Guardiola, understood that as well and had already warned Pep that the second year was harder than the first, and the third harder than the second. And if he could relive his experience as boss of the Dream Team, he would have left the club two years earlier. ‘Don’t stay longer than you should,’ Cruyff told Pep on one occasion.
So Zubizarreta knew it was going to be difficult to convince him to stay, but would give it his best shot. The director of football mixed protection with silence, and sometimes a bit of pressure in search of an answer. The answer never came. Guardiola’s responses to Zubi’s questions about his future were always the same: ‘You already know what I’m going through, it is difficult’ and ‘We’ll talk, we’ll talk’.
At the start of the 2011–12 season, after the league and the Champions League had been won, Guardiola called a meeting with his players to remind them what every coach has told his successful team since the day football was invented: ‘You should know that the story doesn’t end here. You must keep on winning.’ And the team continued winning silverware: the Spanish Super Cup, the European Super Cup and the World Club Championship in December.
With limited weapons in his armoury due to the absences of Villa and Abidal, and after having built a small squad, Barcelona paid a high price in La Liga for the energy they put into the Copa and the Super Cup (games in which they celebrated wins over Real Madrid). Barcelona’s fanbase supported Pep, obsessed as they all were with halting their bitter rival’s revival.
In September, the game against AC Milan in the group stage of the Champions League was a turning point and an omen for the season ahead. The Italians drew 2-2 in the last minutes of the game at the Camp Nou – the equaliser the consequence of a poorly defended corner – and Guardiola reached the conclusion that his team had lost its competitive edge and there was a lack of attention being paid to the finer points that had made Barcelona so special. This was followed by a run of relatively poor away form in La Liga, that included that 1-0 defeat to Getafe in November.
Pep periodically asked himself if the players were getting his message the way they were a few years ago; he debated the reasons why the 3-4-3 system he had been using that year wasn’t working to plan. He took risks with the line-up, as if he knew that there wouldn’t be a fifth season. He sensed that it was getting increasingly difficult to control his players, some of whom could even lose their way in the world of football if they di
dn’t start correcting their bad habits. Dani Alvés, who separated from his wife during the summer and made the mistake of returning late from his holidays over Christmas, was given the unexpected surprise of a week off mid-season to clear his mind – an unprecedented move, at least one done so openly, in the history of Spanish football’s greats.
Furthermore, there were a couple of occasions when the full back would receive a telling-off in front of his team-mates for not paying attention to tactics, something Pep rarely did. ‘A defender, first and foremost you’re a defender,’ he told him after a game in which he got involved in the attack more than he should have done. The Brazilian, meanwhile, was unimpressed when he was left on the bench. He wasn’t the only one. Seeing their distraught faces during games upset Pep. He spoke indirectly to the players who were angry about being left out of the team by praising the behaviour of players such as Puyol and Keita when they weren’t starting. ‘I’m sure they’ve called me everything, but the first thing they did when they found out was support the team,’ he told them.
Logically, those kinds of problems multiplied as the seasons went by, commonplace in any dressing room. But every conflict, even the most trivial, was chipping away at the bridges Pep had so delicately constructed with his squad.
There were still high points. Barcelona eliminated Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of the cup in February and Guardiola appeared to have gone back to being the Pep of previous seasons: energetic, challenging, inexhaustible. The team was still fighting for every trophy and the board thought that success would convince him to stay, even though his silence on his future had started to become the subject of criticism from some directors who referred to Pep as the ‘Dalai Lama’ or the ‘mystic’. In a way, the club was a hostage to Guardiola’s decision.
Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography Page 2