‘Where would we be if we hadn’t beaten Sporting?’ Iniesta says now. The victory proved to be a sign of things to come.
2
THE EXTRAORDINARY 2–6 AT THE SANTIAGO BERNABÉU
‘Being a coach is fascinating. That’s why it’s so difficult for some to give it up. It’s sweet, a constant feeling of excitement, your head is going at 100 mph all the time’ – Pep Guardiola, 2008.
Pep could only see the positives in the early days of his coaching career, embracing the moment; there was always his inner voice reminding him that he was there for the short term. Methodical with a passion, Pep thrived on organising, making decisions, sharing experiences, applying what he had learnt over the years. His life centred on becoming the best manager he could be and tales of his dedication to the job and attention to detail started to spread around Barcelona.
He had already shown that he was more than a coach who believed his job began and ended with giving instructions to a group of players out on a pitch, and repeatedly demonstrated an empathy and ability to understand the needs of those around him; taking responsibility for the welfare of anyone related to the sporting side of the football club.
Before being appointed first-team coach back in May 2008, Pep was focused upon getting the reserve team promoted to the Second B division when he took time to visit Gabi Milito. The Argentinian centre half was a regular in Rijkaard’s first team and was recovering from an operation on his knee. Despite the fact that Pep hardly had a moment to spare – not least because his daughter Valentina had just been born – he surprised Milito with a visit that lasted more than three hours to encourage and offer moral support to the player. Pep also spoke of his love for Argentinian football, of his admiration for Menotti and Bielsa. Milito was won over by Pep’s charm and was especially surprised when Pep told the media: ‘I’d prefer to see Gabi playing football again than win a title.’
After the final whistle in a cup match at the Nou Camp against Second B minnows Cultural Leonesa, Guardiola bumped into a group of the modest players hovering around the door of the Barcelona dressing room, hoping to swap shirts with their Barça counterparts. Pep greeted them all with a warm smile and threw open the door to the first team’s sanctuary, telling the star-struck opposition players to ‘go on in, please, and make yourself at home’. Cultural’s players couldn’t believe it.
Now that he was a manager himself he soon discovered the solitude of the job and made efforts to be included as a member of the coaching fraternity. Emulating one of the more courteous traditions of the English game, Pep spent his own money on making sure that there was always a bottle of wine ready to share with the visiting coach after a match. If a fellow manager at another club was sacked, he would send him a message of support, even once cancelling all his own prior engagements to organise a private meal with one individual to offer him encouragement only days after his dismissal.
He has an incredible capacity for hard work: upon returning home from Milan after a Champions League encounter at around 4 a.m., Pep found that he couldn’t sleep, so he went to the training complex to watch a video or two of their next rivals. He would increasingly have to turn to sleeping pills throughout his tenure, particularly in his final season in charge.
One of the first decisions that Guardiola took was to make sure that all the money collected from fines that were imposed on the squad went to a charitable organisation, instead of going towards team meals, as was the custom. The sanctions couldn’t contribute to a reward for the team, hence he thought of a much more supportive use for them. At the start of his first season, he donated the proceeds to the Sant Joan de Déu Foundation, which investigates Rett’s Syndrome, a serious mental illness.
When Pep signed a marketing agreement with Sabadell Bank, committing to a number of lectures and personal interviews as part of the deal – while still refusing to give one-to-one interviews to the media – he was initially labelled a money-grabber by some of his critics. However, he was soon vindicated when it emerged that he had shared out all the money he received from the bank between his staff as a way of acknowledging their dedication to a project in which each person had done his bit. Meanwhile, the bank was delighted with an upturn in their number of clients, a 48 per cent increase in Catalonia and 65 per cent in Madrid.
At the start of the season Audi, as they do every year, presented a car to each first-team player as well as the coach; Pep, however, refused to accept his: if there were no cars for his technical staff, then he would not take one either.
In November of Pep’s first year in charge, the goalkeeping coach, Juan Carlos Unzué, lost his father after a long illness. Guardiola didn’t have to think twice – despite the fact that Barça had a game the following day, the first-team coach rearranged the entire pre-match schedule to take the squad to Orkoien in Navarra, 223 miles away, to attend the funeral.
The season was going well. Aside from a poor run of three draws in March (against Betis, Lyon and Mallorca) and two defeats (against Espanyol and Atlético de Madrid) that led to some reactionary criticism from certain quarters, the overall feeling among the supporters was one of euphoria. There was a sense that, under Pep Guardiola, something special was happening at the Nou Camp.
Their football seemed to dominate the opposition, with a high percentage of possession and effective pressure high up the field; Xavi, Iniesta, Eto’o and Henry seemed entirely different players from the season before and the new additions to the team were an improvement. ‘I feel strong and optimistic,’ was how Pep described his feelings around that time. Barça bounced back from their mini crisis in that spring of 2009 by going on a run of nine consecutive wins. This spell was followed by two draws – against Valencia (2-2) in La Liga and Chelsea in the 0-0 first leg of the Champions League semi-final) – that made the end of the season run-in tense and unforgettable.
The Clásico at the Bernabéu that May would be decisive. Going into that match, Barcelona were top with five games remaining and, with the two arch rivals separated by four points, a win for Guardiola’s side would effectively guarantee that the title would be heading back to the Camp Nou.
Pep treated the game against Real Madrid like a cup final and demanded the same bold approach that he had seen from his team throughout the season. ‘We want to be champions, don’t we?’ he asked his players in the days leading up to the visit to Madrid. ‘Now is the time to take this step. I only ask that we go out there with our heads held high because these are the games that define us, they are what do our job justice.’
For such a pivotal match, Guardiola was considering handing Messi the tremendous responsibility of playing as a false striker for the first time. Guardiola had already won the confidence of the little Argentinian and had started the process of building a team around him at that stage. But the relationship between coach and player hadn’t always been that easy.
At the beginning Pep was worried. He wanted to get Messi on his side because he had a feeling that the lad, who at the time was just twenty-one years old, was a diamond in the rough. He foresaw that Barça would depend on him and he was scared of losing him. So he had to establish with Messi a dynamic, a relationship formed on common ground before they could work together. To do so, the coach had to adjust his idea of the team to include an extraordinarily gifted and hungry individual, while at the same time convincing the player – shy, quiet, even distant off the pitch – he had to accept his leadership.
Unmoved by the status of legends or even the credit that an exceptional career in football gives former players, in Messi’s eyes Guardiola was little more than just another coach. At the time of Pep’s appointment, Messi was drifting into melancholy, having become increasingly disillusioned during the last few months of the undisciplined Rijkaard regime.
The beginning of Pep’s tenure was a period of uncertainty for the young Messi. For all the faults of the former regime, it must be remembered that Rijkaard had given Messi his debut and the Argentinian felt protected under the
Dutchman. Then along came Pep, a new boss, new regime, and instantly got rid of Ronaldinho, Messi’s friend, mentor and neighbour (three houses away) in Castelldefels. Messi understood the reasons for the changes and had recently grown closer to Puyol and Xavi as he saw the damage Ronnie was doing to himself, but, nevertheless, it was a period of change in the youngster’s life and he needed to establish a connection, the right one, with the new man in charge.
Pep had wanted to impress upon Leo the idea of a group above everything else, not just because he had been a midfield general but also because he understood that it was necessary for the type of football that he wanted to put into practice. Guardiola had identified Leo’s drive but, crucially, he had misunderstood it, mistaking it for selfishness. ‘I wanted to make Pep understand that it was ambition, not selfishness. Leo is so self-demanding, wants to play every game, win every title, to such an extent that he transmits that to others and it becomes like a tsunami,’ reveals Manel Estiarte, the ‘Messi of water polo’ in his day, and a man brought to the club by his friend Pep as player liaison. Leo always wanted the ball, to be the main protagonist, to finish a move. ‘It’s like a demon inside you that you don’t know you have, and you can’t control it. That is what has made him become the best football player of all time. And I tried to explain all that to Pep.’
In contrast, Guardiola believed that the coach has to make the really big decisions every single day on behalf of every player in his squad. This creates a false sense of power because you realise that, in the end, the footballers are the ones who go out and follow your instructions. The coach’s ideas and Messi’s talent and desire had to meet somewhere in the middle.
Deep down, Pep had never forgotten the lesson he learnt on that day that he missed out on Michel Platini’s autograph. Now he reminded himself that it would be useful in this case.
Guardiola’s boyhood hero, it will be remembered, had been allowed to remain in the dressing room while the rest of his team-mates warmed up. It confirmed that the greatest lie in football is that all players are treated as equals. Later, when Pep was a teenager, Julio Velasco, the successful volleyball coach, taught him that your best player could often be both your greatest asset and your heaviest burden at the same time: ‘You must know how to seduce him, trick him into getting the best out of him, because in our job we are above them, but we’re also below them because we depend on them,’ he told Pep.
Guardiola understood what he had to do, knowing that he intended to love all his players equally – but he wasn’t going to treat them all exactly the same.
Johan Cruyff had harboured just one doubt about Guardiola: ‘As a Catalan, would he be able to make decisions?’ The Dutchman considers Catalonia a nation that is often lacking in initiative. Initiative would be key, in Cruyff’s eyes, because in his experience he had seen that every team in the world had its own Messi (that is, a star player, although clearly not at his level); but not all coaches knew how to get the best out of him.
Guardiola pretty much answered Cruyff’s concerns on his first day in the job, at his inaugural press conference, when he announced that Messi would be liberated from the shadow of Ronaldinho. But this had other implications, effectively ensuring that Messi wasn’t going to be the focal point through his actions but by default, because Pep would get rid of anyone who could overshadow him. Although he had to keep Eto’o for a season longer than he initially anticipated, Ronaldinho and Deco were moved swiftly out of the club and out of Messi’s way. Of the stars who remained, Henry was made to play on the wing when the Frenchman wanted to play as a number nine. There was only one ball and that belonged to Messi.
Guardiola knew that it would become impossible for anybody to try and compete with his star; he had never, ever, seen anyone like him. From very early on in his tenure, Guardiola recognised that, while it was true his Barcelona team represented an array of talented individuals who were combining to form an outstanding football team, Lionel Messi was going to take that group to another level. In subjugating every ego under one individual, by making just one player the focal point for a team that otherwise defined itself as a true collective, Pep was asking others to consent to something that could only be accepted by those who had lived and grown up alongside Messi and who knew, better than anyone else, that this was not simply the whim of some star-struck coach. It was a decision based upon the knowledge that the star of this team would be someone truly, truly special.
So Pep took another step that delighted Messi. While he would be given the opportunity to lead the way through his football, the burden of leadership in other areas would not fall on his shoulders. At just twenty-one, the weight of responsibility would be too much. Instead, the captaincy would be shared among the core of home-grown players. Not only would Pep give the youth team footballers the chance to progress to the first team, but he would also give them the chance to become captains, role models and representatives of FC Barcelona. It was a responsibility shared by Puyol, sometimes Xavi, Valdés or even Iniesta. They would captain the ship: Messi would be the wind in their sails.
It was in stark contrast to Messi’s position with the national team of Argentina: there he was not only expected to lead the way and make decisions on the field, but also to captain the side. The armband imposed a burden on Messi, who just wanted to get on with playing his football, not to have to argue with the referee in defence of his team-mates, nor to be anybody’s role model, nor give inspirational speeches.
In the same way that the coach, after some reflection, started understanding what made Messi tick, so Pep was convinced that he would understand everything that he would ask of him, and, if not, he would charm him into understanding. However, Pep also knew that he needed something that would win the player over completely. And he found it, even though the new coach had to convince the club that it was the right thing to do.
During Pep’s first few training sessions with the team in Scotland, Pep and Messi had two public confrontations.
In the first, Messi reacted angrily to a Rafa Márquez tackle. The players squared up to each other and Pep rushed over to them and reprimanded them. Messi wanted to avoid him but the coach took him to one side. The Argentinian stared at the ground and backed away from Pep.
A similar scene was repeated two days later. Guardiola approached Messi to ask him to explain his cold attitude during training. He told Messi that, if he had a problem, he should tell him to his face but he knew exactly what was going on: Messi was sulking because he wanted to go to the Olympic Games in Beijing with Argentina – but Barcelona were against releasing him as the dates coincided with the first round of the Champions League qualifiers against Wisła Kraków. The matter had gone before a sporting tribunal, where it was established that the club was within its rights not to grant him permission to go, despite FIFA’s demands to the contrary.
However, while the club and Argentinian Federation locked horns, the player felt like a pawn in a dispute in which he had little interest. All he knew was that he wanted to play football for his country in the Olympic Games – and Barcelona were denying him that opportunity.
It provided Pep with the chance he had been looking for.
The coach sat down with president Laporta, Beguiristain and Estiarte in the suite of the hotel in which the team were staying in the United States for a pre-season tour. He explained that if the club could ignore the ruling and let Messi go to the Olympics, the long-term gain outweighed the short-term loss: it would allow him to get the best out of Messi. Nobody dared tell Pep that he was a novice, that this was a decision that should be made by the club. Champions League football was at stake, after all. Pep asked them to trust him.
A little while later he had a chat with Messi. ‘Leo,’ he told him, ‘I’m going to let you go because I have been an Olympic champion and I want you to be one too. But you owe me one.’
It proved to be the first building block in the construction of a relationship that grew stronger and stronger during the four years
the pair were united at FC Barcelona. Pep’s gesture brought them together at a time when they could have been driven apart before things even got going. Pep had decided again that, if mistakes were going to be made, they would be a consequence of his own decision-making and not those of others.
Later, Pep would make Messi a promise: ‘Listen to me, Leo, stick close to me. With me you will score three or four goals every game.’
Before he made his debut in an official game with Guardiola, Messi travelled to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. He returned to Barcelona an Olympic gold medallist – and he understood that it would not have been possible without the intervention of his new boss.
‘If Leo smiles, everything is easier,’ Pep repeated often.
It was time for the showdown against the old enemy, in a match that could effectively seize the La Liga trophy from Real Madrid and hand the title to FC Barcelona in Pep Guardiola’s debut season as a first-team coach. A win for the visitors to the Bernabéu would virtually guarantee them the championship, giving them a seven-point lead with four games remaining; defeat would leave them just a point above their hosts. It was a genuine ‘six-pointer’.
Pep and his boys were facing the biggest challenge and the most high-pressure game of their time together so far, at the end of what had become an exemplary season.
Standing between them and glory were Real Madrid: not only their eternal rivals, but an outfit in extraordinary form, even if their football was a little dull. Juande Ramos’ team had enjoyed a phenomenal second half of the season, collecting fifty-two out of a possible fifty-four points, drawing just one game, against Atlético de Madrid, after having lost at the Camp Nou (leaving them, at that stage, twelve points behind Barcelona). ‘We haven’t been playing to our highest level in every game so that we can give our all when the time comes to have our shot at taking the lead,’ said the Madrid coach.
Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography Page 17