This was Pep Guardiola’s first European final as a coach. The biggest club final in world football. He had less than a year’s experience as manager of a first team.
PG: On paper, that Manchester United side were dominant in every department. I was worried about everything about them: quick on the counter, strong in aerial play, conceding few goals. Sometimes the rival is better than you and you have to go out and defend, but we were going to be brave. And Manchester United knew it.
Subtle changes would have to be made – and those were the little details he had been visualising for weeks – but Guardiola told the players they just had to persist with the same things they had been doing all season. Most of the especially significant decisions that Pep had to make were related to the absentees and their replacements in the line-up. Puyol would have to move to his old position at full back, while midfielder Yaya Touré would fill in as an improvised centre half. Another midfielder, Seydou Keita, was considered ahead of Silvinho for the right-back slot vacated by Dani Alvés. However, when the idea was put to the player in training ahead of the final, a match that every player in the world would give anything to participate in, Keita told Pep, ‘Don’t play me there.’
Keita’s reasoning blew the manager away, because his motives were selfless rather than selfish, as they first appeared: ‘I would do anything for you, boss, but I have never played there. My team-mates will suffer,’ explained Keita. The player was putting the collective needs of the team ahead of any individual desire to play: the midfielder knew that he was not going to be in the line-up unless he was the makeshift right back. On more than one occasion since that day, Pep has said: ‘I’ve never met such a good and generous person as Keita.’ That week, the coach knew that his midfielder would do the job if he asked him to – ’I can still convince Keita,’ he kept saying – but, in the end, decided that Silvinho, who had participated little that year and would be playing his last game for the club, would play at left back in Rome.
‘I don’t know if we will beat United, but what I do know is that no team has beaten us either in possession of the ball or in courage. We will try to instil in them the fear of those who are permanently under attack,’ Pep told the media, translating his prediction into four different languages himself the day before the final. ‘I will tell the players to look their best because they are going to be on the telly for the whole world. Oh, and I believe it is going to rain. If not the pitch should be watered. That should be an obligation, to guarantee a spectacle. After all that, the enjoyment of fans is why we play this game.’
The British press made reigning European Champions Manchester United clear favourites to retain their title in Rome. Having also just secured their eleventh Premier League title, Ferguson’s side were brimming with confidence and self-belief and the mood was reflected across the country as fans and pundits alike predicted that the Red Devils would be too powerful for the diminutive Catalans.
In Catalonia the mood was far more circumspect: United were worthy of considerable respect.
Guardiola was on the verge of possibly his third title in an incredibly short managerial career, an historic treble – the first in the history of FC Barcelona – the greatest achievement for a debutant coach in the history of the game. ‘And if I win that third title, the Champions League, I could go home,’ joked Pep, ‘call it a day and finish my career there.’ He was asked, ‘What would Sir Alex make of that?’
‘I am sure he will think, “Look, here goes another one that will abandon this profession before me.”’
Back at the hotel after the pre-match press conference on the eve of the final, Pep organised a meeting with all his backroom staff and presented them with a photograph of them together, taken a few days before, with the inscription: ‘Thanks for everything. Pep’. The staff applauded and over the noise you could hear the voice of Guardiola shouting, ‘you are amazing, as good as the players, you are!’
Pep had a precious minute to reflect on the way up to his hotel room. He wanted to make sure everything had been organised according to plan. There had been, as happens ahead of every final, huge amounts of information to digest and elements to ponder apart from just tactics: such as the line-up, the state of the grass, logistical issues and even private and personal matters to take care of. It was something he had experienced many times before as a player and knew how quickly events caught up with you as time flew past in the build-up, so he began his preparations several weeks earlier.
Carlo Mazzone, Guardiola’s former coach at Brescia, had received a phone call ahead of the game. At first he thought it was somebody winding him up. ‘Carletto, this is Pep ... Pep Guardiola. I want you to come and watch our Barcelona.’ For Pep, it was important to invite those people from his past who had played their part in his journey: people like the seventy-two-year-old Italian coach, as well as other former Brescia team-mates and even others from his brief spell at Roma.
Closer to home, Pep learnt that Angel Mur, the club’s retired massage therapist for thirty-three years and one of Pep’s favourite members of staff from his playing days, did not have tickets, so he came as a personal guest of the manager.
All seemed in order, but, around midnight on the eve of the Champions League final, Pep lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, struggling to switch off and get to sleep.
The players had been joined by their partners the night before the final – contrary to the conventional belief that players become distracted with their wives or girlfriends around them – because Pep had experienced the excessive pressure and tension that builds to a crescendo on the eve of big games he knew how important it was for the players to relax. If having their nearest and dearest by their side helped them cope with the anxiety and even distracted them, it meant they would sleep more soundly the night before. That level of empathy with those under him became another of those little details for which his footballers are grateful to him.
As the lights finally went off in Pep’s hotel bedroom, the last-minute dress rehearsal of the Champions League ceremony at the Olympic stadium in Rome was coming to a close.
The day of the final. One surprise before kick-off
Andrés Iniesta: The minutes leading up to a Champions League final are like the minutes building up to any other game. Really. I don’t want to seem boring or take away any of the glamour from the world of football, but that’s the way it is. And it’s a good thing that it is like that. The same talks, the same customs.
However, their pre-match routine was not going to be the same as any other in Rome.
On 27 May 2009, with two hours to go before kick-off, the teams arrived at the stadium. Typically, Pep prefers to leave his charges alone for most of that time and deliberately tries to avoid going into the players’ dressing room up until the right moment, when he allows himself around five, ten minutes to intervene. But that night he had a surprise up his sleeve for the players.
Guardiola has an abundance of emotional intelligence, and needs, wants, to get in synch with his players. He can communicate with them in different ways, reach them with a word, a gesture, a look, a hug – it is easier to place instructions and demands in an open heart, and even to enjoy the profession if the relationships are based on trust and – yes, why not? – love.
Throughout the season, his speeches had engaged with the players emotionally before games but on this occasion he had prepared something different, something that would not require any additional words.
Pep Guardiola: What I have learnt over the years – I am aware tactics are very important, but the really great coaches are coaches of people and that human quality is what makes them better than the rest. Choosing the right people to look up to and give them the authority in a changing room is one of the many selections a coach has to make.
Sir Alex Ferguson: Well, in my experience, human beings want to do things the easiest possible way in life. I know some people who have retired at fifty years of age, don’t ask me why. So the drive that certain hu
man beings have got is different from the Scholes and the Giggs and the Xavis, you know, and Messi. I look at Messi and I say to myself, nothing is going to stop him being one of the greats. When he gets to thirty-four, thirty-five, most defenders are going to say ‘Thank fuck he’s gone’. You know what I mean? Because he looks to me an exceptional human being. And Xavi, too, in the same way I would describe Scholes and Giggs. In other words, that motivation is not an actual issue for them; their pride comes before everything else. You know, you see the way Giggs and Scholes train, how they go about their life and that is a fantastic example to other people in the dressing room. I think I have a few who will follow on from that and I’ll be surprised if people in the dressing room at Barcelona do not take how Puyol acts, for instance, as sort of a personal motivation.
Perhaps Barcelona, as Sir Alex is suggesting, didn’t need more motivation than winning, than doing the best for their manager, than making sure they didn’t disappoint Puyol or Xavi. But Pep felt that the occasion called for something out of the ordinary to help set the tone. His plan got under way a couple of weeks before the final with a text message to Santi Padró, a TV producer for the Catalan channel TV3: ‘Hola, Santi. We have to meet. You have to help me win the Champions League.’
When Santi came up with the goods a few days later, Pep watched the end result on his laptop and the film the producer had put together brought a tear to his eye. Santi knew straight away that he’d achieved exactly what Pep had asked him to do. Pep then called for Estiarte to come running, telling him he had to watch this DVD. His friend’s reaction was equally resounding: ‘Where and when will you show it to them?’
‘Just before the game,’ replied Pep.
To which his friend could only add, ‘Wow!’
The players were surprised when their warm-up session at the Olympic stadium was brought to an end by the physical trainer a little sooner than they expected.
But they were still in the zone. There was emotion, tension, in the air as they headed down the tunnel that took them to the dressing room. Nervous, anxious.
Occasionally, one player shouts, claps a team-mate on the back, all to break the tension. Hearts racing. The clatter of studs on the floor. Toc toc toc toc toc toc toc.
At that moment, footballers don’t want to be disturbed; they want only to focus on their routine, to be left alone to get on with their last-minute preparations and superstitions. At Barcelona, Víctor Valdés is always the first to get back to the changing room after the pre-match warm-up. In Rome, he got to the dressing room, only to find it locked. He banged on the door, but was not allowed in. One of Pep’s assistants came out and blocked his way, telling him he’d have to wait. Valdés was flabbergasted. Xavi was next.
Xavi: What’s going on?
Víctor Valdés: He isn’t letting us in!
Xavi : Why!?
Víctor Valdés: I’ve been told to wait.
The rest of the group arrived, and they were finally let in after being made to hang around in the corridor a few minutes longer.
Pep made himself heard above the chatter: ‘Lads, I want you to watch this. Enjoy it. This is the teamwork that has taken us to Rome!’
The lights in the dressing room went off as a big screen illuminated the room and the theme from the movie Gladiator filled the space with sound.
Guardiola’s friend Santi had produced a rousing seven-minute video montage that merged images from the Hollywood blockbuster Gladiator with footage of the entire Barcelona squad, all set to the film’s epic soundtrack. You can see it for yourself online. Every single footballer, even those who played a more peripheral role in the season, is honoured in the film – two sub goalkeepers, Hleb, Milito, and it had been tricky finding footage of the injured defender from that campaign. It featured everyone. Except Pep Guardiola – the coach had stipulated that under no circumstances did he want to be eulogised in the footage. It was all about his players.
When the film finished there was silence in the room. Nobody moved, firstly because of the surprise, then the emotion. Players were shyly looking at each other. Tears were shed. Milito cried, he was missing the final. Unthinking, unconsciously, players had put their arms around teammates’ shoulders. It was a moment, an intense, special moment.
Unforgettable, emotive. But was it the right thing to do?
‘I don’t know if it was because of the feelings the video brought up or what, but our first minutes of the final were pretty awful,’ Iniesta says now. Even Pep Guardiola admits that he might have moved the players a touch too much.
The game, the managers
Sir Alex Ferguson: We really should have won that game, we were a better team at the time.
Pep Guardiola: United were a fantastic team! Just look at their bench that day: Rafael, Kuszczak, Evans, Nani, Scholes, Berbatov and Tévez.
Sir Alex: I think Henry’s a great footballer, Eto’o’s a great footballer but they weren’t players that worried us, you know what I mean? The Wembley final was different.
PG: Manchester United certainly didn’t set out to defend, it is not in their genes, is it? In any case, we had prepared different alternatives depending on how the game went.
Sir Alex: So Eto’o started off in the centre and Messi right, but then it was changed around to Eto’o wide right and Messi dropping into the hole that he uses quite well now. But in the final Messi did nothing, trust me, he didn’t do anything.
PG: We played Messi sporadically in that position, in the hole. We did it against Madrid, but not again until the final. Looking back, thinking about those tactics now ... maybe we won because of the very positive dynamic we had.
Sir Alex: If you go back to the final in Paris, Arsenal–Barcelona, Eto’o played wide left in the game and he worked up and down, he worked his balls off in that game. He’s been used to playing wide but we didn’t expect him to play wide in Rome. We expected at different times that they would change, Messi and Eto’o would change in the game, but not to the point where we were worried too much about it.
PG: United put us under pressure, defended high, had a few chances to score, and if they had scored, United are a team that kills you on the counter-attack, so if they had taken the lead it would have been much more difficult for us. Especially with Ronaldo who is a wide player and in important European games he played through the middle. If you leave Cristiano as a striker and with space, nobody can stop him, it is impossible, he’s unique.
Sir Alex: Conceding from a counter-attack when we were controlling the game turned out to be key, because Barcelona are not the type of side you want to be behind and chasing the game.
PG: The first team to score a goal, like it or not, in a final, makes the difference.
Sir Alex: And when Eto’o scores the first goal, then, yes, Messi became a problem as Barcelona had overloaded the midfield and it was difficult to get the ball off him but, actually, he didn’t threaten us that much.
PG: I remember the final in Rome came to an end and thinking, ‘God, we’ve played really, really well!’ Then, a couple of years later, when we were preparing for the Wembley final, we watched the videos of the game in Rome and realised it hadn’t been as great as we imagined. We had been very lucky to survive the opening minutes.
Sir Alex: The Barcelona midfield – pass, pass, pass – was never threatening, really. When we beat Barcelona back in 1991, in the Cup Winners’ Cup final, that team did exactly the same as in Rome. Salinas was the striker and Laudrup, too, with Beguiristain wide left, but they all dropped deep into the midfield, same thing. At that time we said, ‘Let them have the ball in there, keep the back four in all its positions’, and we never had a problem. But, if you wind on twenty years, a different quality player makes a difference.
PG: In the end, playing against us is complicated. When we are playing well, we pass the ball and we force our opponents to drop deep bit by bit. It seems like they are sitting back but, no, we’re pushing them back.
Sir Alex: And the second goal,
if you think about it; Messi, five foot seven, scores from a header at the back post, against an English team. That shouldn’t happen.
PG: We played better in the second half than we did in the first.
Sir Alex: Barcelona had one or two chances before Messi’s goal, just after half-time, and could have killed us off then but in the last fifteen minutes we actually had five chances.
PG: Xavi hit the post with a free kick and Thierry Henry was denied by Van der Sar before Messi scored with twenty minutes remaining. Then we dug in and defended. But after I watched that final again, I looked back and thought that it was all a bit of a gift.
Scouting report: Champions League final 2009
FC BARCELONA 2-0 MANCHESTER 2009
First half:
Manchester United had beaten Barcelona the previous year in the semi-finals of the Champions League by being very defensive. With Ronaldo up front, Tévez off the striker, Rooney very deep on the right wing. They sat back and counter-attacked. Evra marked Messi, who played on the right, with the help of a defensive midfielder. In 2008, following a 0-0 at the Camp Nou, a repeat performance at Old Trafford with a goal by Paul Scholes took United to the final. United were very happy with the performance. It was perfect.
Before the Rome final, United’s mentality had changed: they were now Champions League title holders and the resulting confidence and sense of superiority were reflected in their approach: Ferguson asked the team to press high. The message was, ‘we are the Champions, we can’t sit back and defend deep any more.’
Manchester United got off to a great, positive start: with Cristiano as a striker up against Touré and Piqué; with Rooney on the left to work the space behind Puyol at right back. The United idea was clear: pressure high up the pitch to stop Barcelona building from the back and look for Ronaldo as soon as they recovered possession, with an emphasis on trying to find him in space behind Piqué (identified as being slower than Touré). This strategy unsettled the Barcelona defence that was placed quite high upfield.
Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography Page 21