Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

by Balague, Guillem

  Later that week, Pep made another announcement to the press: ‘Of course, the first bit of news is that we are playing for the right to play in a Champions League final; but the second piece of news is that Abidal is back with us. It is excellent to hear that a man who has fought a battle with cancer has been given the all-clear. He will be on the bench for the match.’

  3 May 2011 – Champions League Clásico. Second leg. Camp Nou stadium. Barcelona 1 Real Madrid 1

  Iniesta returned to the Barcelona side after recovering from a muscle strain that kept him out of the first leg at the Bernabéu.

  With Mourinho confined to a Barcelona hotel because of his suspension, and without Ramos and Pepe, Kakà made a surprise appearance in the Madrid starting eleven. His inclusion didn’t quite have the desired impact in making Madrid more of an attacking threat, but with two midfield pivots and four men in front of the ball, Mourinho had sent his side out to take the game to Barcelona. And, as always, there was controversy. On fifty-two minutes, Real Madrid thought they had broken the deadlock – but with the sides level, Higuaín had a goal disallowed for a foul committed moments earlier by Ronaldo. Later on, Pedro gave Barcelona the lead. Madrid reacted by going for broke, bringing on Adebayor in place of Higuaín and withdrawing Kakà. At 3-0 down on aggregate Real finally found the net when Angel Di María’s shot struck the post and rebounded to Marcelo for the tap in.

  Barcelona had qualified for the 2011 final at Wembley with a 3-1 aggregate win.

  Forty-five minutes later, Pep Guardiola took up his place in the press room of the Camp Nou. Typically, he began by paying homage to his own players, and the opposition – while relishing the moment: ‘This has been one of the most beautiful nights I have ever lived.

  ‘I would also like to praise Madrid for their courage this evening, because they wanted to go toe to toe with us.

  ‘We feel that we have knocked out a superior team, a wealthier club, that can pay whatever release clauses they want to sign a player, a team with seven strikers that anybody would love to have in their squad; a heck of a team.’

  Barcelona had emerged from a gruelling twenty-day period, having won their seventh European Cup semi-final and getting a chance to win their fourth final.

  Pep felt drained. The three-week period had been ‘tremendously hard, with a lot of tension; very intense and very tiring’.

  For Xavi, the wounds from those Clásicos are not yet fully healed; the memory of the emotion is not diluted yet: ‘Yeah, it was hard. Those four Clásicos were hard. And when you’re on your own and you get criticisms, mentally you have to be very strong. It happens to me too. There are days when you think “I can’t take this any more. I’m not having a good time.” But at least Pep must have felt protected surrounded by his people, he has Tito, Manel, people he has known for years. People who have shared so many things with him, who helped him feel everything was under control.’

  Mourinho was not about to give up the fight. He was down but not out and saw this as merely the opening few rounds in the battle he’d come to Madrid to fight. At Inter Milan it took him until the third game against Barcelona to work out how to beat them and adapt his team accordingly. During the summer of 2011, the Real Madrid manager fine-tuned his squad and introduced new tactics that would see them play a higher line than they had the previous season, moving his players closer to the opposition area. He also spent that summer with an eye on the first official match, the season opener: the Spanish Super Cup between the league and domestic cup winners. In other words, the first game of the season against FC Barcelona. Pep, meanwhile, prepared with a focus on allowing his players ample recovery time to put them in the best condition for the arduous season ahead.

  14 and 17 August 2011 – the first Clásicos of the 2011–12 campaign. The Spanish Super Cup. Barcelona 5 Real Madrid 4 (aggregate)

  The first leg finished 2-2 at the Bernabéu. Three days later, Messi, who had hardly trained with the team after his holidays, scored the winning goal just two minutes before the final whistle to secure a 3-2 victory for Guardiola’s side. But the match will be remembered for the toxic atmosphere in which it finished after Marcelo was sent off for a dangerous tackle on Cesc Fàbregas, the sight of friends like Xavi and Casillas rowing on the pitch and – worst of all – the sight of José Mourinho sticking his finger in Tito Vilanova’s eye as players and officials from both sides argued on the touchline. The unsavoury scenes led to players like Xavi and Piqué openly criticising their Spanish team-mates in the Madrid squad for being sucked into Mourinho’s dark arts.

  One Barcelona player, who has asked to remain anonymous, sums up the mood among the Barcelona players: ‘Half the time, we know its only pantomime with him [Mourinho], and he’s only doing it to wind people up, but it’s unbelievable the way he has the press wrapped around his little finger – and even though poking an opposition coach in the eye is just about the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever seen in a football match, look how quickly people seem to forget about it. And if you remember, it somehow gets turned around so that we take the shit for it; the media saying, “he did it because he was provoked!” It’s like fighting a losing battle all the time.’

  Several months later, the two sides were to meet again, this time in the quarter-finals of the Copa del Rey, not perhaps the most important competition the two sides would be battling for – but Madrid’s performance at the Camp Nou, rather than the outcome, heralded a shift in dynamic between the two sides.

  18 and 26 January 2012 – Clásicos in the Copa del Rey. Quarter-finals. Barcelona 4 Real Madrid 3 (aggregate)

  Following a 1-2 victory for Barcelona in the first leg at the Bernabéu, the return leg at the Camp Nou was a tense affair, with some good football played by both sides, plus the usual controversy. Barcelona looked very comfortable with a two-goal lead, but Madrid’s fightback to pull the scoreline level and salvage a 2-2 draw had an effect upon the Barcelona public and players. With nothing to lose, Real Madrid seemed to rediscover themselves and had the home side anxious, denting their confidence. It finally proved that an ultra-defensive approach was not the way forward and sent a message to the Madrid players who had, up until that night, been weighed down by an inferiority complex. It was what, for a while, the Spanish players had asked the manager to do and Mourinho accepted the switch in tactics. It was welcomed by attacking players, like Ronaldo, on Mourinho’s side. And it provided a glimpse of what was to come.

  Half-time at the Camp Nou. Barcelona are beating Real Madrid 2-0 in the quarter-finals of the Spanish Cup. In the home dressing room, Guardiola is giving a tongue-lashing to his players.

  He is not happy with the performance. He complains about the lack of intensity, the mistakes in the circulation of the ball, the poor pressure to get the ball back. Despite the two goals, Barcelona are lucky not to be behind and they are playing with fire.

  Pep prefers to show his disgust when the team are in front, but on this occasion the mistakes would have been pointed out even if there was a provisional Madrid victory.

  In the second half Real Madrid score twice. It proves to be the game in which Mourinho and his players feel the tables have finally been turned.

  And rightly so. It is the visitors who attack, who look after the details, who seem hungrier.

  21 April 2012 – Clásico in the League. Camp Nou. Barcelona 1 Real Madrid 2

  It had taken eleven Clásicos for José Mourinho to really achieve what he had first set out to do: knock Guardiola and Barcelona off their perch. The Madrid coach’s side remained very much a ‘Mourinho’ side; but this time they were confident, full of self-belief and ruthless in executing quick transitions, utilising all their attacking flair to really hurt Barcelona. The result effectively handed the league title to Real Madrid, with the win giving them a seven-point advantage with only four matches remaining. It was a hammer blow for Pep and his side, just days before taking on Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final that would eventually be followed by Pep’s announcem
ent of his departure.

  He had insisted before the Clásico that an analysis of the result was simple: lose or draw and Real Madrid would be league champions. And having been thirteen points behind their rivals, Guardiola was happy that it all became similar to a one off-final at home.

  For all their possession, Barcelona struggled to get the ball to their forwards – and without Villa, and with Pedro not at his best after struggling for long spells of the campaign with injuries – they lacked a cutting edge. A similar problem would see them knocked out of the Champions League by Chelsea and fuelled Pep’s doubts about his ongoing ability to find new solutions to evolving problems as other teams sought ways to minimise Barcelona’s threat.

  In the end, the defeat meant considerably more than just losing a title – its psychological impact was far-reaching.

  In his final season, Pep had remained faithful to the style that had seen his side reach exceptional heights in the previous three seasons – playing with a false nine, applying defensive pressure high up the pitch, attacking in orderly fashion so that when the ball was lost they could immediately apply defensive work, a mobility of players that created absolute order out of apparent disorder and always with the ball as the undisputed star; building up from the back. In addition – sometimes as a reaction to opponents’ reluctance to attack and occasionally because of injuries – Pep had tried a three-man defence, even in big games such as the 2-3 victory against Milan at San Siro or at the Bernabéu in the league 1-3 victory.

  Yet, despite Pep’s best efforts, the fissures in the armour widened, either by team erosion or by the challenge of constantly evolving and improving opponents who were finding and exploiting weaknesses. Guardiola and the team suffered.

  Early in the season, his old friend Marcelo Bielsa – who had just been appointed coach of Athletic de Bilbao – provided other teams with a few pointers in a 2-2 draw in San Mamés: which required a last-gasp Messi goal to salvage a point for Barcelona. Bilbao played a very physical game, with intensity; their lines compact so that Barcelona’s decisive players couldn’t receive the ball between the lines. It opened the eyes of other opponents in and beyond La Liga: with Getafe, Espanyol, Villarreal, Osasuna, Levante and Milan and Chelsea in Champions League all taking a leaf out of Bielsa’s book and adopting similar strategies.

  Yet the opposition weren’t Barcelona’s only problem, and sometimes they only had themselves to blame, lacking a competitive instinct, forgetting the basic principles upon which their successes had been founded or simply making stupid errors. Away draws to Real Sociedad, Espanyol, Villarreal and the defeat against Osasuna all occurred for those reasons. In contrast, Real Madrid made no such errors that season and were far more ruthless.

  Guardiola recognised the symptoms: not competing well has nothing to do with playing well or badly, it is about looking after the little details. Barcelona forgot that they needed to be Barcelona in every minute of the match; yet, often, they weren’t effective enough when it was required, conceding sloppy goals because of a lack of concentration, making the transition between attack and defence too slowly, or simply starting games a little too relaxed and then reacting too late. Such attitudes and errors, to name just a few, cost points and titles. Barcelona also failed to change their style even when the conditions (pitch, weather) were against them. Is flexibility in terms of a team’s primary style a sign of weakness or of strength? Isn’t adapting a virtue?

  And then there was Messi.

  Barcelona’s over-dependence on the Argentinian genius – especially in terms of scoring – became a problem. The absence of an alternative plan to his brilliance handicapped the team. The injury to Villa, Pedro’s loss of form due to constant muscular problems, a poor goalscoring contribution from Cesc towards the end of the campaign; all forced Xavi to become a midfielder who had to get into the box (he scored fifteen goals, a personal best). There was no recognised striker available – with the confidence that twenty games per season gives someone to take a lead role. The team were short in a striking position with no available youngsters in from the lower ranks who fitted the profile.

  Pep identified the problem: the team was no longer as trustworthy on the really big occasions as they once had been, not so long ago.

  He had never promised titles but everybody had got used to them. He felt at peace, though, content that he had fulfilled his obligations in giving everything to the team. ‘I do not believe the runners-up are defeated. Manchester United were not a defeated club in Rome or at Wembley,’ he said in London just before the semi-finals of the Champions League against Chelsea, the game that would define the season. He wanted people to reassess the meaning of success: if clubs like Barcelona, Madrid, United compete with a month to go, you have done what you were asked to do. The rest depends on intangibles, on posts hit, on penalties missed, deflected shots: ‘Nobody can hold anything against us; we have done what we had to do,’ he told the media at Stamford Bridge.

  But Pep knew that the accumulation of success had a logical progression: the more you win, the less you are desperate to win. At the highest levels in sport, a moment’s relaxation can expose you. The side let their guard down after three years of unprecedented success and it cost them. That war of attrition, that need to continue to fuel a competitive group under any circumstances was a lost cause that took its toll on the manager, and was possibly the fight that burnt him out more than any other: more than the exchanges with Mourinho, even. In contrast, while José was competing with Pep in Spain, the Madrid coach did not need to spend a single moment trying to deal with that same psychological problem: because his players grew hungrier for trophies the more they saw Barcelona winning.

  In the end the pendulum had swung the other way.

  ‘Two Picassos in the same period’ is how Arrigo Sacchi describes Mourinho and Guardiola. The legendary Italian manager – a man who pushed football to another dimension in the eighties – feels that Pep’s departure from Barcelona was a bad day for football. ‘It is a shame for all those who like the beautiful game. He made football evolve and still win. I would like to congratulate him for his fourteen titles in four years. I think that everyone will remember the Barça side in twenty years’ time because they revolutionised the sport.’ Sacchi also reserves high praise for José: ‘He is a rare guy to find. So distinct from Guardiola. You have to study Mourinho as a whole. His teams play excellent football.’

  Listening to José after Pep’s departure, is it possible to read between the lines a sense that he also wished Pep had stayed, that he will probably never find a more formidable opponent? ‘If I say today that I am tired and I stop training for ever, my career would be perfect. I have won everything I had to win in the most important countries.’ Perhaps that’s only wishful thinking on our part.

  Pep wanted to operate in a footballing utopia: a place where Carlo Mazzone joins him for coffee, Batistuta argues about not having a striker, where Marcelo Bielsa, as happened on that trip to Argentina, lines up Pep’s friend David Trueba as man-marker for a chair in the middle of the living room of the Argentinian’s house. Pep wanted perfection, in a footballing dream world that existed on a higher plane: a place from which he was brought crashing back down to earth by Mourinho.

  ‘Prepare yourself, Pepe,’ Ferguson had told Guardiola when they met in Nyon. ‘Mourinho is on his way to you!’ Pep wasn’t that concerned: ‘It won’t be so bad.’ Sir Alex replied: ‘I live happier now.’ The Manchester United manager was right. The fight with José’s Madrid was, according to Manel Estiarte, ‘draining, because the dark arts of the Portuguese were tiring, infuriating and so often unfair – despite the fact that they were simply a tactic for defending his own team and club’.

  Those ‘arts’ had tainted Pep’s recollections of the Clásicos: ‘I don’t have particularly happy memories of those Barça–Madrid games of the past few years; they’re not games I enjoyed, neither in victory nor defeat: there was always something that left a very bad taste in the mouth
.’

  Pep dreamed of a competition in which football decisions were all that mattered.

  ‘When you play as many times against each other, it becomes like the basketball play-offs. You do one thing; they respond with another, you answer in another way. I remember the first game against Mourinho: Inter played with a 4-4-2 formation. When they came to the Camp Nou in the second leg of the group stage, they had a diamond formation and we beat them. When we went back to Milan for the semis, we played against a 4-2-3-1 where there was no passing; it was all direct play from them. When José came back here with Madrid, they wanted to play more and lost. They lost in the Champions League even though they went back to playing directly. They have tried to play deep, leaving space behind. In the Super Cup, the games in the Nou Camp, they had almost lost the tie but they closed us down. The guessing, the changing, the preparing, the switches during games; guessing what formation they will play, how we can surprise them too: that is what makes everything enjoyable, what gives meaning to everything. It is the thing that made those encounters fascinating. It is, in fact, the only thing that stays with me.

  ‘The rest? Not so much. With Mourinho, so many things have happened, so many things ...’

  Pep took it all personally. For José it was all part of the job.

  ‘Our relationship has been good, is good and will be good,’ Mourinho said in his first season at Madrid. ‘If ever Pep and I have a footballing problem, it will never become a problem between José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola: only ever a problem between the coach of Real Madrid and the coach of Barcelona. It’s something completely separate. Totally different. I respect him as much as I believe he respects me and there are no personal issues between us, quite the opposite. Right now, I can’t wish him luck because we are competing for the same thing, but apart from that, there’s no problem.’