“Most players would stay and pick up the
minutes they could – but not Thiago,” says
Martinez. “He knew what he was capable of
and wanted to prove himself. He wanted to
play in a team where he would be the star.
He needed that new challenge.
“Of course, it helped that Pep Guardiola
was there, too.”A SPACE MAN CAME TRAVELLING
Such was Bayern’s desire to hire Guardiola
in 2013, the German giants announced his
impending arrival in the middle of a season
where they captured the Treble under Jupp
Heynckes. What the club hierarchy didn’t
expect was an ultimatum.
“Thiago is the only player I want,” stated
Guardiola in his first week at the helm. “It’ll
be him or no one.”
While Bayern suits were puzzled by such
a demand for someone else’s understudy,
the move suited all parties: Die Roten keptGuardiola onside, Barcelona felt justified in
selling a luxury substitute for €20m, and
Thiago had the platform he so craved and
his talent deserved.
“Guardiola knew Thiago was perfect and
fundamental to make his team work, but
also that he could cope with the pressure of
being talked about like this,” Christian Falk,
head of football and chief Bayern reporter
for German magazine Sport Bild, tells FFT.
“Straight away, you could see his talent. If
he had stayed at Barcelona, he would have
been the next Iniesta or Xavi because he
was perfect for the system, but with those
two guys still there he just wanted to play.”
He also had to evolve. A midfielder’s prime
function at Barcelona is to create, and knit
together defence and attack – but at Bayern,
Thiago had to master more prosaic, darker
arts at the base of a 4-2-3-1. A stunning late
scissor-kick winner at Stuttgart in January
2014 offered an early glimpse of what the
Spaniard could deliver with the ball, but ithis squad. What the future first-team boss
admired most was what Spanish newspaper
El Pais gleefully described as “the air of the
circus performer, convinced that everyone is
waiting for his next trick”. It was no surprise
when Guardiola gave Thiago, freshly turned
18, his senior debut in May 2009.
The prodigiously talented midfielder had to
overcome a series of developmental injuries
to meet the demands for elite football. Thiago
made 81 appearances in all competitions in
2011-12 and 2012-13, but couldn’t dislodge
the crown jewels in Barcelona’s first team.
“You’ve got to remember that Thiago was
competing against the greatest midfield not
just in Barça’s history, but probably football’s
too: Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta,” says Martinez.
“Then you had the return of Cesc Fabregas
[in 2011], and that is a lot of competition.”
Thiago had a choice: stay at Barça where
he was comfortable, knew everybody, had
a home, friends and family – or move on to
a new challenge at Bayern.
THIAGO
ALCAn TARA“TECHnICALLY, HE’S
A COLOSSUS WITH
THATMAGIC– HE’S
ASHInY ORnAMEnT
THATJUST MAKES
YOU THInK, ‘WOW’”