... and he expects the same from
his players. Why? Because Guardiola
has understood the most complex
tactical instructions since his teens.
“Now you’re going to play as a false
winger,” the former head of La Masia,
Oriol Tort, told the 13-year-old with his
team trailing 1-0 at half-time to
minnows Carmel – not the easiest idea
for a skinny central midfielder to
process. However, Guardiola drifted
into the vacant space between the
centre circle and his winger.“We won 3-1 and I touched
the ball more in 15 minutes than
in an entire half,” he wrote in
his out-of-print 2001
autobiography La Meva Gent, El
Meu Futbol (‘My People, My
Football’, pictured right). “Just
by moving two paces I could
radically change the game’s
rhythm. Tort knows more about
football than those who
invented it.”
If a 13-year-old can do it...HE’S TACTICALLY FLEXIBLE...
COMMUn ICATIOn IS KEY
Never question Guardiola’s
authority. This is a man who
needs to feel loved, from the
boardroom to the training
pitch, if he is to bring his
revolution to your football club.
Though he struggled with the
workload of being Barcelona’s
de facto spokesman under
fiery president Joan Laporta,
Guardiola’s support for the
man who gave him his big
coaching break with the B
team was ceaseless. When
Sandro Rosell replaced Laporta
in early 2010, the alienation
that followed played a
significant part in Pep leaving
Barça at the end of 2011-12
for his New York sabbatical.
At Bayern, the rows between
Guardiola and long-term
doctor Hans-Wilhelm Muller-
Wohlfahrt ended in the latter’s
resignation (after 38 years with
the club) at the continued
implication that he was
responsible for Die Roten’s
frequent injuries.
Before his imprisonment for
tax evasion, ex-Bayern
president Uli Hoeness had
lunch with Guardiola nearly
every day, the pair swapping
stories over plates of
rostbratwurst sausages.
Though Guardiola and Karl-
Heinz Rummenigge, a
confirmed Pep devotee,
frequently share a coffee, the
pair’s relationship cooled after
the chief executive suggested
during July 2015’s tour to
China that the club would
survive without their leader.
That said, Guardiola is aware
enough not to remodel an
entire squad. Rumours
abounded that he wanted to
ship out Gerard Pique and Dani
Alves, among others, in his
final Barcelona season. In the
end, he fell on his own sword.
Support him, give him what
he wants, or Pep walks away.
Put simply, Guardiola loves talking
about football. It’s a process that
begins the first time he meets his
players, continues throughout every
training session (“He interjects all the
time to correct and explain exactly
what he wants from us,” recalled
Dani Alves of Pep’s early days at
Barcelona) and even extends to
individual chats every day. Praise is
effusive when merited.
Guardiola typically spends two
hours per day discussing one-on-one
the positional minutiae of what he
demands from his players. Entirely
self-taught as a player, Jerome
Boateng (below) has been the biggestbeneficiary at Bayern Munich, adding
brains to his prodigious centre-back
brawn, while Philipp Lahm still
spends 15 minutes after every training
session talking in minute detail
about midfield play, his hands a blur
of explanatory signals. For more
instinctive players such as Franck Ribery,
less is more.
“Pep doesn’t just give you
orders,” said Gerard Pique. “He also
explains why.”
He knows his players intimately.
He cried with youngster Pierre-Emile
Hojbjerg when the midfielder lost his
father to stomach cancer in April- He wants a maximum of 20
players in a first-team squad because
he hates telling anyone that they
have failed to make the 18-man
matchday squad.
He varies what he says, too, not
through any kind of psychological
plan but merely to express exactly
what he is feeling inside. “Guys, you’re
all greats,” he told his Barcelona
players before 2010’s title-decider
against Villarreal, which came two
days after Champions League semi-
final defeat to Jose Mourinho’s Inter
Milan. “I just want to tell you one thing.
If we go out there and lose, and the
league escapes us, don’t worry.” They
won. 4-0. ImageImagess^ P
A Images/Getty Images
PA Images/Getty ImagesHE DEMAn D S
TOTAL COn TROL
PEP
GUARDIOLA