“Guardiola could control the ball quickly and pass it quickly,” Cruyff
revealed. “He could deliver the ball in good condition so that another
player could do something with it.”
Only 21, so nervous was Guardiola, a keen football student, he had
spent much of the day before the Wembley final arguing with striker
Julio Salinas over how many steps up there were to receive the cup.
“How about,” snapped keeper Andoni Zubizarreta, “we win the thing
first, then we can count the steps?”
When Ronald Koeman’s extra-time free-kick secured a 1-0 victory
against Sampdoria, Zubizarreta stopped in front of Guardiola at the
top of the Wembley stairs before going to lift the trophy. “There are
33, you know,” winked the vice-captain. “I just counted.”
Further success followed only two months later at the Barcelona
Olympics, but it was the 1994 Champions League Final against Milan
in Athens that was to prove most instructive. “Go out there and enjoy
yourselves,” Cruyff had told his team a couple of years earlier against
Sampdoria – but now the Dutchman’s message was different: turn
up, and you win.
Fabio Capello’s Rossoneri won 4-0. “Their superiority was so great,”
Guardiola conceded, “I just wanted it to be over.” That balmy night
in Greece is entrenched in Guardiola’s psyche.
“I’ve no doubt Pep thinks about Milan before any game he expects
to win as a coach,” Eusebio Sacristan, Guardiola’s then team-mate
and now Real Sociedad manager, tells FFT. “He knows what we were
missing in the 1994 final: hard work and respect for the opposition.”
Cruyff was sacked in 1996, although Pep continued as the on-
pitch lieutenant for first Bobby Robson, then Louis van Gaal. It was
under Guardiola, the embodiment of Catalan seny, or common
sense, that Barça recovered from a disastrous start to Robson’s only
campaign to bag the Copa del Rey, Cup Winners’ Cup and Spanish
Super Cup.
“Robson made us see that you win more matches – and therefore
trophies – when the players and coach are all working in the same
direction,” Pep later wrote, an attitude never better exemplified than
when he stepped aside for skipper Gica Popescu to lift the 1997 Cup
Winners’ Cup, despite the Romanian’s half-time substitution.
Yet it was with Van Gaal that Guardiola began to drill down into
tactical minutiae. “Of all the coaches I’ve played for, the one with
whom I most talked about football was Van Gaal,” he said.
“Often we talk about tactics in a disparaging way. To
submit yourself to the discipline of the group is to make
a team. That’s what Van Gaal did.”
He soon became captain, aged 26, ahead of senior
pros like Miguel Angel Nadal and Guillermo Amor. “You’re
the only one I can speak to on my level,” Van Gaal told
Guardiola. “You’re my captain.”
By the end of the decade, manager began to
edge captain towards the exit, with a new
generation well on the way. Xavi had
already become a first-team regular by
1999-00, as Pep spent nearly 18 months
out because of a persistent calf injury.
“Guardiola was my reference,” Xavi tells
FFT. “My coaches always told me to look
at him. One or two touch, all of the
time. Bakero, Koeman and Stoichkov,
too, but Guardiola was in my position.”
In 2001, Guardiola departed for
Brescia in Serie A with 16 major
honours. He went back to the club of
his heart six years later – after a spell in
Mexico under 4-2-3-1 inventor Juanma Lillo – as
Barcelona B’s coach, to restore the style he so
admired under Cruyff.
“I’ll watch the match from my seat as club
member 84,533, but when I see that Barça don’t play
with the imprint left by Cruyff, I’ll stop,” he wrote. “I’d
love to see them play the same way in which I was
lucky to play.”
Manchester City fans are very glad he did.
94 The Managers FourFourTwo.com
MAnAGERS
AS PLAYERS