Pep Confidential (19 page)

The coach believes that it would be absurd and unworkable to try to recreate Barça’s playing model here. He places a high value on Johan Cruyff’s historic role in the formation of Barcelona, as well as recognising those visionary coaches throughout the Catalan club’s history who helped bring youngsters up through the ranks and into the first team. The valiant individuals who took time and trouble with the kids in the youth teams. There’s immense pride here. ‘I’m a Barça man and always will be.’

This doesn’t mean, however, that he’ll ever be back training Barcelona. In fact, if I were a betting man, I’d say that his future is going to be Bayern and then England. Who knows? He may end up in eight-to-ten years taking a curtain call by coaching a national team. He isn’t planning a very long career and the family agreement seems to be just that: a limited but intense career span. Barça doesn’t seem likely to figure in this hypothetical 10-year plan, but one can never say never.

It’s also difficult to envisage Pep doing anything other than coaching. This is what he loves. When anyone suggests other roles in football, like sports director or president, he shows no interest, as if his coach’s brain can’t even imagine doing those jobs. He is also unimpressed by talk of the
entorno
, the people, the press and the powerbrokers around FC Barcelona. ‘Forget them. The way it’s been set up at Barça you have two options: either you’re a powerbroker or you’re not. I was forced to choose, against my will.’

Before turning his thoughts to Bayern once again, Pep wants to share one last memory from his Barça days. He’s thinking of the dramatic 2012 Champions League semi-final against Chelsea, during which Barcelona had 46 shots on Petr Cech’s goal (23 in the away leg and another 23 at home) but were still knocked out. Chelsea went on to the final in the Allianz Arena against Bayern, whom they beat in a penalty shoot-out.

‘I made a mistake that day. I’ve gone over it a thousand times in my mind. I told the players to cross the ball into the area but I didn’t get across to them that I wasn’t looking for them to score on the volley, but to win the second ball or the rebound and – pam! – score that way. I didn’t manage to get them to understand the exact instructions. I reckon that if I’d got that across properly we’d have won and we’d have been in the final.’

This brings him back to Bayern and the second ball. ‘I need to help the players free themselves so that they can run and show everyone what they are capable of. I need to adapt to them, not the reverse. I don’t want them doing something just for the sake, as some people claim, of pleasing me. What I want is players who are happy and confident in their game.’

The second half of the Nürnberg match was a good example of what Guardiola wants for Bayern. They were like a whirlwind. It was a tempest during which it was possible to see the first traces of what Pep’s trying to teach them. His defenders take up position around the centre circle and, from then, the brakes are off: Bayern play flat out. They hit the Nürnberg penalty box 32 times in 45 minutes. A Bavarian avalanche. Now
that
is the language of Bayern.

It is no accident that the proud, triumphant Bavarians have turned to Pep. They’re looking for a football identity, a brand, a direction, a powerful language which will mark them out. Hoeness, Rummenigge and Sammer knew exactly what they wanted from this third phase. They weren’t just looking to add an extra diamond to the crown: they wanted to re-draw from a clean sheet. They were not looking for the Barça Pep, but the Bayern Pep, a man still in the process of evolving. Make no mistake, we are witnessing two parallel processes here. Whilst Guardiola works to reform Bayern in this so-called third phase, he is also creating his own identity, free from the Barça straitjacket. ‘All I want to do is share my game philosophy with the players so that they can reduce risk to a minimum and achieve their potential.’

Guardiola has linguini with truffles. He doesn’t eat anything during the day so he tends to have a lavish meal in the evening. Even the prospect of playing a friendly leaves him tense and robs him of his appetite. He manages only to drink water, bottle after bottle. So he really makes up for it in the evening. He’s already put away a whole bowl of pureed potatoes, a tomato and mozzarella salad, half a dozen
rostbratwurst
with sauerkraut – the legendary Nürnberg sausage – and the linguini with truffles. Now he’s ready to attack a juicy sirloin steak. None of this stops him talking nineteen to the dozen, however.

When Guardiola was appointed at Barça in 2008, he took on a disillusioned, foundering team which was still capable of producing excellent football. Barça teams have spent 25 years following the guiding light of Cruyff, from the youngsters right through every category. They all follow the same ideas. Identical methods are used for training sessions. In other words, they play the same way. On average, a
cantera
player who makes it into the first team will have spent between 12 and 15 years playing the same kind of game, which amounts to a minimum of 6000 hours. And he’ll go on to add another 4000 hours. Not only will they have taught him the language of Barça but they will have turned his natural talent into a specific football personality. He will be fluent in the Barça language. The player will play a brand of football that has been developed and designed, planned and controlled. After so many years of systematic repetition it becomes an automatic response which causes difficulties if the player leaves Barça for another team. What Barça does is special and personal to them, whether or not they win or lose. So it was in the dark years and in the glory days of Team Pep, when they won everything. Football language exists independently of victories, although it is those victories which give it influence.

Bayern has had tremendous success, but the team has never developed its own language. The success is inherited from a long tradition, from the likes of Beckenbauer and Gerd Müller. Gary Lineker’s famous quote nails it: ‘In football you play 11 against 11 and then the Germans win.’

These were amazing victories: three consecutive European Cups in the 1970s; 22 league titles before Guardiola’s arrival; Heynckes’ sublime treble. The club has made history and is one of the foundation stones of world football. But what is its football identity? An insatiable desire to win is an advantage, but it is a character trait rather than a hallmark of identity and the two things are very different.

Two of the most important players in Bayern’s history, Uli Hoeness and Kalle Rummenigge, decided that the time had come to create the language of Bayern. That’s why they approached Guardiola. They didn’t say: teach us to play like Barça. They said: we want to go on winning, but we want to do it with a distinctive style, so that people will say,
that’s
how Bayern play.

Pep is clear about everything. Not the little details but certainly the broad ideas. He gets up from the table with little Maria half asleep in his arms and keeps talking, now a little agitated. He is obviously thinking about how much he has to do.

‘I need to talk to Müller tomorrow morning, first thing. I want to ask him why the hell he doesn’t always play like he did today. I need to talk to Ribéry. He’s always telling me that he prefers giving an assist to actually scoring himself but today he really revelled in his goal against Nürnberg. I need to make him see that scoring should be a priority.’

He goes out into the street, still talking. ‘I have to fit Götze and Thiago into our game. It’s going to be tough and I don’t know how to go about it yet. But it’s got to be done. Götze and Thiago are key.’

It’s stopped raining now and out on the pavement in Maximilien Strasse he walks with his sleeping daughter in his arms whilst he talks about diagonal passes, crosses and footballers being given freedom to run and run.

23

‘LAHM … THE GUY IS FUCKING EXCEPTIONAL!’

Munich, August 25, 2013

HAVING RISEN EARLY after a late night, Pep is up and reading nutritionist Mona Nemmer’s latest report by 8am. And he is not pleased. Only four of the 14 men who played yesterday against Nürnberg chose to stay for dinner at the Allianz Arena’s players’ restaurant. For Guardiola, this is a priority issue. His players’ nutritional intake after the intense physical exertion of a game is a crucial part of their physiological recovery. Scientific studies show that the requisite nutrients must be consumed within an hour of the match finishing in what is known as the ‘metabolic window’. Other studies allow for two hours and some research suggests that you can wait even longer. In any case, it is certainly true that plenty of carbohydrates and a certain amount of protein are essential for good recovery and injury prevention, particularly when the players are facing a match every three days.

Guardiola, Lorenzo Buenaventura and, of course, Nemmer, have explained all this to the squad several times already and Pep is annoyed. He cannot understand why professional footballers would choose to ignore something that could make such a massive difference to their continued wellbeing in the course of such a long season.

The players’ lounge is on the second floor of the Allianz Arena. It is a large restaurant which seats 200 and entrance is by invitation only. To reach it you have to go through the sponsors’ restaurant, a gigantic area which runs the whole length of the stadium’s main stand. The sponsors’ guests congregate there and are offered a snack before the match, followed by dinner afterwards. Each sponsor has tables reserved for their own invited guests, who are treated to Bayern’s first-class catering service amid all the noise and fun of what is usually a highly-entertaining evening.

The door to the players’ lounge is tucked away, half hidden in a corner of the restaurant, discretely guarded by doormen who make sure that no one gets in without an invitation. Each player and member of the coaching staff is given two tickets to the game, plus two invitations to the players’ lounge, given that the Allianz Arena is sold out for the whole season. In stark contrast to the sponsors’ area, the players’ restaurant is a haven of peace and exudes a sense of deep calm, broken only by the sound of small children clamouring for autographs or photographs with their favourite footballers, a practice which is, theoretically, against the rules.

Once showered, the players leave the dressing room, go through the mixed zone where the press ask them about the game, then walk down a corridor and take the lift up to the restaurant. There, family and friends will be waiting for them. There’s a simple buffet laid out: two kinds of soup, two Italian pasta dishes, parmesan cheese, rice, salad, tomato; some meat, fish, fruit and, usually, small portions of
Apfelstrudel
.

Some players aren’t particularly hungry after a game, because of fatigue or nervous tension. Others prefer to eat a little cheese and wait a few hours before going out to a Munich restaurant with their partners. Whatever the reason, yesterday only four of them ate at the stadium, whilst the rest waited until later. This angers Pep, who believes that it is vital for anyone playing at the elite level to pay attention to the most minute of details.

Guardiola usually dines in the players’ lounge, except on rare occasions like last night, when he had a date with friends, or the evening of the
Clásico
between Barça and Real Madrid, when he said a quick goodbye to his team and hurried home to watch the game on television. In general, the coach and his family are in the private restaurant two hours after the match, eating with the rest of the squad and their friends.

This is when you’ll see Guardiola at his most spontaneous and chatty. No longer the serious, focused coach who supervises the last training session before a game or the introverted, tense guy waiting for the game to start. First, there’s a television interview to get out of the way, and then he spends some time with the opposition coach as they wait for the joint press conference. In Barcelona he used to invite the visiting coach for a glass of wine in his office, but in Munich he contents himself with a chat in the corridor outside the press room. Aware that different timetabling arrangements in Germany mean that the visitors can get home the same day, he doesn’t want to risk the other coach missing his plane.

After the joint press conference, Pep has a chat in his office with Hoeness, Rummenigge and Jan-Christian Dreesen, the club’s financial director. All of them love deconstructing the tactical details of the game. These are usually long conversations and there will be days when, an hour after the final whistle, Pep and Uli will still be chatting about the way they have played. To round off the evening, Guardiola goes up to the players’ restaurant to eat with Cristina and their three children, although he will stop to chat at the tables of the players and their friends, taking a bite of something each time. Here, a little cheese; there, a few chips. This is when he is at his analytical best, when he is happy to sum up in a few precise words the things his team have done well or badly: ‘Bah, that Lahm is a scandal! He is super-intelligent, understands the game brilliantly, knows when to come inside or to stay wide. The guy is fucking exceptional,’ he says.

They have just finished their first ‘normal’ week. There has been no midweek game and the double training sessions have finished. In fact, this will have been one of the few weeks, between July and Christmas, when the players haven’t had a game in midweek, be it with Bayern or on international duty. Out of the 22 weeks that make up the first part of the season, only two will have a clear midweek. In Germany the term
Englische Woche
(English Week) is used to define the practice of having two games per week. So 20 of the 22 weeks will have been English Weeks.

The decrease in training sessions has also made a big difference. Until now, the coaching staff have been arriving at Säbener Strasse at 8am and staying until 9pm. This timetable has been necessary to cover the double training sessions every day, but this week they have left their hotel and moved home with their families. Pep’s children have started school. Now the staff start at 9am and work until 4pm. Pep’s life has regained a bit of normality and he gives the impression of being at cruising speed.