Pep Confidential (20 page)

Guardiola spent last Monday visiting Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp near Munich. He and Cristina had doubts about whether the children should come with them on such an emotional visit to what is, after all, a memorial to human cruelty. In the end the whole family plus Manel Estiarte made the trip. As they had feared, that night the children slept poorly and had nightmares. Despite this, their parents considered it an important learning experience for them.

Pep used the week profitably given that it was his last chance of extended free time before Christmas. He went to an art gallery, played golf and starred in an advert for the beer company which sponsors Bayern, dressed in
lederhosen
(Bavarian breeches and braces). He also took the chance to stroll around Munich, commenting, ‘It’s a bit surprising to be able to walk about the city and go into restaurants without people coming up to talk to me. The people here are extraordinary. They treat you with real respect and leave you in peace’.

When asked about appearing in the advert dressed as a Bavarian, Pep laughs and says that Cristina liked how he looked in
lederhosen
. He goes on to outline his policy on promotional events: ‘I don’t have any problem with all that because what is important for the club is also important for me. At Barça I didn’t do much of this kind of thing but I am not here to compare clubs. Each has its culture and its way of doing things. It doesn’t matter what has happened in the past. What is important is the present. I have to adapt to Bayern, and Bayern has to accept my work on the pitch and behind the scenes. We will be focusing on what the club and the team needs.’

Pep is getting used to the way they do things at Bayern. It’s all quite different to what happened at Barcelona. Bayern’s official club newspaper headlines an article with: ‘
Optimaler Start, aber…’
(Optimum Start, but…), and the coach begins to understand that self-criticism forms part of the club’s culture and has to be accepted as an intrinsic part of the Bavarian character.

The derby against Nürnberg left him with mixed feelings – that sense of disappointment in the first half, and the pleasure at his team’s domination in the second half. ‘We have worked well this week. When we attack it is important to defend as well, and when we defend it is important to know how to attack. Football is attacking and defending. It is about attacking a lot and conceding very few opportunities. Against Eintracht in Frankfurt we were even better, although we conceded a few chances at the end. We have spoken about it a lot with the players during the week and it shows.’

The Bavarian derby produced some interesting statistics. The 2-0 victory, with goals from Ribéry and Robben, who seem to be competing for the prize of fittest player, was their 28th consecutive game in the league without a loss and they achieved 81% possession, a record for the Bundesliga. Pep didn’t seem too bothered about statistics at yesterday’s dinner, however. The developing narrative around penalties turned another page, too, with the opposition keeper, Raphael Schäfer, saving David Alaba’s spot-kick after half an hour.

Whilst the rain falls this Sunday morning in Munich, Guardiola takes notes about nutrition as he prepares for what he is going to say to his players in a short while. He struggled to sleep last night, as is almost always the case after games, and has been ruminating on his players’ weaknesses. They have improved, certainly, but they still aren’t capable of cutting off counter-attacks at the beginning of that move. It’s bugging him. They are also sterile at the start of the game, whenever they start that inconsequential
tiquitaca
, passing without getting free of their rival, without breaking the lines as they know they should … and are quite capable of doing. He has to go through all of this with them this morning.

And one last thing. He’s going to have to think about how he fits Götze and Thiago into this model of play. Although Thiago is going to be out for a long time to come.

24

‘PAM! PAM!
THAT’S
OUR STYLE OF PLAY!’

Munich, August 25, 2014

HE DIDN’T EXPECT to receive two pieces of bad news on Sunday morning. It’s raining and whilst hundreds of fans gather in silence around the pitches in Säbener Strasse, huddled together under umbrellas, Guardiola is meeting with his squad in a room on the floor above the dressing room. It’s a huge space, laid out like a cinema and they usually have their pre-match talks here. Today it’s more of a post-match talk, with two themes: food and football. Pep makes a start: ‘I’ve already explained on two occasions the importance of having dinner within an hour of finishing a game. Mona has also made this point but yesterday we noticed that almost none of you followed those instructions. Only four of you had dinner at the right time. I understand that you would all prefer to leave the stadium and go out with your partners to your favourite restaurants, but if we are playing every three days then this is the only way to recuperate physiologically. When we’re playing away from the Allianz there’s no problem – it’s shower, bus and a plate of pasta. But when we’re here in the Allianz I need you to do what I’m asking. It’s absolutely essential and I won’t ask again. You must eat within an hour of the match and since you are all professionals playing at the highest level I trust that you’ll do it from now on.’

He takes less than four minutes to cover this first topic and uses the next five to talk about their game. ‘Secondly. Let yourselves go, let yourselves go. Be yourselves a bit more. I’m only asking that you all drive forward in a unified way at the beginning, playing the ball out from the back, but once you are high up the pitch, past the halfway line in fact, hit the diagonal ball to the winger so that he can cross to the striker and then, lads, everyone hunting the rebound and the second ball.

‘Be yourselves. That’s what you’re best at, so do it. You need to dig into your own DNA and run when you think you need to, just as long as you’ve crossed the centre of the pitch. And another thing…

‘I hate
tiquitaca
. I hate it.
Tiquitaca
means passing the ball for the sake of it, with no clear intention. And it’s pointless. Don’t believe what people say. Barça didn’t do
tiquitaca
! It’s completely made up! Don’t believe a word of it! In all team sports, the secret is to overload one side of the pitch so that the opponent must tilt its own defence to cope. You overload on one side and draw them in so that they leave the other side weak. And when we’ve done all that, we attack and score from the other side. That’s why you have to pass the ball, but only if you’re doing it with a clear intention. It’s only to overload the opponent, to draw them in and then to hit them with the sucker punch. That’s what our game needs to be. Nothing to do with
tiquitaca
.’

Just in case they hadn’t already got it, he has reassured them that they don’t have to be the FC Barcelona of Munich and, just to drive this idea home, the substitutes’ training session, which is particularly intense and demanding, is based around opening up the wings, crosses to the box and arriving for the cross in two distinct waves. The first to attack the cross and try to score, the second to snaffle up the rebound and score from that. Pep roars: ‘Pam! Pam!
That’s
our style of play.’

It’s raining hard and someone points out that summer must be over. The comment causes Toni Tapalovic, the goalkeeping coach, to start teasing Pep: ‘Just you wait for the winter – we’ll be training outside in minus-10 degrees and half a metre of snow. Then we’ll go directly from the pitch to the sauna without taking our boots off.’

Javi Martínez’s parents are visiting and have their own meteorogical wisdom to impart: ‘In Munich it’s like the Bilbao drizzle, but here it’s snow rather than rain. You’re not really noticing it but it keeps falling until eventually you have half a metre of snow.’

Guardiola and Thomas Müller are arguing out on the pitch. The coach has asked him straight out why he doesn’t always play the way he did yesterday, with that level of intense pressing. As we stand listening in the quiet of the morning, the player replies that it’s because he wants freedom of movement and feels that he plays better when he doesn’t have any particular responsibilities. The coach tells him, gesticulating all the while, that if every player in the team demanded a similar level of freedom, it would be a disaster. The argument will be settled sooner rather than later.

Perhaps because of his experience working with players with strong characters like Samuel Eto’o and Zlatan Ibrahimovic at Barcelona, Pep is always direct with his players, but also happy to engage in dialogue. He has always believed that every player is different and needs to be treated as such and is already applying this credo in Munich. Having discovered that Schweinsteiger is obsessed with football and loves to talk endlessly about tactics, Pep jumps in with both feet. One day we watched them chatting about a particular move for 30 minutes after training. On the way to the dressing room they were still talking and then 20 minutes later, when they emerged from their shower to get the bus to go to the team hotel for the game, they were still going strong, both of them waving their hands about as if they were in the middle of a Champions League final.

He can give Philipp Lahm as many instructions as he likes and the captain takes it all in without a problem. On the other hand, when it comes to Franck Ribéry, a drip-feed approach is required. This is a street player, a self-taught footballer who works on his instincts. Trying to teach him even just two tactical concepts at the same time can completely block him when he goes out to play. Ribéry still plays the same way he did as a kid on the streets of Boulogne-sur-Mer. He gets the ball and immediately goes on the attack.

He has to be vigilant where Mandžukić is concerned. In less than two months he has changed from a receptive team member to being defiant and negative and then, recently, back to a great team player again. At the moment he is giving 100% and is the one who pushes the whole group and accepts everything positively. His attitude is excellent. However, we have yet to see what will happen if Götze takes his place.

If Mandžukić can accept the fact that he will be a substitute from time to time and that in the difficult days of rain and cold, he will be an almost certain starter, everything will go swimmingly for him and he will be a key member of the team. It will all be different next season when the ‘other guy’ comes (in August 2013 nobody in Säbener Strasse is allowed to talk about signing Robert Lewandowski, Borussia Dortmund’s centre-forward).

The trick is working out how to interact with each individual. Whilst his players are constantly learning and incorporating new concepts into their game, their boss is also learning and improving the way he communicates with each of them. He’s tough on one guy and soft on the next. He might give long, tactical explanations to a kid in the youth set-up and then respond brusquely to a key member of the first team. He’s always looking for the right code to unlock the talents of each player and take them to the next level.

There’s some bad news. Thiago Alcántara’s right ankle is seriously injured and he has to be operated on tomorrow in Stuttgart, with two-and-a-half months of recovery time required. He’s going to have to wave goodbye to half the season. It’s a devastating blow.
Thiago oder nichts
.

And there’s other, equally bad news. Javi Martínez can hardly walk. He has intense pain deep inside his groin muscles, not unlike a hernia, and he can’t even kick the ball with his left leg. What worries him most, though, over and above the pain, is the fact that the doctors can offer no immediate solution to the problem.

By now Pep is constantly scratching his head, which tells us he is deeply worried. He’s lost Thiago, Javi’s lame and Schweinsteiger has taken his foot off the pedal. It’s a bad state to be in, particularly because they’ll be facing José Mourinho’s Chelsea this week in the European Super Cup final, a match in which Bayern will be looking for revenge, in a big way.

But first they have another appointment. In two days’ time, on Tuesday, they have to play a league game in Freiburg, the southernmost city in Germany, on the border with France. There are a few changes planned and five or six of the usual starting line-up will be on the bench. Pep wants to save them for the Super Cup.

After training Pep meets up in one of the training ground’s dining rooms with the friends he ate with last night. He talks to them about the family atmosphere at Bayern. ‘People told me before I arrived but you have to experience it to believe it. It’s absolutely true. We’re like one big family here.’

He goes on to talk about his bosses. He feels very close to Hoeness, whom he adores, and talks about Rummenigge’s professionalism, something which Pep finds unusual in football. He is also profoundly grateful to Sammer for all the support he gives him. Guardiola feels very much at home here in Munich.

When someone mentions the upcoming Super Cup and his reunion with Mourinho, he dismisses the topic quickly: ‘I know Jose far too well already.’

But his head is already elsewhere, in Freiburg. He’s still considering all his options. Is it wise to field so many players who are normally substitutes on Tuesday and leave five or six of his usual starters out? In the next 48 hours he’ll go over and over his plans, a thousand times. As always.

25

‘BAYERN WERE LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF A MOVIE TODAY.’

Freiburg im Breisgau, August 26, 2013

PIERRE-EMILE HØJBJERG leaves Guardiola’s office in tears. The young Dane had asked for an appointment with his boss two hours ago, but this is the first time Pep could see him, because of a press conference. Højbjerg gets straight to the point and with a tremor in his voice tells Pep what has happened: his dad has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and the family is devastated. Hs older brother is stuck on a boat somewhere, and will take two weeks to get home. Young Højbjerg is going to have to step up and support his family right now. Neither the coach nor the player can hold back the tears and they embrace as the emotion overcomes them. They sob uncontrollably for a few minutes. The player is just 17, he’s been at Munich only for a year and suddenly his whole world has collapsed. As for Pep, his deep sadness for Højbjerg has brought back the painful memories of Éric Abidal and Tito Vilanova, who both suffered similar illnesses. Training will start half an hour late today.