Pep Confidential (27 page)

Despite these evident defects, Guardiola is exultant. He has 101 days under his belt at Bayern and they have been celebrated with a formidable exhibition. He is reminded that on the last two occasions Bayern have won the Champions League (2001 and 2013) they have gone to England and beaten Premier League opponents. Perhaps this is a positive omen. Pep doesn’t take much notice of the suggestion. ‘The Bundesliga – the objective remains the Bundesliga,’ he reiterates. The same phrase has been on his lips for the last month now: ‘We have to get through the Oktoberfest without tripping up.’

It might appear a modest goal but he still thinks it’s tough to get through September without Javi Martínez, Götze and Thiago, and with Schweinsteiger far from his best.

‘We can win games via the defenders and the strikers but if you don’t have midfielders then you just can’t play well. I want us to survive these weeks and let’s see whether we can get the injured guys back,’ he argues. Then he returns to one of his basic precepts of football. ‘I love midfielders, I’d love to have thousands of them in my team. Thankfully I have Lahm who, even though he may be the best full-back in the world, can play anywhere – he could be our striker if we asked him. In midfield he’s just prodigious.’

From this point, Bayern begin to play the football their new coach wants. ‘For everything to come off for us, the players need to run their legs off but to use the ball like they did when they were kids,’ Pep explains. His players are bubbling with excitement.

Ribéry: ‘They are little details but really important. Pep has boosted my confidence.’

Schweinsteiger: ‘He’s got incredible ideas.’

Robben: ‘His arrival has been refreshing, a great stimulus. I’m 29 but under Pep I’m learning tactical concepts I’d never heard of before.’

Right now we can’t be absolutely certain if the Etihad is the turning point of Bayern’s entire season, but it is unquestionable that October 2, 2013 will forever be a red letter day for Guardiola. When they land back in Munich the coach reads a quote from Lothar Matthäus in a newspaper: ‘
Tiquitaca
has reached Bavaria.’

Pep throws it in the bin.

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‘IF ANYONE WOULD PREFER ME NOT TO MAKE THE DECISIONS, NO PROBLEM. YOU DECIDE WHO’S GOING TO PLAY.’

Munich, October 18, 2013

PEP’S TACTICAL TALK delays the start of training by half an hour. He usually gives three per match. The day before he tells his players how their opponents will attack. Then, on the morning of the match, he describes their offensive and defensive strategy and that evening, in the team hotel, he runs over his tactical plan for Bayern’s attack.

It’s Friday and his men have been scattered by international call-ups for 12 days. He wants to rally the troops and shake them out of relaxed mode. Players tend to come back from these training breaks in different states of mind. Those who have won with their national side will be feeling pretty high, whilst those on the losing side will be suffering. In any case, everyone’s happy to be back together again and there is a good deal of joking around. The Säbener Strasse dressing room is jumping. Pep, however, wants concentration and serious focus. He’s looking for the same level of intensity they produced in Manchester and Leverkusen.

Thirteen days previously they left Leverkusen with a 1-1 draw, the same result as the Freiburg game at the end of August. This time however, Bayern had put on a prodigious display of football, just like in Manchester, and Dortmund’s defeat by Borussia Mönchengladbach propelled Guardiola’s team to the top of the Bundesliga table for the first time in the championship. Week eight and Bayern were right on track.

Bayern had taken the euphoria from Europe-wide recognition for the manner of their victory in the Etihad Stadium to Leverkusen, and celebrated another festival of football three days later. This time they didn’t win despite the overwhelming domination of their third-placed rivals. With the ball at their feet for 80% of the game, Bayern completed 90% of their passes accurately and had 27 shots at the redoubtable Bernd Leno’s goal, 18 of which hit the target. But Pep’s men managed to score just one goal, for a conversion rate of only 3.7%. Leverkusen produced a terrific series of blocks and saves and needed only three shots on target to score.

It has been two weeks since the midfield trio of Lahm, Kroos and Schweinsteiger were so impressive in Manchester and Leverkusen, and Guardiola wants everyone back on track. The international break was a parenthesis which he now wants closed as quickly as possible. His talk goes on for 35 minutes, twice as long as usual. The coach explains how tomorrow’s opponents, Mainz 05, play, describes how he wants to deal with them and finishes up with some instructions about the importance of maintaining solidarity.

‘We must all show respect to each other. I know that you all want to play but that just isn’t possible and I have to choose the players I think are the most suitable. It doesn’t mean that those of you who don’t get a game and end up sitting on the bench are less able. It just means I haven’t picked you this time. But if you run off to the press or your agents saying that you should have played, you will be showing a lack of respect – not for me, but for the guy who did get a game, your team-mate. If anyone would prefer me not to make the decisions, no problem. Be my guest. You get together and decide who’s going to play and who’s not.’

Clearly the aim of this unexpected and rather startling onslaught is not to incite a management takeover but to puncture some of the rather over-inflated egos which have returned from the fortnight’s break. Pep wants to reactivate his men’s all-for-one mentality. He wants to stop them slipping back into their comfort zone.

Today the giant screens have come out for the first time. Pep demanded them on his first day, back in June. He wanted to cover up training pitch No.1 so that the press and scouts from other clubs could not spy on them. We know only too well that the coach prefers to work quietly, in privacy, away from prying eyes. Aware that a nearby hill offers a bird’s-eye view of Säbener Strasse, he asked that the club go a step further than just shutting the gates. He wanted one training pitch completely shielded from public view. After an unacceptable delay of four months (due to the initial difficulty in finding materials which would do the job effectively), today, at last, a thick grey screen, blocking off the whole pitch, is installed. The sun is blazing in the Munich sky and just as he finishes his talk, Pep and his assistants comment that the screen probably isn’t sufficiently opaque to hide the training session completely. Anyone with their wits about them will still be able to see everything from the nearby mountain.

‘Mountain? How do you say ‘mountain’ in German again? I can’t remember.’ Heinz Jünger, Säbener Strasse’s head of security, who is always helpful and interested, intervenes to remind him that
berg
is the word Pep is looking for.

Bastian Schweinsteiger is the first player out onto the pitch. He is startled by the screen. Punching the air with both arms and shouting something unintelligible (or at least something we prefer to ignore) about the press, he indicates a distant point and says that someone is bound to turn up there and get a good shot, despite the screen’s arrival. As it turns out the vice-captain is spot-on. A little later Markus Hörwick, the super-efficient communications director, rushes up to close a tiny crack through which a newspaper photographer is trying to grab an exclusive.

Pep is very quiet. He’s thinking about tomorrow’s game against Mainz. The training sessions immediately prior to a match are special for him. He will already have spent the previous evening shut up in his office going over his rival’s strengths and weaknesses. He’ll know what he needs to do to win. But he dislikes the international breaks because his players come back a little dazed. He wants to reinvigorate the team so that it starts to feel that their triumphant performances against Manchester City and Bayer Leverkusen took place only a couple of days ago, instead of the actual two weeks.

In the last few days he has asked for up-to-date stats on the team’s finishing, which continues to disappoint. It’s not something you can teach in training and in any case, high goal-scoring phases are just that: phases. However, greater focus and concentration will help a lot. He uses this afternoon’s talk to praise his men for their excellent defending and points out that the team allowed Leverkusen only three meagre chances. He then goes on to remind them that of their 18 shots on target, they managed only one goal.

‘Focus, gentlemen. If we are concentrating all the time we will get it right more often.’

Except for Thiago, who’s in the gym working on his ankle and Shaqiri, who is out for six months with a muscle tear, Guardiola has his whole team back, although Javi Martínez has not joined them today. He is working at the foot of the nearby mountain with Thomas Wilhelmi, the fitness coach responsible for player recuperation. Javi will work for 80 minutes today, trying to recover his much-depleted fitness levels after a groin operation, dental surgery and a difficult start to the season. Lorenzo Buenaventura will lead the rest of the squad in an intense and demanding training session, carried out in the shadow of the grey screen installed by the club.

The evening goes very well. The ball flies across the grass in a possession drill; nine minutes continuously until they stop for the obligatory drinks break. The main course will be an 11-against-10 mini-match using the whole pitch and done at maximum intensity, followed by another game in a smaller part of the pitch. Philipp Lahm is, of course, in midfield.

Lahm has been the great discovery of European football this autumn, which is pretty amazing considering that this is a 30-year-old who has spent his whole career as a full-back. The coach’s decision to move him into midfield and the captain’s response on the pitch have created an unexpected revolution. Despite the fact that he has told the club magazine that Lahm will go back to being a full-back once the injured players are fit, Pep is very pleased with the outcome so far. ‘If we achieve something this season, it will be because of that decision,’ he repeats.

I ask Philipp Lahm’s agent, Roman Grill, what he thought when Pep told Lahm to move into the midfield. ‘To be honest, I thought: “Finally! A coach who can see the natural place for Philipp.”

‘Up until now German football has focused more on the physical aspects rather than the technical side of things. Coaches here have missed a lot of opportunities. I had been thinking for ages that Philipp would be perfect in that position.’

Roman Grill played for Bayern II as a
pivote
and coached at youth level. ‘Obviously I have the advantage of having coached Philipp when he was a kid. I used him in the midfield then. His strongest qualities are his football intelligence and his ability to read a game tactically. That’s why he should be in the centre. Philipp contributes a lot to the defensive organisation but also to the fluidity of the game. As a full-back he had this ability to spot his team-mate and make exactly the right pass which, in turn, helped the whole group. And in the midfield he has even more opportunity to use that skill.’

Today, just before the Bundesliga resumes, Guardiola is saying very little but doing a lot of thinking. His players have spent 10 days working with their national sides across the globe and it really bothers him. He’s had some good news, however. Joachim Löw’s decision to give Mario Götze 45 minutes for Germany has had a huge impact on Bayern’s big signing, who is not yet 100% fit. Guardiola is also delighted that Löw chose to put Lahm in the midfield during the last 15 minutes of the Sweden game. Most coaches wouldn’t have done it, but Löw has opted to be guided by the empirical evidence rather than his own ego. Apparently untroubled by people in the world of football suggesting that his decision was a weak attempt to copy Guardiola, the coach has put the interests of his team first.

Some nice words have also come Pep’s way today from Barcelona, where Gerard Piqué has been talking to
So Foot
magazine. ‘Guardiola is the best coach I have ever had. The guy used to work 24 hours a day.’

Pep, as human as the rest of us, is tickled pink by the compliment and marks the moment with one of his favourite sayings: ‘These are the kinds of things that make sense of this job.’

By the afternoon, however, he is totally focused on Mainz and is much quieter, much more serious than usual. Until, that is, he opens his mouth – and lets rip. Completely silent during the 11-against-10 match, he then starts to shout at the top of his voice when they move to a smaller area of the pitch. He corrects positions and shouts for greater intensity as he spurs his men on. Guardiola really lets go. He whips his men up, demanding more and more. It’s as if he’s dealing with novice players who have never won anything, who have it all to do. He’s squeezing everything out of them, extracting their juice like so many oranges. This is another time when the collective flow underpins every move. Robben flies like a man possessed, Ribéry runs non-stop, Götze’s obviously loving every minute and Lahm and Kroos work together effortlessly without having to look at each other. On this warm October evening this is a Bayern possessed by some fantastical force until, that is, Ribéry falls to his knees, a victim of an accidental kick from Kirchhoff. He’ll be out tomorrow. There’s no doubt about it.

Despite this, Guardiola allows himself the first smile of the evening as he walks to the shower. He is more than happy to join in the teasing about
tiquitaca
, the term used to describe any playing style that involves more than three consecutive passes.

‘I hate
tiquitaca
. I always will,’ he says. ‘I want nothing more to do with
tiquitaca. Tiquitaca
is a load of shit, a made-up term. It means passing the ball for the sake of passing, with no real aim and no aggression – nothing, nothing. I will not allow my brilliant players to fall for all that rubbish.’

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