Pep Confidential (36 page)

‘It’s normal enough when the opposition parks the bus like that. That all changes if your opponent happens to be aggressive and wants to contest the ball – how much ball you have isn’t of supreme importance. What’s really important is that the ball needs to be far away from our goal – that’s what makes me happy.’

Contrary to what many think, Guardiola is not interested in owning the ball for the majority of the match, nor in pure statistics. What is eternally and crucially important for him is the idea of running – something which will only gain in importance in the coming months.

‘We enjoy our work when we play well and we run and run and run. In order to enjoy our best play, we need to run a lot.’

The other great factor in the month of February is the flood of consecutive games. ‘Right now we’re constantly playing every three days and we can’t allow anything to distract us and affect our focus,’ Pep insists. ‘The next game is always the most important and that means we can only think of that and not about the Champions League or anything else. We must concentrate only on the next step forward. Always serious, always focused. Every single victory needs to be constructed from zero because the most difficult thing isn’t to win but to continue winning once you’ve hit winning form and the whole world just supposes that you’ll keep on winning. We have to wipe everything else out of our minds, including last year’s treble, and our wins this season. We have to work every single day as if we’d won nothing – as if we’re starting from zero.’

At the end of this unstoppable February, perhaps the most emblematic moment actually comes on March 1, when the visitors, Schalke, don’t even manage to cross the halfway line until the 29th minute and Neuer doesn’t touch the ball until four minutes before half-time. It’s just one more indication of Bayern’s devastating dominance. Pep, nevertheless, wants nothing to do with such a flood of remarkable statistics, nor with the records his team is accumulating. ‘A sportsman always needs to centre himself totally on today, in the very moment if possible. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?’

Run ceaselessly and focus on the here and now: the two fundamental principles which will underpin Bayern’s performances in February, when they continue to triumph despite having already won everything. Principles which will then be forgotten in early April, when the title is won and the team hits its only dip of the season – and it’s a big one.

Before this happens, Bayern will continue to hammer their rivals with the same regularity as they recover and then lose players. Schweinsteiger and Martínez are back but Shaqiri is injured once more and Ribéry needs surgery. On Wednesday, February 6, Pep has all his squad (except long-term absentee Badstuber) fit for the first time. It lasts one measly day. By Thursday, Ribéry undergoes his back operation. Thanks to injuries, thanks to tactical alterations and because of the dreadful burden of matches, the coach can’t talk about the starting XI. Instead, he operates with a main group of 15 or 16 interchangeable players – amongst whom guys like Pizarro continue to perform well when called upon. This is a Bayern which mutates smoothly from one tactical schematic to another and which changes formation constantly and easily depending on the demands of their coach and the characteristic of their rivals.

I reminded Christian Streich, Freiburg coach, about a chat we’d had six months previously at his Mage Solar Stadium. Back then he’d predicted how impressive Pep’s Bayern were going to be. ‘Yes, I remember saying that to you. I told you that Bayern were going to be a brutal rival and that’s what they’ve become. If you try to play defensively, they’ll just unpick you with passes. Press them high and they can rip you apart. They have so many strings to their bow and are just overpowering. Six months ago they weren’t playing like this, but during that time, under Pep’s tutelage, they’ve done it. Bayern are a machine.’

Pep continues to alter his line-up depending on the next opponent, or injuries and the need to rest players, but these practical decisions also reflect Guardiola’s immutable belief that constant evolution is a fundamental imperative. Evolution as a way of being – a necessity, a duty. Pep states it bluntly: ‘The character of a team is the character of its coach.’

46

‘HE’S SO INTENSE THAT HE’LL EXHAUST US.’

Munich, February 16, 2014

DEFINING PEP – THAT’S a tough challenge. There isn’t a single adjective which will wholly sum up the complexities of a personality like his. Sometimes he seems like he’s made out of steel, sometimes out of butter. All the same it is tempting to seek out some definitive word. Like ‘obsessive’.

‘If being obsessive means being passionate and detailed in your preparation,’ says his friend Sala i Martín, ‘then Pep is obsessive. But in my opinion that kind of obsession isn’t a negative thing if you’re obsessed about something you love and you’re trying to achieve to a perfect degree. Pep’s obsessive in the same way a great musician or a great artist is obsessed. It’s just that his key, his palate is football.’

The professor of economics talks to us about what he sees as in-depth preparation. ‘During his sabbatical year in New York he’d sometimes attend my classes on innovation and economics at Columbia University and he was extremely interested in individual communication – far more so than group communication. He’d already figured out that this was no longer an era to show his players a ‘Gladiator’ video [as he did before the Rome Champions League final of 2009] or use Cruyff’s turn of phrase from the 1992 European Cup final [‘Go out and enjoy yourselves’]. Pep was much more interested in personalised communication – finding other ways of getting feelings and beliefs across to his players. He wanted to understand Twitter and social networking with a view to possibly using some of those concepts and rules while communicating within the dressing room or on the training pitch. Because he knew he should be doing that. So in the US he dedicated himself to working out how to harness the power of modern technology to communicate with players. He spent a year working it out. It became an obsession even when he didn’t yet have a team to apply all this to. In the heart of Manhattan life he was consumed by how all this was going to help him change and improve his work, long before he had some to do.’

Sala i Martín evokes another ingredient which is essential to understand Guardiola: passion. ‘Kasparov told him clearly: Pep, you can’t play without passion.’

Buenaventura, too, believes that passion is fundamental to victory in football. ‘If you talk to Diego Simeone he’ll tell you something which pretty much stands out: “I’m the footballer who got the most out of the least resources. You know why? Because I have passion! How the hell was I going to get 100 games for Argentina? As a player I was a bit of a lump, but everything I achieved was down to my passion.”’

Pep isn’t out to intellectualise football, or his ideas and concepts. He doesn’t use complicated vocabulary. He’s an ordinary guy and uses simple words. This is the son of a bricklayer who has never forgotten his roots.

‘The players will end up drained by Pep,’ Thiago once predicted. ‘He’s so intense that he’ll exhaust us. He’s an even better psychologist than he is a tactician.’

Thiago really knows him. He’s taken his rows and he’s earned his demonstrations of affection – his warnings and his praise. ‘Pep will never be satisfied. He doesn’t enjoy himself. He’ll never enjoy football because he is always looking for what has gone wrong in order to correct it. Pep is never happy because he’s a perfectionist.’

47

‘THEY LIKE THE IDEA OF TELLING THEIR FRIENDS: I PLAY FOR PEP GUARDIOLA.’

Munich, February 17, 2014

THE TEAM IS more than prepared for the great challenges of the season. They’re on top form and they’re hungry. The league title is within reach. With two weeks to go before the end of February, Bayern are 16 points ahead of Bayer Leverkusen and 17 above Borussia Dortmund. Guardiola jokes: ‘If we don’t win the league, I’ll resign.’

Given that the team are on such a high, it seems a good time to chat to a few experts and I start with Alexis Menuge, the German correspondent for the French paper
L’Équipe
and author of
Franck
, Franck Ribéry’s biography. ‘Bayern are stronger now than they were at the end of 2013. I think that’s down to the fact that the players understand more about what Pep wants. The Qatar training camp was very intense and they trained well. But apart from all the hard work I think that tactics have had a role to play here. For the last few weeks Pep has allowed his men to play with a 4-2-3-1 more frequently. That’s how they played under Heynckes and I think his players feel more comfortable as a result.’

Next I interview Roman Grill, Philipp Lahm’s agent and a man who understands football tactics inside out. Grill has strong opinions. ‘The team’s improvement is mostly down to Pep Guardiola’s ability to teach effectively and in my opinion he’s the first Bayern Munich coach Philipp’s worked under who teaches his players something new every day. He has had a very positive influence on them and, given his record with Barça, has the kind of authority that inspires the players to learn.’

As well as working so closely with Lahm, Roman Grill played for Bayern II and also coached the youth team. There’s no doubt in his mind as to the reason for the team’s improvement. ‘This team needed someone like Pep. And I really can’t see any other coach doing what he has done here. Last year Bayern already had the best squad in their entire history, whether it was created by sheer good luck or by first-class planning on the part of the management, but there were some very dodgy tactical decisions made under Jupp Heynckes. Heynckes used his charisma and authority as a respected, experienced coach to manage his men, but the players were coming up with the tactical solutions themselves on the pitch and it just couldn’t have gone on for another year, particularly after they won everything. They needed the stimulus of a coach with ideas, a coach who has a plan which he implements on a daily basis. There’s no other coach in the world who could have given them this – only Guardiola. The team has gone through an amazing process of evolution and I have never seen a Bayern team play with this level of intensity. The match against City in Manchester was a fantastic spectacle, extraordinary. Pep always knows exactly what he wants. He’s a man who wants to help his players, work with them, not against them but he is also clear about what he wants, what his objectives are.’

The day after this chat I catch up with Daniel Rathjen, a
Eurosport Germany
reporter, who has followed Bayern’s season closely. ‘Winter was an important turning point for Pep and for Bayern. He came here in the summer with his philosophy and his new ideas but it was still Heynckes’ team. You could see it in the players, in the bosses and even in Pep himself. You could see it in the way they played and it was an enormous challenge to turn this around. It was always going to take time. I think that Marrakech was the catalyst, after they won the Club World Cup. Back then Pep thanked Heynckes again saying, ‘Danke, Jupp, for giving us the chance to win this title’. But it was a watershed moment. It was the last title won by the ‘old’ team. In Qatar, after the winter break, Pep’s reign really began. Players like Robben, Schweinsteiger, Lahm and Ribéry understood that they could continue to win trophies and it was then much easier for Pep to reap the rewards of the seeds he had sown. The weeks prior to February were spent getting to know each other, establishing routines and recovering from the plague of injuries that had hit them. And all the while Bayern still managed to achieve overwhelming domination of the league. Their second stage of evolution really started from January onwards, when they began to function as a solid group.’

I also speak to the renowned author Ronald Reng, who has written several books, the most famous of which is
Robert Enke: A Life too Short
. Ronald lived in Barcelona for several years and witnessed Guardiola’s Barça at first hand. He is, therefore, well placed to make comparisons with Bayern. ‘The Bayern players have surprised me much more than Pep himself. I already knew Pep from Barça and was aware of his talent for innovation and his tactical ideas. But the humility with which the players have been prepared to learn has surprised me. In some cases this has meant a radical transformation, almost as if they’ve moved to a foreign country. In any case, there are huge differences between Bayern’s game and Barça’s. There is the occasional game, usually at home, that you can see some similarities, but they are very rare. Bayern have this ability to hit you hard from a standing start. Barça don’t have anything like that. It’s the capacity to create something out of nothing.’

Perhaps the most interesting part of the process for Reng has been the fact that winning the treble in 2013 didn’t dissipate their hunger in any way. ‘First, it’s important to say that the prospective change of coach had an impact on the team even during their treble campaign. By January the players knew that Pep was going to be appointed and that affected them psychologically. Consciously or subconsciously many of them started to give Heynckes more support because he was the guy who was leaving. It was even easier for Jupp to manage a team of men who had so much affection for him. Players like Robben and Ribéry, who were a key part of the title wins, were no longer focusing on themselves and their own egos. They were thinking of their coach, who was leaving. So in essence the ‘Pep effect’ actually started before he even got here. And right now they’re playing at a much higher level. Their results are outstanding, but so is the way they are playing: the type of game they’re playing now is much more difficult than what they did last year. More passing, more definition, more complex tactics – it’s actually quite a curious phenomenon that rarely happens in football. These players had won everything but they still liked the idea of being able to tell their friends, ‘I play for Pep Guardiola’. That’s not what usually happens, I can tell you. In fact players are usually very critical of their coaches, only too ready to find fault. Here the opposite happened. There was a huge amount of curiosity about Pep and they were also surprised by the kind of training sessions he introduced. In truth, Pep’s arrival was the biggest stimulus this team could have had. The greatest discovery of this season has been that veterans playing at this elite level are still capable of changing, and in such a short space of time.’