Page 102 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

of you standing up, some jumping up and down, finalising the rituals.
The game is not always going according to plan, and Pep doesn’t say anything as soon as you return
to the dressing room, but he finds two to three minutes to catch your attention.
Piqué: In the second season, we were drawing 0-0 against Rubin Kazan and he told us something at

half-time that really stuck with me: ‘When we lose our fear of losing, we’ll stop winning.’
Valdés: I remember a talk at half-time during a game in which things were going pretty badly. Very
calmly, he explained to us what we should do to sort out the situation. It was just a small move that
the midfielders had to carry out, positional play. He showed it to us on the blackboard and ‘zas!’ we
won the game because of that.
Xavi: With Pep, everything is calculated, if you get me, he’s always been able to see two or three
moves ahead. He analyses, and tells you things you haven’t thought of.

Valdés: When a player understands what the coach is explaining and realises that with his
decisions things improve, the level of credibility, connection and conviction increases considerably.
Estiarte: Pep told me: ‘Manel, we cannot deceive them, not once, because they will find us out.
And when they do, we are dead.’
Return to the pitch, second half, and after running normally even more than the opposition, you go
back to the changing room having given what Pep asked of you: your all. No more, no less.

Xavi: After the game he’ll sometimes give you a hug, or there will be times when he won’t say a
thing. Or there are days when he’ll give a team talk after the ninety minutes, and other times he won’t.
He does what he feels and what he feels is right at all times. And if he wants to tell you off, he does
so, no problem.
Estiarte: Sometimes he would only say after a game, ‘Look, in three days we have such and such a
match, eat, drink and rest. Congratulations.’ A subtle reminder to be responsible.
Iniesta: He knows how to control his emotions and say things at the right moment. He worries about

the group when things aren’t going well and when we win he takes part in the hugs and celebrations.
A family, we’re like a family.

The main team talk in the bowels of Stamford Bridge, Pep’s magic dust, wasn’t applied before the
start of the second leg of the semi-finals of the 2009 Champions League, but at half-time.
After emphatically beating Real Madrid and almost bagging the first title of the season (Barcelona
were seven points ahead of their rivals with four La Liga games to go), the team travelled to London
after the 0-0 draw of the first leg. They were nervous and anyone who said they weren’t was lying.

Nobody trembled but the hours leading up to the game were tense.
Rafa Márquez (injured) and Puyol (suspended) couldn’t play, so Pep had to decide on the best
partnership at the back. The players were told the line-up a couple of hours before kick-off, just
before leaving the hotel to get to the Bridge. The two central defenders chosen were Piqué, who had
grown in stature daily since his debut earlier in the season, and midfielder Yaya Touré, a selection
which took everybody by surprise. Keita was the defensive midfielder and Iniesta was used up front
with Messi and Samuel Eto’o.
The atmosphere was like nothing many of the players had ever experienced before – noisy long

before the game, the roar, the hunger for success that came from every corner of the stadium. Pep
Guardiola was astonished and admitted after the game that the atmosphere had certainly been
intimidating.
The coach had insisted in the couple of training sessions and in the tactical talk prior to the match