Page 110 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

FC BARCELONA v MANCHESTER UNITED. ROME 2009

The preparations

Sir Alex Ferguson: Ah, Rome. It wasn’t a great game for Manchester United, we really
should have won that game, we let ourselves down really.

Pep Guardiola: Now that time has passed, I realise we had a very positive dynamic, it
didn’t matter who we were playing against, we had very high self-esteem. We had won the
league, the Copa del Rey, got to the final of the Champions League in the last seconds of
the match against Chelsea. The team dynamic was fantastic, even though we had some

injuries.
Sir Alex: On the morning of the game we had two or three footballers who weren’t well,
we never said it. We had a problem about the fitness of some of the players, but they
wanted to play and I went along with that. It was wrong.

PG: We were helped by the confidence and form going into that game: no doubt about it.
How important that is! We felt we could beat anybody even though our preparations were
full of uncertainty. We were without Dani Alvés and Eric Abidal, both suspended; Rafa
Márquez, who was crucial to us, was injured; I had to decide who to replace him with.

Iniesta had not been with us for a month and a half, Thierry Henry was also restricted to a
limited programme of exercises ... They were desperate to participate. Wow, so many
difficult situations. If you think about it now, calmly, and remember the line-up we played
against: Rooney, Cristiano ... Carlos Tévez was on the bench!

Manchester United also had concerns ahead of the match. Rio Ferdinand had suffered a
calf injury and missed the previous four matches, but flew out with the rest of Ferguson’s
squad to Rome after taking part in training that morning. The signs were good: there was
no apparent reaction to the defender’s muscular problem. And Rio wanted to play.

Guardiola told both Iniesta and Henry he was going to wait right up until the last minute
possible to decide if they could be passed fit. Pep had been playing the final for weeks in
his head, visualising every conceivable tactical scenario and permutation; calculating where
the spaces would open up; where his side could gain the upper hand in two v ones;

endlessly replaying the key battles. The manager’s reluctance to rule Iniesta and Henry out
was understandable: both played a key role in the game he had been planning.
He’d prepared for every eventuality, planned every contingency. Two days before that
final, he took Xavi to one side and told him, ‘I know exactly where and how we will win in

Rome. I’ve seen it. I can see it.’ The midfielder looked at his boss with a mixture of
enthusiasm and, perhaps for the last time, some scepticism. ‘Yes?’ said Xavi. ‘Yes, yes,
yes. I’ve got it, we will score two or three, you’ll see,’ replied Pep with such absolute
conviction that Xavi’s doubts, the typical anxieties experienced by every player before a big

game, evaporated.