Page 111 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

This was Pep Guardiola’s first European final as a coach. The biggest club final in world
football. He had less than a year’s experience as manager of a first team.

PG: On paper, that Manchester United side were dominant in every department. I was
worried about everything about them: quick on the counter, strong in aerial play, conceding
few goals. Sometimes the rival is better than you and you have to go out and defend, but
we were going to be brave. And Manchester United knew it.
Subtle changes would have to be made – and those were the little details he had been

visualising for weeks – but Guardiola told the players they just had to persist with the same
things they had been doing all season. Most of the especially significant decisions that Pep
had to make were related to the absentees and their replacements in the line-up. Puyol

would have to move to his old position at full back, while midfielder Yaya Touré would fill in
as an improvised centre half. Another midfielder, Seydou Keita, was considered ahead of
Silvinho for the right-back slot vacated by Dani Alvés. However, when the idea was put to
the player in training ahead of the final, a match that every player in the world would give
anything to participate in, Keita told Pep, ‘Don’t play me there.’

Keita’s reasoning blew the manager away, because his motives were selfless rather than
selfish, as they first appeared: ‘I would do anything for you, boss, but I have never played
there. My team-mates will suffer,’ explained Keita. The player was putting the collective

needs of the team ahead of any individual desire to play: the midfielder knew that he was
not going to be in the line-up unless he was the makeshift right back. On more than one
occasion since that day, Pep has said: ‘I’ve never met such a good and generous person as
Keita.’ That week, the coach knew that his midfielder would do the job if he asked him to –
’I can still convince Keita,’ he kept saying – but, in the end, decided that Silvinho, who had

participated little that year and would be playing his last game for the club, would play at
left back in Rome.
‘I don’t know if we will beat United, but what I do know is that no team has beaten us

either in possession of the ball or in courage. We will try to instil in them the fear of those
who are permanently under attack,’ Pep told the media, translating his prediction into four
different languages himself the day before the final. ‘I will tell the players to look their best
because they are going to be on the telly for the whole world. Oh, and I believe it is going
to rain. If not the pitch should be watered. That should be an obligation, to guarantee a

spectacle. After all that, the enjoyment of fans is why we play this game.’
The British press made reigning European Champions Manchester United clear favourites
to retain their title in Rome. Having also just secured their eleventh Premier League title,

Ferguson’s side were brimming with confidence and self-belief and the mood was reflected
across the country as fans and pundits alike predicted that the Red Devils would be too
powerful for the diminutive Catalans.
In Catalonia the mood was far more circumspect: United were worthy of considerable
respect.

Guardiola was on the verge of possibly his third title in an incredibly short managerial
career, an historic treble – the first in the history of FC Barcelona – the greatest
achievement for a debutant coach in the history of the game. ‘And if I win that third title, the

Champions League, I could go home,’ joked Pep, ‘call it a day and finish my career there.’