Page 115 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

Sir Alex Ferguson: We really should have won that game, we were a better team at the
time.

Pep Guardiola: United were a fantastic team! Just look at their bench that day: Rafael,
Kuszczak, Evans, Nani, Scholes, Berbatov and Tévez.
Sir Alex: I think Henry’s a great footballer, Eto’o’s a great footballer but they weren’t
players that worried us, you know what I mean? The Wembley final was different.
PG: Manchester United certainly didn’t set out to defend, it is not in their genes, is it? In

any case, we had prepared different alternatives depending on how the game went.
Sir Alex: So Eto’o started off in the centre and Messi right, but then it was changed
around to Eto’o wide right and Messi dropping into the hole that he uses quite well now. But

in the final Messi did nothing, trust me, he didn’t do anything.
PG: We played Messi sporadically in that position, in the hole. We did it against Madrid,
but not again until the final. Looking back, thinking about those tactics now ... maybe we
won because of the very positive dynamic we had.
Sir Alex: If you go back to the final in Paris, Arsenal–Barcelona, Eto’o played wide left in

the game and he worked up and down, he worked his balls off in that game. He’s been
used to playing wide but we didn’t expect him to play wide in Rome. We expected at
different times that they would change, Messi and Eto’o would change in the game, but not

to the point where we were worried too much about it.
PG: United put us under pressure, defended high, had a few chances to score, and if
they had scored, United are a team that kills you on the counter-attack, so if they had taken
the lead it would have been much more difficult for us. Especially with Ronaldo who is a
wide player and in important European games he played through the middle. If you leave

Cristiano as a striker and with space, nobody can stop him, it is impossible, he’s unique.
Sir Alex: Conceding from a counter-attack when we were controlling the game turned out
to be key, because Barcelona are not the type of side you want to be behind and chasing

the game.
PG: The first team to score a goal, like it or not, in a final, makes the difference.
Sir Alex: And when Eto’o scores the first goal, then, yes, Messi became a problem as
Barcelona had overloaded the midfield and it was difficult to get the ball off him but,
actually, he didn’t threaten us that much.

PG: I remember the final in Rome came to an end and thinking, ‘God, we’ve played
really, really well!’ Then, a couple of years later, when we were preparing for the Wembley
final, we watched the videos of the game in Rome and realised it hadn’t been as great as

we imagined. We had been very lucky to survive the opening minutes.
Sir Alex: The Barcelona midfield – pass, pass, pass – was never threatening, really.
When we beat Barcelona back in 1991, in the Cup Winners’ Cup final, that team did exactly
the same as in Rome. Salinas was the striker and Laudrup, too, with Beguiristain wide left,
but they all dropped deep into the midfield, same thing. At that time we said, ‘Let them have

the ball in there, keep the back four in all its positions’, and we never had a problem. But, if
you wind on twenty years, a different quality player makes a difference.
PG: In the end, playing against us is complicated. When we are playing well, we pass the

ball and we force our opponents to drop deep bit by bit. It seems like they are sitting back