Page 117 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

always found space as the centre backs didn’t follow him closely.
Evra attacked down the left flank as he was not being tracked by Messi or, later in the

match, Eto’o – so the French left back and Rooney frequently found themselves in some
two v ones against Puyol.
The United forwards received the ball with their back to goal in between the Barcelona
midfield and defence, and could turn easily as Barcelona didn’t close them down to put
them under pressure. Barça were either scared or asleep in those first few minutes.

Cleverly, Giggs defended against Busquets and made it difficult for Barcelona to build up
from the back, forcing them to play longer balls than usual to the midfielders.
Henry and Eto’o didn’t see much of the ball and couldn’t run into defenders or in behind

defenders, so they couldn’t link with Messi who kept trying to dribble three, four players at
a time.
Then a fantastic tactical move took place that proved key to the game.
Pep moved Eto’o wide and Messi in the centre of attack. The first Barcelona goal came
soon after, nine minutes played.

Barcelona 1-0 Man United (Eto’o, 9). Barcelona scoring with their first attack. Iniesta
drifts past Anderson and slips the ball to Eto’o in the right channel. He cuts inside Vidić and
toe-pokes the ball past Van der Sar into the bottom left-hand corner despite a fruitless last-

ditch lunge from Carrick.
In the final fifteen minutes of the first half, Messi dropped deeper into midfield to
participate in the build-up and create superiority against the outnumbered United
midfielders, but the Barcelona wingers didn’t use the vacant space in the central striking

position.
With Barcelona packing the midfield, the United players became demoralised while
struggling to get a foothold. Interestingly enough, there was no fluidity in the Barcelona
game, or not as much as we saw in later years, and only Iniesta tried to open up the United

defence with some individual work. Barcelona didn’t seem to be playing like Barcelona: they
lacked aggression, didn’t control the ball as much as usual, giving it away far too often.
They posed little threat from the wings, playing predictable football, and were too respectful
of United. Despite the scoreline, Manchester United were creating lots of problems for

Barcelona.

Half-time:
Sir Alex Ferguson was very unhappy. In fact after the first ten minutes he had shown his

displeasure in the dugout. ‘Press high, you have to press high. You be stopped doing that’,
he shouted in the changing room. The infamous hair-dryer treatment. The United players
had not followed instructions in the first forty-five minutes.

Second half:

Tévez came on for Anderson and Giggs moved to the double pivot position alongside
Carrick.
The second half was similar to the first. Busquets didn’t participate much, Barcelona were

again lacking intensity and aggression (not enough then). They made only a couple of runs