Page 123 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

surprise them with it.
‘You are going to be able to find and create space here and here. Right here. This is

where the game can be won and lost. Keep an eye on the two v ones that are going to pop
up here, here and here. In midfield we will be four against three, we’ll have superiority in
numbers in these central areas. Here is where you are going to win the game for me.
Because I have seen it, I have analysed it and I know this is where we will win it.’

So, it wasn’t the simple instructions that Cruyff gave his Barcelona players at Wembley
twenty years earlier, no ‘go out and enjoy yourself’. The message was ‘yes, we have to
enjoy this match, but we have to suffer for it too’.
Javier Mascherano cannot help being a fan of Pep, of the delivery and timing of his

speeches, of the quality of the message: ‘I’ve heard more than one player say: “Son of a
bitch, he’s nailed it!” That speech at Wembley was one that made the greatest impression
on me. While he was talking, it wasn’t as if he was referring to a game that we were about
to take part in, it was as if we were actually playing it right there. He was up and down,

side to side in front of the board, gesticulating; and if you shut your eyes and listened to
him, you were already out there in the middle of the action. Everything that he said would
happen, happened as he said it would. During the match I was thinking; I’ve seen this
already, I’ve already heard all about it – because Pep has already told me about it ...’

There was one more moment of inspiration. A few words that would send Mascherano,
for one, out on to the pitch with a tear in his eye.
Just after the players had warmed up, minutes before the match was about to kick off,
completely unplanned, Pep decided to appeal to the players’ human instincts. As the

referee was trying to usher them out and into the tunnel leading on to the pitch, Pep quickly
grabbed hold of them and gathering them around said, with pure determination in his voice:
‘Listen, lads, we’re going to do this for Abidal! He has made it here and is with us, we
cannot let him down.’

Scouting report: Champions League Final Wembley 2011

First half:

Abidal was in the line-up.
Pep received a report from a friend in England that explained Manchester United had
been training with a 4-3-3 but that finally they were going to play with their more usual 4-2-