Page 131 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

manager to friend, brother, mother ...
In fact, Pep’s emotional investment in his players sets him apart from most managers. While José
Mourinho or Sir Alex Ferguson would get to know players’ relatives or partners to find out more
about their pupils; where the Portuguese manager would invite his most influential footballers and

their families for private meals with plenty of wine mainly to ‘casually’ discover if a child had been
ill or if the wife was unhappy with a new house, Guardiola established a more blurred line between
the personal and the professional.
Pep knew he could not treat an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old in the same way as the superstars and
he would chat to those younger players one to one in his office whenever he felt he needed to. With
the star players, when necessary he’d take them for a meal. Thierry Henry was one of the first he
decided to take aside.

‘Henry isn’t a problem,’ Guardiola kept repeating at press conferences, but during the difficult start
to Guardiola’s first season the French forward was criticised more than any other player. His price,
wages and prestige – along with his lack of empathy with the press – took their toll. And even though
the team improved, the former Arsenal star was not producing his best. Two factors influenced
Henry’s poor form: his back injury and the position in which he was forced to play. In the summer
that Eto’o was on the market, after Pep had told him as well as Deco and Ronaldinho that they were

not wanted, Guardiola promised Henry, who under Rijkaard played uncomfortably on the left wing,
that he would be moved into the central striker’s position. However, when it transpired that Eto’o
was to stay at the club for another season, Thierry had to carry on playing wide, a position in which
he found it difficult to impress as he was lacking the pace and stamina of his earlier years.
When Henry was at his lowest, Pep took him out to dinner to cheer him up and tell him that he had
every faith in his ability. Henry appreciated the gesture. In the following game against Valencia, ‘Tití’
was unstoppable and scored a hat-trick in the 4-0 victory. In the end, together with Messi and Eto’o,

he formed a devastating front line during what would be an historic treble-winning season (Copa del
Rey, Spanish League and Champions League). The trio scored 100 goals between them – Messi 38,
Eto’o 36 and Henry, who ended up playing fifty-one games, 26. At the end of that campaign, Henry
went into the 2009 summer break knowing that he had had a spectacular season.
But the following summer, after a personally disappointing campaign, unable again to return to the
lead striking role in the centre – or to the form that had terrified so many Premier League defences –

at thirty-two and with an offer from the MLS, Henry left Barcelona.

Samuel Eto’o and the lack of ‘feeling’

Pep had given his affection, time and effort to his players in a process that began during pre-season at
St Andrews. Most of it was intuitive and came naturally to him. In exchange he demanded very high
standards of work but something else too, something much bigger, something we all look for: he
wanted them to love him back. And if they didn’t give him that love, he suffered immensely.
It was the boy in Pep who, logically, never entirely went away, that kid who wanted to impress
during his trials for La Masía. The kid who, once accepted by the youth academy, needed to be liked,

selected by his coaches, approved of by Cruyff. The youngster who would respectfully decide to
follow the politics that came with the Barcelona philosophy because he believed in them, but also to
take up a role that helped him get close to the majority of the fans: leadership with emotion again.
That need to be liked might doubtless lie dormant for a while, perhaps hidden under the shield that