Page 144 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

ways his lack of experience was noticeable in some situations,’ he explained. ‘For example, Arsène
Wenger is someone who always tries to establish very close contact with each and every one of his
players. I mean that when a coach talks to you and looks you directly in the eyes, it really improves
the player’s perception of the coach. So you listen to him and you say to yourself, “OK, he’s right. I

need to work on this for myself, I need to give more.”’
In other words, when Pep understood that his contribution was insufficient, when he saw that the
Belarusian didn’t understand what the team needed, he cut him loose before the season had even
finished.
But as with other rejected players, Guardiola’s attempts to build bridges slip Hleb’s mind. ‘I have
the English I have because of Hleb,’ Pep has said. He spoke on countless occasions with him because
he felt that he was the kind of player who needed the occasional arm around his shoulders. Guardiola

thinks now that it was wasted time that could have been spent doing other things. Hleb didn’t ever
comprehend what Barça was about and even the player himself admits it. ‘I understand now that it
was almost all my fault. I was offended like a little kid. And I showed it: sometimes I would run less
in training, sometimes I would pose. The coach would tell me to do one thing, and I’d do something
else in defiance. It was like kindergarten, I find it ridiculous now.’
Yaya Touré, another discarded player, blamed Guardiola for his departure: ‘Guardiola, when I

asked him about why I wasn’t playing, would tell me strange things. That’s why I went to City. I
couldn’t speak to him for a year,’ he explained. ‘If Guardiola had talked to me I would have stayed at
Barça. I wanted to finish my career at Barça but he didn’t show any trust in me. He didn’t take any
notice of me until I got the offer from City.’
Yaya Touré’s agent forced the situation to such an extent, with accusations against Pep Guardiola
and the club (‘a madhouse’, he claimed), that the relationship with the player deteriorated. According
to his agent, Yaya should play every game, but Busquets’s promotion to the first team prevented him

from doing so. Eventually, Pep’s relationship with Yaya became purely professional and the
footballer felt marginalised since he could no longer be a part of that cushioned world that Pep builds
around his loyal players.
It was soon very clear to him that the emotional investment Pep asks of his players, an integral part
of the group’s make-up, had an expiry date: the affection lasted as long as the player’s desire to be a
part of his vision.

Gerard Piqué, the eternal teenager

Pep recognised the need to – and indeed did – treat Thierry Henry, for instance, like the star he was,
but also like the star who wanted to be treated as one. With Gerard Piqué, though, the relationship
took the opposite dynamic. Pep took him under his wing, loved him and cared for him more than
perhaps any other player in the side; yet that same devotion to Gerard ended up creating a tension that
became one of the biggest challenges of Pep’s final season at Barcelona.
Initially, Pep had not requested Piqué’s signing. Tito Vilanova, his assistant and Gerard’s coach in
the junior sides at La Masía, was the brains behind his transfer. Pep had no problem in admitting so in

the first conversation he had with the then twenty-one-year-old former Manchester United centre back
when he returned to the Camp Nou: ‘If you’re signing for Barcelona it is because of Tito Vilanova.
I’ve only seen you play a couple of times, I don’t really know you that well, but Tito has real faith in
you.’