Page 152 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

But days, even hours, after conceding his exhaustion and inability to continue, Pep’s expression
changed. The sense of relief that he had felt during his public farewell was replaced by one of
sorrow.
There was speculation about the reasons behind his mood swing, and whether or not it was a

consequence of the press conference send-off that had been such an inappropriate ending for his
illustrious career: after all, the club was announcing that the best coach in their history was leaving
and they decided that it should coincide with the announcement of his replacement, Tito Vilanova.
Was his melancholy due to the fact that his assistant and friend Tito was staying, a decision that
surprised everybody? Was it because the boss and his replacement were still awkwardly sharing the
same space? Or perhaps it was more to do with the strange atmosphere created in the dressing room
from the moment of his announcement, as everybody, team and staff alike, felt they could have done

more to convince him to stay?
Whatever the consequences, Pep was emotionally drained and, in exposing his fragility, he
revealed the scars with which the intense pressure of football at that level had aged him so much.
Perhaps it is true that four years of managing Barcelona takes the same toll as managing a quarter of a
decade, at say, Manchester United. Pep was telling us: I am not Superman; I am vulnerable, flawed.
Pep Guardiola: the archetypal anti-hero, a man capable of achieving greatness and performing

wonderful deeds, despite his own weaknesses and fears, aware of his power and responsibility but
who would have been happier if he hadn’t spread himself so thinly in his unwanted multiple role as
club figurehead, philosopher and manager, and who, despite everything, fought against being used as
an example. More of a Spiderman, then.
After all, no Superman would have burst into tears in front of the world’s TV cameras as he did
after the team won their sixth title in a year, the World Club Championship, against Estudiantes. Or
admitted straight afterwards, in his first words post-game, that ‘the future looks bleak. To improve on

this is impossible.’ He had asked Tito, still on the pitch, ‘What else are we going to do now?’,
because, having to face the same challenges, Pep could only foresee the problems ahead and didn’t
think he was strong enough to overcome them all over again. From the pinnacle of the game, the only
way was down.
Yet, astonishingly, Pep did continue and did improve the team. Once again, he had proved capable
of overcoming the odds, transforming and leading a group of men into performing heroics on the

football field, while at the time shaping and staying true to his own values and philosophy. He
achieved the seemingly impossible, superhuman feats, but it took its toll: he may appear superhuman,
but cut him and he bleeds like the rest of us – and, because of that, what he achieved was all the more
impressive not despite of but because of those human qualities.
That is part of Pep’s magic. The public is fascinated by such a seductive mixture: on the one hand
fragile, even physically, and, on the other, strong in leadership and the sheer force of his personality.
And his team is precisely that, too: extremely convincing in the way they play, with obvious cultural

characteristics; but, on the other hand, lacking physical stature, weak, smaller than the average
footballer – it’s that dichotomy that makes Spiderman Pep and his team so appealing.
He earned his authority not just through the team’s play and their trophies, but through his
behaviour in the good and the bad times, in his achievements and his self-confessed errors. The
cynics said that his exemplary composure and behaviour were merely a front and that we would only
know the real Pep in defeat. The media loves football because it’s usually black and white, about

winners and losers. Good and bad. And the Madrid press wanted to believe that Pep was bad, that his
public persona masked something altogether different. That tribalism came to the fore when