Page 161 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

inside.
The Clásico was played on a Monday, a rarity due to the postponement of fixtures because of an
election day in Catalonia on the Sunday. Madrid were in good shape, taking on Barcelona as La Liga
leaders a point ahead of the Catalans – under Mourinho they had already become a solid team that

conceded few goals and killed off the opposition with their quick counters: the classic Mourinho
team.
As they had in their prior Champions League encounters, the match started in the pre-game press
conferences: a cat-and-mouse game to see who was going to fire the opening shot. José took aim at
Guardiola: ‘I hope players can help the referee and that it’s a game where people only talk about
football.’ The implications were obvious. Pep kept his head beneath the parapet.
Barcelona won 5-0 with goals from Xavi, Pedro, Villa (2) and Jeffren. ‘We couldn’t have played

better, we could have scored more. We had them asleep, they couldn’t touch the ball,’ Xavi
remembers.
Víctor Valdés was practically a privileged spectator in the Barcelona goal: ‘I was getting dizzy
following the ball. Finally I decided to stop looking so closely, my guys were the ones with it
anyway.’
Unsurprisingly, typically, Pep prepared for the game with an obsessive attention to detail. Early in

the match, the team performed a few of those high-speed ‘piggy-in-the-middle’ passings for which
they are famous, in midfield areas, with the intention of keeping possession and finding a gap at the
same time. The Camp Nou was ecstatic, seeing their players not only hammer the opposition, but run
– or, rather, pass – rings around their rivals. Guardiola identified more than ever with what the team
was doing: it was a moment of confirmation when everybody, fans, players, manager, was walking in
the same direction. The big idea, writ large out there on the pitch.
The fact that this moment of affirmation, one of the best games ever seen, took place against a side

managed by Mourinho was doubly satisfying. Pep admitted privately that he had betrayed himself
with the line-up versus Inter the previous season: the presence of Ibrahimović mortgaged the way the
team played, with less possession and more direct attacks. That admission was confirmation that he
didn’t have the key to success but, if he was to fail, he wanted to do it his way. He studied closely the
reasons for his mistake, and in the new season Pep persisted in the idea of controlling games, of
making Xavi, Iniesta and Messi the focus of the team. In the 5-0 Clásico performance, Pep saw the

Barcelona he had been dreaming of.
Guardiola wanted to put the result into context: ‘What will prevail in history is not just the result,
but the way we did it. It isn’t easy to play so well against such a strong team – a team that was killing
opponents domestically and in Europe. We have to be proud. Let’s dedicate this victory to Carles
Rexach and Johan Cruyff who started all this, and to everybody who has participated in the process:
former presidents, former coaches, everybody. It is a global victory because we have done things
differently and because there is no other club in the world that trusts local people as much as we do.’

José tried to take the heat out of the result: ‘It is one that is easy to accept. It is not a humiliation,
only my biggest defeat.’
Of course, Mourinho was underplaying the reality – and the truth was that this match would have
the most profound influence upon his professional career. He made the mistake of being too bold, of
focusing his team’s energy on what they would do in possession, rather than when they didn’t have the
ball. He went to Barcelona believing that he could take them on, at their own game, in their own

backyard. The scoreline might not have reflected the actual distance between the two teams in terms
of quality – it was, rather, a difference in understanding how to apply that quality to a particular