Page 166 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

After training that same afternoon at the Santiago Bernabéu and before Guardiola’s turn arrived to
talk to the press, well aware of what Mourinho had just said, one of the highest ranking people at
Barcelona entered the sacrosant dressing room. It surprised many.
The director told the coach to calm down, not to get involved in a war of words, to stay the usual

Pep. Perhaps it would be a good idea, it was suggested, if Mascherano appeared with him, always
balanced, calm. He was indeed the chosen player to accompany him in the press conference.
But Guardiola had decided to reply. Enough was enough.
In front of the media, Pep had always been the Barcelona coach, a club representative, and never
just Pep Guardiola: he had had to bite his lip dozens of times. But now he’d had enough. He wanted
to react as his body was telling him to, exactly as he felt.
‘Let’s talk football, eh Pep,’ the director reminded him again a few minutes before Guardiola

entered the press room at the Bernabéu. ‘Yes, yes,’ the coach answered. He wasn’t faithful to the
truth.
But a doubt assaulted him just before entering the conference area where dozens of international
journalists were waiting for him. He looked around for support.
Nothing is ever lineal or simple in Guardiola’s mind.
Was it a good idea what he was about to do? Manel Estiarte was next to him: ‘Pep, just think about

your players, about yourself, about all the Barcelona fans out there on the streets.’
That was that. Point of no return.
He sat down and took the bull by its horns.
‘As Mr Mourinho has mentioned my name, he called me Pep, I will call him José.’ Pep glanced
around with a half-smile – in front of him rows of journalists and at the back dozens of cameramen. ‘I
don’t know which one is Mr José’s camera. They must be all of these.’
His body language showed discomfort. He moved his shoulders, shifted position in his chair. But

as the discourse progressed, the Pep of easy words, the one that always convinces you, started to take
over.
‘Tomorrow at 8.45 we will play a match out on that pitch. Off the pitch, he has been winning the
entire year, the entire season and in the future. He can have his personal Champions League off the
pitch. Fine. Let him enjoy it, I’ll give him that. He can take it home and enjoy it.’
The speech, two minutes twenty-seven seconds of it, was delivered with controlled anger, with

wit, without pause.
‘We will play a football game. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, we win, we lose. Normally he
wins, as his CV shows. We are happy with our “smaller” victories, which seem to have inspired
admiration around the world, and we are very proud of this.’
For months he had been telling his players, ‘do you think I don’t want to answer back? But we
can’t, we shouldn’t. We are Barcelona.’ Everything, of course, has its limits.
‘We could draw up a list of complaints of our own. We could remember Stamford Bridge or

250,000 other things, but we don’t have secretaries and ex-referees or managing directors on our staff
to note those kinds of grievances down for us. So ... we are only left with going out at this stadium at
8.45 p.m. tomorrow and trying to win by playing the best football we can.
‘In this room, he is the fucking boss, the puto amo, the fucking chief.
‘He knows the ways of the world better than anyone else. I don’t want to compete with him in this
arena not even a second.’

There was something else he didn’t want to leave untouched. This José Mourinho that questioned
the legitimacy of the Barcelona successes is the same one that hugged him, lifted him in the air that