Page 174 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

that Pep’s departure from Barcelona was a bad day for football. ‘It is a shame for all those who like
the beautiful game. He made football evolve and still win. I would like to congratulate him for his
fourteen titles in four years. I think that everyone will remember the Barça side in twenty years’ time
because they revolutionised the sport.’ Sacchi also reserves high praise for José: ‘He is a rare guy to

find. So distinct from Guardiola. You have to study Mourinho as a whole. His teams play excellent
football.’
Listening to José after Pep’s departure, is it possible to read between the lines a sense that he also
wished Pep had stayed, that he will probably never find a more formidable opponent? ‘If I say today
that I am tired and I stop training for ever, my career would be perfect. I have won everything I had to
win in the most important countries.’ Perhaps that’s only wishful thinking on our part.
Pep wanted to operate in a footballing utopia: a place where Carlo Mazzone joins him for coffee,

Batistuta argues about not having a striker, where Marcelo Bielsa, as happened on that trip to
Argentina, lines up Pep’s friend David Trueba as man-marker for a chair in the middle of the living
room of the Argentinian’s house. Pep wanted perfection, in a footballing dream world that existed on
a higher plane: a place from which he was brought crashing back down to earth by Mourinho.
‘Prepare yourself, Pepe,’ Ferguson had told Guardiola when they met in Nyon. ‘Mourinho is on his
way to you!’ Pep wasn’t that concerned: ‘It won’t be so bad.’ Sir Alex replied: ‘I live happier now.’

The Manchester United manager was right. The fight with José’s Madrid was, according to Manel
Estiarte, ‘draining, because the dark arts of the Portuguese were tiring, infuriating and so often unfair
– despite the fact that they were simply a tactic for defending his own team and club’.
Those ‘arts’ had tainted Pep’s recollections of the Clásicos: ‘I don’t have particularly happy
memories of those Barça–Madrid games of the past few years; they’re not games I enjoyed, neither in
victory nor defeat: there was always something that left a very bad taste in the mouth.’
Pep dreamed of a competition in which football decisions were all that mattered.

‘When you play as many times against each other, it becomes like the basketball play-offs. You do
one thing; they respond with another, you answer in another way. I remember the first game against
Mourinho: Inter played with a 4-4-2 formation. When they came to the Camp Nou in the second leg of
the group stage, they had a diamond formation and we beat them. When we went back to Milan for the
semis, we played against a 4-2-3-1 where there was no passing; it was all direct play from them.
When José came back here with Madrid, they wanted to play more and lost. They lost in the

Champions League even though they went back to playing directly. They have tried to play deep,
leaving space behind. In the Super Cup, the games in the Nou Camp, they had almost lost the tie but
they closed us down. The guessing, the changing, the preparing, the switches during games; guessing
what formation they will play, how we can surprise them too: that is what makes everything
enjoyable, what gives meaning to everything. It is the thing that made those encounters fascinating. It
is, in fact, the only thing that stays with me.
‘The rest? Not so much. With Mourinho, so many things have happened, so many things ...’

Pep took it all personally. For José it was all part of the job.
‘Our relationship has been good, is good and will be good,’ Mourinho said in his first season at
Madrid. ‘If ever Pep and I have a footballing problem, it will never become a problem between José
Mourinho and Pep Guardiola: only ever a problem between the coach of Real Madrid and the coach
of Barcelona. It’s something completely separate. Totally different. I respect him as much as I believe
he respects me and there are no personal issues between us, quite the opposite. Right now, I can’t

wish him luck because we are competing for the same thing, but apart from that, there’s no problem.’
Pep would never see it that way.