Page 182 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

familiar one. But before that he had to address the fans.
‘We’ll do this quickly, the players need to get to the showers,’ he began. And in his words there
was a hidden homage to Bielsa who started his own farewell speech to the Chile national team in the
same way: ‘Life has given me this gift. In these five years we have been able to enjoy the spectacle

produced by these guys.’
‘You have no idea of the love that I’ll take home with me, these past five years, you have no idea of
the feeling of happiness I take with me. I am just as lucky as all of you, I hope you have enjoyed
watching them play.
‘Know that I will miss you all. The one who loses is me’, a last reference to his admired Bielsa,
words used too by the Argentinian manager in his last day as Chile manager.
And with a reference to the same metaphor he had used at his presentation as Barcelona manager,

he said, ‘The seat belt got a bit too tight, so I took it off. But the rest of you needn’t do so because this
will continue. I leave you in the very best hands. Stay with them. I wish you the very best, good luck.
See you soon, because you will never lose me.’
Pep’s mum, Dolors, advised fans, via radio interviews days later, to get hold of those last words,
to treasure them. They weren’t said by chance.
That final message hinted and foretold of a return; the ball boy, the youth team player, the captain,

the coach and the man who made Messi the best player in the world, maybe of all time, would surely
be back. The only thing we can’t guess yet is in what capacity. After spending some time abroad to
distance himself from the club, the next logical step in Pep’s Barcelona career would be a return as
sporting director or even president.
When Pep finished speaking, the players applauded and ran towards him to throw him up in the air,
the way they had done in Rome and at Wembley. Then, they all stretched out their hands to make an
enormous ‘sardana’ ring of bodies – the traditional Catalan dance – and ran around the centre circle.

It was another of the symbols that this Barça team will leave behind, this example of unity, spinning to
the music that had started a unique cycle: Coldplay’s ‘Viva la Vida’, the exhilaration and enthusiasm
of the first year, those first tentative steps of the new project that began to take shape despite the
voices of the sceptics that were gradually and systematically silenced with each victory.
Soon after that Pep needed to become reacquainted with the old Pep, to resuscitate himself even.
So when the lights went out and the public had disappeared, Pep made his way down on to the

pitch with his family, brothers, sisters, cousins and friends to take photos.
That Guardiola knew that life was much more than football. That Pep was curious to discover new
worlds, literary worlds, cinematographical, theatrical, musical worlds; and others geographical, at
the other extreme of the globe, and some even closer to home.
Throughout the whole night, Pep was half smiling – it was the end of an era but also the start of a
new one. What he had wanted since the previous October: a rest. A reunion with his other self and
other dreams. It was time to enjoy things away from his consuming passion after a seemingly

interminable four years.
How different from when, eleven years earlier, he had played his last game for Barcelona and,
after the game, ended up being carried off the pitch by his team-mates Luis Enrique and Sergi
Barjuan. Not everybody stayed behind to see that. That night, there were no post-match celebrations,
eulogies or speeches, no emotional grandfathers or excitable youths taking pictures of the moment. He
had also walked around a dark, empty stadium with Cris and his agent.

As a player, he had received harsh criticism for leaving the club at the end of his contract, whistles
from an unforgiving crowd unjustly accusing him of trying to cash in. It counted for little that he was