Page 184 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

will have to hear a few home truths.
But on that line, was Pep’s decision to quit really for the good of the club? Some might say that he
abandoned his players and colleagues at the time when they needed him most. His nemesis, after all,
was on top. The movie doesn’t usually end with the arch enemy winning – not unless they’re

preparing us for a sequel. And the suggestion is that Pep’s legacy, his bequeathing of his powers to
his sidekick, Tito Vilanova, could provide us with a sequel. But has he really left his successor in an
ideal situation or a no-win scenario where every victory will be heralded as another win for Pep,
every defeat as the fault of whoever follows him?
Whatever the answers, nobody in Catalonia was ready to question his motives or his timing. He
was protected, as José Mourinho has always said and envied, by the press, who enjoyed his
successful era with that combination of devotion and blindness that often goes hand in hand.

One thing is certain. Without Guardiola, without the spiritual leader, Barça is facing a new
situation, and Tito, Guardiola’s best friend, a mammoth task. Does Guardiola-ism make sense without
its most charismatic leader, without Guardiola? Will Tito be able to control it in the way Pep did for
four years?
That is, though, another story, one still being written.

‘Today, you all let me down.’
That is what Pep Guardiola told his players at the end of the last league game of the season in
Seville, at Real Betis. Barcelona had managed to scrape a 2-2 draw in the last few seconds of the

game after a poor performance, a reminder of the worst trips of the campaign, especially in a second
half where they ran less, worked less, pressured less and just seemed generally apathetic.
Fifteen days later the team would play in the Spanish domestic cup final and that level of
performance and attitude could not be accepted.
As soon as the players entered the dressing room, the manager asked for the door to be closed
behind them. ‘Quiet! Today you let me down,’ he grievously pointed out in what probably was the
worst telling off of his entire time at the helm. He didn’t want to personalise the mistakes in one or

two players but he couldn’t ignore the signals.
The farewells, the endless rumours about dissent, the speculation about the future of certain stars
had distracted and softened his team. He felt responsible.
At first nobody responded. They all listened in silence, this time looking at the floor, like scolded
children: reminded that the season had not finished yet.

Then Dani Alvés asked to be allowed to speak.
The Brazilian had lost focus during the season, more than most, and he had been sent off in that
match with most of the second half still to be played and with the team winning 1-0. Betis scored two
goals after that.
‘Forgive me. I am sorry, it was a stupid sending off,’ he told his colleagues.
That game, that performance, even the sending off, was not mentioned again by anybody in the
following two weeks that preceded the cup final in Madrid against Athletic de Bilbao – the message
had been received.

That title could become the fourth of the season after the Spanish Super Cup, the European Super
Cup and the World Club Cup.