Page 195 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

short-term goals over long-term gain, those ideas didn’t fall on deaf ears.
Cruyff had become synonymous with ‘Total Football’, the playing style honed by Ajax coach Rinus
Michels, who also went on to coach Johan at Barcelona. It is a system whereby a player who moves
out of his position is replaced by another, thus allowing the team to retain their intended

organisational structure. In this fluid system, no footballer is fixed in his intended outfield role;
anyone can move seamlessly between playing as an attacker, a midfielder and a defender all in the
same game. As a player, Cruyff quickly won over the Barça fans when he told the European press that
he had chosen Barça over Real Madrid because he could not play for a club associated with the
Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. He further endeared himself when he chose a Catalan name, Jordi,
for his son. And in 1974, just to seal the deal, Cruyff helped the club win La Liga for the first time in
fourteen years, defeating Real Madrid along the way in an historic 5–0 victory at the Bernabéu that is

still remembered as one of Barcelona’s best ever performances. Needless to say, he had enough
credit and charisma to ensure there was little resistance to his Total Football vision when he landed
the job of manager in 1988.
‘The biggest problem was the Catalan character and when you try to do something new, they
always have doubts: they prefer to wait and see how it goes,’ says Johan Cruyff who today
understands better than most the conservative and pessimistic mentality of the Catalans. He also knew

that once they were convinced (by the team’s continuity and success) those same people would also
become the most loyal disciples of his ideas.
Cruyff introduced some passing drills into Barça’s ‘arterial’ system. And since then, the rondos
have been not just a method but a symbol of the club’s playing style: of dominating possession and
never losing the ball. Cruyff blended several ideas and concepts and converted them into a
philosophy – the seeds of which were planted throughout a club in urgent need of a footballing
identity. Until then, the first team of Barcelona had been comfortably living in a world of excuses and

enemies, content with their role as victims when faced with Real Madrid, an institution seen from
Catalonia as the club of the Establishment.
Xavi Hernández describes the style in its purest form: ‘I pass the ball and move, or I pass the ball
and stay where I am. I make myself available to help you; I look at you, I stop, I keep my head up and
look, and, above all, I open up the pitch. Whoever has the ball is running play. That comes from the
school of Johan Cruyff and Pep Guardiola. This is Barça.’ Or, as Pep Guardiola put it succinctly in a

press conference after one of the impressive victories against Real Madrid: ‘I have the ball, I pass the
ball; I have the ball, I pass the ball. We have the ball, we pass the ball.’ T-shirts bearing that slogan
can be seen in the streets of Barcelona.
Having the ball required technical ability, being able to control it quickly and place it well (the
difference between a good and bad footballer, according to Cruyff, is how well you control the ball
and where you place it with your first touch, accommodating it for yourself in the right direction or
sending it accurately to your team-mate). It needed players who were able to be in the best positions

to receive the ball, capable of constantly assisting, of one-twos, of keeping their heads up, of looking
for the next pass before receiving, of anticipating play. But, more importantly, they had to be
footballers capable of understanding the game. If they had a brain, Cruyff was able to explain to them
not just how but why things were done. From the moment the Dutch coach had an influence on the
work and methods of the academy, there was a definitive change in the selection process of young
players.

‘Why do we open up the field?’ Cruyff would explain. ‘Because if we have the ball and we are
open, it is more difficult for the opponent to defend.’ Or: ‘People criticised me because I played with