Page 37 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

was a bit like me. You must have a lot of technique, move the ball quickly, avoid a collision – and to
avoid it you must have good vision. It’s a domino effect. You soon get a sharp eye for detail, for
players’ positions. You can apply this when you are a player and a coach, too. Guardiola learnt that
way – thanks to his build – and he was lucky enough to have had a coach who had experienced the

same thing.’
Once established in the first team, the best piece of advice Rexach gave Pep is one that he likes to
repeat to his midfielders today: ‘When you have the ball, you should be in the part of the pitch where
you have the option of passing it to any one of the other ten players; then, go for the best option.’
Guardiola has said on numerous occasions that if he was a nineteen-year-old at Barcelona today,
he would never have made it as a professional because he was too thin and too slow. At best, he likes
to say, he’d be playing in the third division somewhere. It might have been true a decade ago and

perhaps even true at many other top clubs today, but not at FC Barcelona; not now. His passing range
and quick thinking would fit wonderfully into the team he coached – and his leadership skills must not
be forgotten either; as it soon became evident in his playing career; he didn’t just pass the ball to his
team-mates, he talked to them constantly.
‘Keep it simple, Michael!’ shouted a twenty-year-old Guardiola on one occasion to Laudrup, the
international superstar. The Danish player had tried to dribble past three players too close to the

halfway line, where losing the ball would have been dangerous. ‘That was simple,’ Michael replied
with a wink. But he knew the kid was right.
Just seven months after his debut, Pep was not only one of the regulars, but also a leading player
with immense influence in, at least up until recent times, the best Barça team in history: Cruyff’s
Barcelona won four consecutive La Liga titles between 1991 and 1994.
In the 1991–2 season, Barcelona had qualified for the European Cup final to be played against
Sampdoria at Wembley, something that for Pep, both as a culé and player, represented the

culmination of a dream. The club had never won that trophy.
The night before, in the last training session in London before the game, striker Julio Salinas and
Pep were arguing about the number of steps up to the famous balcony where the cup was collected at
the old stadium. ‘There’s thirty-one steps, I’m telling you,’ argued Pep, for whom accuracy was
important as he has a weakness for football mythology and rituals. Salinas, who loved winding Pep
up, got a kick out of disagreeing with him. Zubizarreta, the keeper, couldn’t bear to hear them

squabbling any longer: ‘The best way to resolve this is to win the game tomorrow! When we go up
the steps to collect the cup, you can bloody well count them then, OK?’
Seventeen months after his debut, on 20 May 1992, Guardiola, as expected, found himself in the
line-up of the European Cup final. Before heading out on to the pitch, Johan Cruyff gave his players a
simple instruction: ‘Go out there and enjoy yourselves.’ It was a statement that embodies an entire
footballing philosophy and was central to Cruyff’s principles; yet for others, its simplicity, ahead of
such a key game, might be considered an insult to the coaching profession.

As Barcelona fans, players and directors were celebrating wildly after Ronald Koeman fired home
a free kick in the final moments of the second half of injury time, at least one person wearing a Barça
shirt had something else on his mind amidst the chaos and euphoria. As the stadium erupted while one
by one the Barcelona players held aloft the trophy known as ‘Old Big Ears’, Zubi sidled up to
Guardiola and said: ‘You were wrong, son, there’s thirty-three of them. I just counted them one by
one.’

‘Ciutadans de Catalunya, ja teniu la copa aquí’ (Catalans, you have the cup here), cried Pep
Guardiola from the balcony of the Generalitat Palace in Barcelona that houses the offices of the