Page 41 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

was only one interpretation of what happened under Robson. But that is misleading, because that is
exactly what took place. At half-time in the 1997 Spanish Cup final against Real Betis, Sir Bobby
Robson sat in a corner of the changing rooms at the Bernabéu. The score was level at 1-1 and the
Barcelona players wanted to seize the initiative and capitalise on the weaknesses the players

themselves had spotted on the left of the Betis defence, while exploiting the gaps present between
their opponent’s midfield and defence. The players, not the coach, gave each other the instructions
combined with interventions from Mourinho. The game was won in extra time, 3-2, the third title –
Spanish Cup, Spanish Super Cup and European Cup Winners’ Cup – in a season that remains etched
in the memory by the images of Ronaldo powering past, round or through La Liga’s defences.
Guardiola’s confidence was growing both in terms of asking questions (why are we doing this?
Why don’t we start building that way, this way? Why don’t we move those players in that direction

when the ball is in that other direction?) and advising his team-mates. ‘I was up to my balls with Pep,
all day: this and that and this and that in the dressing room. He made my head spin!’ says Laurent
Blanc who played for Barcelona in the team during Sir Bobby Robson’s reign, and at the time was not
particularly impressed by Pep’s ‘perseverance’ – a polite way of describing his obsessive nature.
The league title eluded Barcelona and celebrations were muted as the season drew to a close, the
mood not helped by the fact that Sir Bobby Robson had learnt, as far back as April of that year, that

the club had already reached an agreement with Louis Van Gaal to take charge at the Camp Nou the
following season.
For Guardiola, this represented an opportunity to learn from the architect of the extraordinarily
successful Ajax team that he admired so much. But then a personal sporting tragedy struck.
Early the following season, in an August Champions League encounter versus Latvian side Skonto
FC, Guardiola picked up a muscle injury that went undiagnosed until it was far too late. He realised
something was wrong when, on his way to a delicatessen, he struggled to sprint across the road

before the traffic lights turned red. What had at first appeared a fairly innocuous calf muscle injury
would eventually lead to Pep missing most of the 1997–8 campaign as he visited one specialist after
another in a seemingly interminable quest to find out exactly what was happening. It was not until the
end of that season – in which Barcelona won a league and cup double under their new manager – that
Pep was finally able to receive the necessary treatment and underwent an operation in the summer that
would also see him miss out on Spain’s disastrous 1998 World Cup campaign in France.

The injury required a slow and arduous period of recuperation and it would not be until some
fifteen months after that fateful sprint to the shops that Guardiola would be able to play an injury-free
game of football for the Barcelona first team, almost halfway through the ’98–9 season, making his
return at the Riazor stadium against Deportivo La Coruña on 5 December.
There were those at the time who mischievously suggested that Guardiola’s prolonged absences
and mystery injury that coincided with Van Gaal’s first season at the club were no mere coincidents
and that the player was deliberately avoiding working under the Dutchman. While it is true that,

despite winning two league titles and a Spanish Cup during a stormy three-year first spell at the club,
Van Gaal often found himself at loggerheads with the local media, the assumption that the Catalan
local hero, Guardiola, shared an uneasy relationship with the Dutch coach is incorrect. Van Gaal
quickly identified Pep as a natural successor to Guillermo Amor as club captain, with Pep eager to
learn from the coach whom he greatly admired, and the pair constantly discussed football, tactics,
positioning and training exercises. ‘He is, alongside Juanma Lillo, the manager whom I talked to

most. Especially at the beginning, because in the end the contact diminished, both in quantity and
content,’ recalls Pep.