Page 45 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

Juventus played out like something from a mafia movie. The tale begins with a phone call to the
player’s agent, Josep María Orobitg, informing him that somebody from Juventus wanted a secret
meeting with him. Consequently, a car arrived to collect the agent in Barcelona and took him, via a
number of B roads, to Turin. Barely a word was spoken in the car until they finally arrived at a

modest hostel in a remote spot. ‘Orobitg went up the stairs and Luciano Moggi came across, the
general director of Juventus,’ Collell explains. ‘He was sitting at a round table, surrounded by
shaven-head bodyguards, wearing the typical dark glasses. A chubby waitress served abundant
amounts of pasta but said little. Suddenly, the bodyguards left together. Alone, Moggi and Orobitg
reached an agreement in less than three minutes.’ Orobitg says it took forty-five minutes but agrees
with the description of the scene. The fact of the matter is that nothing was signed on paper.
Manchester United had been interested in him while he was still at Barcelona, but his agent could

only listen to what they had to say at that time because Pep refused to allow him permission to
negotiate with another club while he was still wearing a Barcelona shirt. Sir Alex Ferguson put a lot
of pressure on the agent, as he was planning for the season ahead and saw Pep as a key player in his
plans. Ferguson even presented them with an ultimatum: he wanted a face-to-face meeting with the
Barcelona midfielder. Guardiola was hesitant and he turned Sir Alex Ferguson down. That was the
end of the matter. Ferguson was angry but Pep had no regrets. ‘Maybe the timing I chose was wrong,’

Sir Alex says now.
In the press conference ahead of the 2001 Champions League final at Wembley, when Pep said
Ferguson had done the right thing in not signing him, he was really hiding the reality of that failed
transfer: after six or seven months of negotiations, meetings with Ferguson’s son and the agent Francis
Martin, and after the player rejected huge financial incentives, Manchester United moved on. In his
place, Ferguson signed Juan Sebastián Verón along with Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Laurent Blanc.
And United went on to finish third in the Premier League that season.

Inter, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham pressed on with negotiations. Inter showed considerable
interest, but Juventus remained Pep’s preferred club. Yet, three months after the aforementioned trip
to Turin and continuing contact between the Juve president, Umberto Agnelli, Moggi and Pep’s
representatives, something strange happened: the Italian club denied that the secret encounter – even
the pasta, the bodyguards and car ride from Barcelona – had even taken place and that no agreement
had ever been reached.

The logical explanation for Juve’s U-turn was that Moggi had just dismissed the coach Carlo
Ancelotti, who had given the thumbs-up to Pep’s signing, and replaced him with Marcello Lippi.
Juventus sold Zinedine Zidane to Real Madrid and suddenly their objectives changed: with the €76
million from Zidane’s transfer fee – then the most expensive in history – the Italians decided to build
a younger team, bringing in Pavel Nedved, Lilian Thuram, Marcelo Salas and Gianluigi Buffon.
As the summer passed, opportunities and options from some surprising corners emerged. Real
Madrid even sounded him out in a meeting in Paris. ‘Have you gone mad!?’ Guardiola replied in a

conversation that lasted all of two minutes.
The deadline for Champions League registration came and went, making it increasingly difficult for
Pep to join one of the biggest clubs. He had even come close to signing for Arsenal, but, the day
before the deadline, Patrick Vieira’s proposed move to Real Madrid broke down and the deal taking
Guardiola to north London collapsed.
It was a difficult time for Pep, not least because the Catalan press were asked by some enemies of

the player to publish that no other club wanted him so the club would be protected from criticism that
they had lost a good player.