Page 46 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

With the possibility of playing in the Champions League now no longer an option, Pep accepted an
offer from Serie A side Brescia. The team coach, Carlo Mazzone, made a point of telling Pep as soon
as he arrived that he was there because of the president, not because he wanted him. Guardiola was
determined to prove his worth with his work on the pitch and accepted the premise. He signed a

contract when the season had already started, on 26 September 2001, but his debut wasn’t until 14
October against Chievo Verona.
A month and a half after joining Brescia, the Italian team was already playing the way Pep, rather
than the coach, wanted but Mazzone was shrewd enough not to object to the ideas Pep introduced to
the squad. One day, Pep asked for videos of the forthcoming opposition for the players and staff to
analyse, something that had never before been done at the club. The fact is, instead of viewing the
move to Brescia as a step down in his career, Pep saw it as a way of getting to know a new style of

football and consequently a way of enriching his tactical knowledge: at this stage he had decided he
wanted to continue to be involved in the game when his playing career ended. Football was his
passion, his obsession, the thing he knew best, and Serie A was considered the league that practised
the most advanced defensive tactics since Sacchi. His Milan of the eighties were regarded as having
set the benchmark in terms of work rate and defensive strategy over the previous two decades – and
Pep was determined to learn as much as he could from his time in Italy.

Brescia training ground. A cold November morning, 2001

The lengthy periods of injury, his departure from Barcelona or sporting defeats pale into
insignificance compared with the emotional ordeal Pep suffered after failing a drugs test during his
time at Brescia: firstly, after a game against Piacenza on 21 October 2001 and then, a week later,
against Lazio on 4 November. The results of further analysis of the samples sent to a laboratory in
Rome supported the accusation that Pep had taken nandrolone, an anabolic steroid that is said to
improve an individual’s strength and endurance and has similar properties to testosterone.
Guardiola received the news about the supposed positive result while practising free kicks in a

training session. ‘I saw Carletto Mazzone speaking with the team doctor. That moment, that
conversation, changed my life, but I only knew that later,’ Pep recalled recently. ‘They came over to
me and told me the news. When I went back to the changing room I knew from the missed calls on my
phone that the world had already judged me.’
That same day, Pep called Manel Estiarte, in his day the Maradona of water polo, Olympic
champion and friend who played in Italy and with whom he had forged a close friendship. ‘Do you

know a lawyer? I’m going to need one,’ he asked Manel. His friend went to see him the next day and
he expected to find the footballer depressed, in need of a hug, and he had already prepared some
reassuring words; but when he arrived, he found Pep to be his usual self: stoic, pensive, obsessive.
Guardiola had been up all night, researching every other incident similar to the situation he now found
himself in: reading the legal arguments and poring over case studies. Pep threw himself into finding a
solution, rather than rolling over and accepting his fate. He was going to fight, and he wasn’t just
going to leave it in the hands of the lawyers. In typical fashion, Pep was taking this personally and he

was determined to be in control of his destiny rather than leave it to others to decide his fate.
Despite Pep’s determination to fight back, there were always going to be moments that would test
his resolve, and Manel Estiarte was there to support him and help him avoid sinking into despair, as
Pep himself explains in the introduction to All My Brothers, the former water polo player’s