Page 47 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

autobiography: ‘For seven years I simply maintained that I had never done anything wrong. From the
first day when someone pointed me out and told me “Guardiola is a bad person”, you were on my
side and stayed with me. When these things happen to people, they don’t forget. It was you and your
blessed luck that pressed that button on teletext and showed me the way to go so that, seven years

later, the person who had pointed the finger at me would change his mind and would say that
“Guardiola is not a bad person”, that I was a good person. Yes, it was fate, I’m sure it was, but you
believed in me and that’s why I was lucky. You brought me luck. Much needed luck. That good
fortune is a gift, the best title that I have ever won in my sporting career. I will never achieve another
quite as important, I can promise you. I held myself in too high esteem to take substances that could do
me harm.’
What, you may be wondering, did teletext have to do with any of this ... ? Pep Guardiola is

referring to a call he received from his friend Estiarte one Sunday, months after the Italian National
Olympic Committee had announced the positive result in the nandrolone test. Pep was dozing on the
couch when Manel called, shouting down the line, excited. Estiarte went on to explain that on Italian
teletext he had accidentally stumbled upon a story referring to a new discovery related to positive
testing in nandrolone cases. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) had ruled that a result of less
than two nanogrammes per millilitre of urine sample was an insufficient quantity to indicate substance

abuse, because, they had now discovered, the human body is capable of producing up to the nine
nanogrammes per millilitre they had found in his body (in contrast, the Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson
was found to have two thousand nanogrammes per millilitre). It was a coincidental yet key moment,
part of a long judicial process that was a test of Pep’s mental strength.
‘I am convinced I will win,’ Pep said many times during that process to the Italian press. He was
hit with a four-month suspension, but from the moment that the National Olympic Committee
sentenced him, Guardiola launched a legal battle that went on until he proved his innocence. He never

accepted the allegations, nor any consequent sanction. He even said ‘The Italian justice system cannot
look me in the eyes. I am innocent.’
In May 2005, the Tribunal of Brescia fined him €2,000 and sentenced him to seven months’
imprisonment. The verdict was suspended because he had no criminal record but it was a tremendous
setback for Guardiola. ‘Do you think I need an illegal substance to play against Piacenza?’ he
repeated to everyone.

For Pep, this was an issue related to human values, truth and lies. They were accusing him of
something he hadn’t done and he was prepared to spend every penny fighting to prove his innocence.
The lawyers could indeed take every penny, but he would never give up his reputation. His allies,
including Estiarte, saw him as being fixated by the issue. Perhaps obsession is his most natural state,
but it took him to the point of exhaustion. ‘Leave it, it’s done, no one remembers it,’ his friend told
him afterwards. ‘I remember it and I know that it was a lie, that it’s not true,’ Pep would answer. He
had to persevere until he had cleared his name.

Collell explains an incident in his biography that illustrated the farcical nature of the process. In the
spring of 2005, Guardiola’s agent, Josep María Orobitg, excused himself from a judicial hearing
relating to the case to go to the toilet. A mature gentleman entered the bathroom and took his place
alongside him, then muttered mysteriously: ‘Sometimes the innocent have to die to win the battle.’ It
was a very senior person involved in the process.
Finally, on 23 October 2007, an Appeals Tribunal in Brescia acquitted Pep Guardiola of any

wrongdoing, after it was scientifically proven that the test results upon which the accusations were
based lacked credibility, a development that had started with Estiarte’s chance discovery on teletext.