Page 49 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

agreed under the condition that they would not use the names of potential signings to win votes, as so
often happens in Spain – instead he wanted to sell a vision for the club to the fans.
Ronaldinho was offered to Bassat and Guardiola as a potential signing, but Pep wanted to focus
upon a football project that could have included his former Dream Team colleague Ronald Koeman

as coach, or, if Ajax refused to release their Dutch manager, Juanma Lillo.
Even though the subjects of potential transfers were never publicly disclosed to bolster the
electoral campaign, Guardiola was planning to build a side that would include the likes of Iván
Córdoba, Inter Milan’s Colombian centre back; Cristian Chivu, Ajax’s captain and defender;
Emerson, Roma’s Brazilian midfielder; and Harry Kewell, Liverpool’s Australian winger.
In the end, Joan Laporta won the elections, with the support of Johan Cruyff and the promise of
bringing David Beckham to the Nou Camp – the use of the Beckham name was no more than a

marketing ploy, but one that worked for Laporta. The Manchester United website announced that his
candidacy had made an offer for Beckham, a leak orchestrated by agent Pini Zahavi which included
an agreement that Barcelona would sign one of his players, the goalkeeper Rustü Reçber, which did
indeed happen a month later.
When Bassat’s campaign defeat was confirmed, Pep told him, ‘I know we approached things
differently, but ... we would do it again the same way, wouldn’t we?’

The decision to side with Bassat would come back to haunt Pep several years later, as there were
those, Laporta among them, who would not find it easy to forgive him for ‘betraying’ Cruyff, his
mentor, by siding with an opponent.
After the failed electoral campaign, the decision to play in Qatar was just about the only step in
Guardiola’s career motivated by money: the move would earn him US$4 million in a two-year
contract. The journalist Gabriele Marcotti travelled to Qatar to interview Pep in 2004, and
encountered a player in the wilderness at the end of his career, sad, but not bitter. ‘I think players like

me have become extinct because the game has become more tactical and physical. There is less time
to think. At most clubs, players are given specific roles and their creativity can only exist within those
parameters,’ he told Marcotti.
Pep was only thirty-three.
The game had been transformed, reflected in the European football landscape of the time that was
dominated by a powerful Milan side, a physically strong Juventus, the Porto–Monaco Champions

League finalists, the arrival of Mourinho at Chelsea and his faith in athletes as midfielders. Pep was
correct: ‘pace and power’ was the dominant footballing ideology of the day, but it was soon to be
challenged, firstly by Rijkaard’s Barcelona and, latterly, by Guardiola himself.
After playing eighteen games for Qatar’s Al-Ahli and spending most of his time lounging by the
pool in the complex where he lived alongside Gabriel Batistuta, Fernando Hierro and Claudio
Caniggia, and after asking the former Santos winger and now coach Pepe Macia hundreds of times
about the Brazil of Pelé, he went for a trial at Manchester City, spending ten days under Stuart

Pearce’s eye in 2005.
Eventually Pep turned down a six-month contract in Manchester, wanting a longer deal than the
City manager was prepared to offer. In December 2005, he signed for Mexican side Dorados de
Sinaloa, taking the opportunity to be coached by his friend Juanma Lillo. There, he learnt a new type
of football, but also deepened his knowledge of other aspects of the game, especially in terms of
administration, physical preparation and diet. Pep’s managerial education would often continue into

the early hours of the morning, as he and Lillo sat discussing tactics, training and techniques
throughout the night.