Page 54 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

available!’ he’ll shout, pointing a finger at the culprit. ‘Before passing the ball, you need to know
where you’re passing it to; if you don’t know, it’s better to keep it; give it to your goalie, but don’t
give it to your opponent’; it’s simple common sense, yet at the very core of a successful doctrine.
‘Football is the simplest game in the world – the feet just have to obey the head,’ explains Pep, yet he

is more aware than anybody that it is anything but simple. And one more thing that Guardiola started
saying while watching football: ‘One day I will be the coach of FC Barcelona.’
Manel Estiarte heard those words more than a few times, muttered along with the rest of Pep’s
footballing theories during their long conversations at Manel’s house in Pescara, Italy, where the two
friends and their families would spend a few weeks together almost every summer. Pescara might not
be the most beautiful place in the world, but Estiarte, whose wife is Italian, has had a house there
since playing for the Pescara water polo team in the mid-eighties. After he retired, Manel escaped to

the house whenever he could.
During those summers, the hot, fourteen-hour July days of sunshine would pass slowly for the two
friends and their families who slipped into a simple daily routine: eight hours on the beach, home to
freshen up before dinner, wine and hours of good conversation long into the night before finally
heading off to bed for a good night’s sleep in preparation for doing the same thing all over again the
next day. It’s what holidays were made for.

Of course, these days it’s more complicated to remain anonymous, as other tourists can’t help but
notice that the most popular club manager in the world happens to be sitting on the beach a few yards
away from them, and they will inevitably approach him, perhaps to share their memories of a game.
But until recently, Pescara provided a sanctuary where the friends could quietly share their dreams,
plans and set the world to rights.
At the start of their summer holiday in Pescara in 2007, Pep was out of work; the experience in
Mexico and his Argentinian trip had finished and he had announced his retirement as a player. He and

Manel were walking along the beach when Pep dropped a bombshell.
‘I’ve been offered a job at Barça, if I want it.’
‘Wow, Barcelona!’
‘Yeah, they want me to work as technical director of the youth categories.’
‘Well, you like to organise things and you’re great working with kids.’
‘Yeah, yeah; but I don’t know. I don’t know ...’

‘What do you mean you don’t know!? You are going back to FC Barcelona!’
‘It’s just that ... I want to work with the B team, the second team. I see myself coaching them. I want
to start off there.’
‘But didn’t they just get relegated and are now in the third division!!??’
Manel remembers that conversation vividly and recalls thinking that there was no point trying to
convince his friend that it was, perhaps, a bad idea to start his coaching career with a team on the
slide on the wrong end of the Spanish league system (four divisions below La Liga) because once Pep

had made his mind up, there was no turning back. Nevertheless, in this instance it didn’t stop others
from trying to persuade him he was about to make a mistake.
From a little village square in Santpedor, football had taken Guardiola all over the world. It had
been a lengthy education; starting with tears at La Masía, coping with criticisms and defeats, failed
dreams, incredible highs and lows, periods of reflection, study; encouragement from family, friends,
and mentors; lengthy coach trips around the Catalan countryside, a footballing odyssey that would

take him to Wembley, to Italy, to the Middle East, to Mexico and Argentina. It involved a great deal
of observing, listening, watching and playing an awful lot of football.