Page 56 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

walked into that hotel willing to forgive and to forget – and with a particular proposal and a position
in mind for Pep. Despite the suggestion from Murtra, he wanted the former captain to become the
future director of football.
Guardiola: Thanks for the offer, but I want to be a coach.

Beguiristain: Where? There is no vacancy for you in the first team, even as an assistant to Rijkaard
...
Guardiola: Give me the B team, in the third division.
Beguiristain: What?! You must be crazy. It’s a no-win. It’s easier to win the league with the first
team than to gain promotion with Barça B.
Guardiola: Let me have control of the B team; I know what to do with them.
Beguiristain: But the job we’re offering you is much better than just the B team, on a financial level

as well. Being in charge of the academy is more prestigious. The B team is in the third division!
Back in 2007 the B team was struggling and not considered the talent pool it now is: it had just
suffered relegation to the English equivalent of League Two for the first time in thirty-four years.
But Pep was insistent.
Guardiola: I want to be a coach, to train. Let me work with whatever team, whatever level you
want: the juniors, or the infants, anybody. I will even work with the toddlers on a potato field, but I

want to become a ‘hands-on’ coach.
Beguiristain: You could get your fingers burned trying to rescue that B team, you must be mad. And
another thing; what will it look like if we dump Pep Guardiola, the club’s icon, in the third division
side? It doesn’t make sense!
Pep proceeded to explain what he wanted to do with the team in great detail, how he planned to
design the squad, what kind of training sessions and what kind of regime he wanted to implement. ‘I
want to work with these kids; I know they don’t ask for anything and give you everything. I will get

that team promoted,’ Pep repeated.
He took some convincing, but, eventually, Txiki was won over by Pep’s enthusiasm and ideas for
the reserves. The director of football went away and started doing some digging around, gathering
second opinions about Pep’s qualities as an actual coach. He spoke to members of the academy set-up
who had been on coaching courses with him, his tutors, too, and they all agreed that Pep had been one
of the most brilliant students they had ever worked with. So the decision was taken soon after that

meeting.
It was typical Pep Guardiola: a blend of boldness and genius. There can’t be too many former
players who have turned down a director’s role overseeing an entire academy set-up, in order to beg
for the chance to take over training a failing reserve side.
‘Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into, Pep?’ his friends would ask him
repeatedly once they had heard what had happened that afternoon. ‘Four divisions down, that’s hell: it
has nothing to do with the football that you know. You’re not in for an easy ride, more like a bumpy

one! Are you really sure about this?’ Oh, yes, he was sure. ‘I just want to coach’ would be his
answer. As David Trueba wrote, ‘Pep had always been very clear that life consists of taking risks,
making mistakes – but wherever possible, your own mistakes rather than those of others.’
However, there was another stumbling block to Pep’s wish that he be given the opportunity to
coach and that was the fact that someone had already been chosen for that job: none other than
Guardiola’s friend and former team-mate Luis Enrique. The former Spanish international had been

told by an enthusiastic Barça director that his approval as B team coach for the 2007–8 season would
be unanimously accepted by the rest of the board. Pep’s appearance on the scene suddenly changed