Page 60 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

three red cards. Occasionally the mask slipped from the cool, calm, collected Guardiola. He quickly
decided that instead of trying to bottle up his emotions on the touchline, he would let rip in Italian so
that match officials couldn’t understand the tirade of four-letter abuse that was being directed at them
from the Barcelona dugout.

His motivational methods frequently took the form of challenges. When Gai Assulin returned from
his debut with the Israeli national side, Guardiola, reminiscent of something Cruyff had once said to
him, set his player a test: ‘This weekend – go out and score a goal.’ He set up two and scored the
third. ‘He does it a lot – he challenges us – if you push yourself you’re rewarded,’ as another player
remembers.
‘This isn’t the third division, this is the Barça reserve team – not just anyone can be here,’ he told
his players once; yet the honour of playing for the club went way beyond pulling on the shirt on match

days and, as a consequence, Pep demanded high standards from his players at all times, both on and
off the field. He banned the use of mobile phones at the training ground and on the team coach.
Players were fined €120 if they were late for training and had to stick to a twelve o’clock curfew – if
they were caught breaking it once they were fined €1,500, twice and it rose to €3,000. If you were
caught three times you were out of the door. He also had strict policies regarding the procedure
leading up to games: team strategy was practised on match days. If it was an away game, the team ate

together at La Masía; if they were playing at home, in the Mini Estadi, each player ate at home.
The reserve team goalkeeping coach, Carles Busquets, was once asked by a former colleague what
it was like having Guardiola as your boss: ‘Pep?’ he responded. ‘You’d be scared!’ In fact, only now
will Busquets admit that he used to sneak round to the car park for a crafty cigarette as Pep banned
everyone from smoking in or around the dressing room.
One of the reasons that Guardiola had been so eager to test himself and his ideas with a team in the
lower divisions was because he wanted to confirm a personal theory: that a reserve team, like any

other, could serve as a university of football; because all teams behave, react and respond the same
way. Whether superstars or Sunday league, there’s always a player who is jealous of a team-mate,
another who is always late, a joker, an obedient one fearful of punishment and eager to please, a quiet
one, a rebel ... It was also educational because it helped prepare for the fact that every opponent is
different: some are offensive, others timid, some defend in their own box, others counter-attack.
Working with the B team gave Guardiola the perfect opportunity to try and find solutions to the kinds

of problems he would encounter working with a higher profile team; yet enabled him to do so away
from the spotlight and glare of the media.
At the same time, he was humble enough to recognise that he wasn’t sufficiently trained in certain
areas, mostly defensive work. His friend and coach Juanma Lillo saw all the games of the Barcelona
second team and, when they had finished, Guardiola would ring him to express his doubts to him,
whether they be about the use of space by his players or the behaviour of those off the ball. Rodolf
Borrell, now at Liverpool FC, was a coach with one of the Barcelona youth teams at the time, and

each week Guardiola went to his defensive training sessions to observe and learn.
Pep’s enthusiasm proved contagious and his presence a breath of fresh air at the training ground; at
the same time he also gave the B team a degree of credibility. After all, if Guardiola was involved
then, everybody figured, it must be important. If the B team had been neglected in recent times, then
Guardiola’s influence saw it transformed and given a makeover, blowing out the cobwebs and raising
its profile, while instilling a new regime of professionalism that was missing even from the first team.

Especially from the first team.
The B side may have been the old workshop round the back of the club, but Guardiola was