Page 61 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

determined that it would lead by example. So when the new Barça B was ready for the season, Pep
led them with pride.
They lost their first friendly under him, against Banyoles, on a small artificial pitch. It only took
that one defeat and a stuttering start in the competition to herald the first murmurings of dissent in the

media. Guardiola ‘had more style than power’, wrote one journalist. It became a popular cliché to
say that Pep, who as a player read and distributed copies of The Bridges of Madison County to his
Dream Team team-mates, couldn’t possibly possess the strength and authority to mould a winning
team on the Astroturf and cabbage-patch pitches of the Spanish third division.
Pep went to see Johan Cruyff soon after the stumbling start to the season, something that he would
repeat frequently whenever he needed advice over the coming years. ‘I’ve got a problem,’ he told his
mentor. ‘I’ve got these two guys who I don’t know if I can control, they don’t listen to what I say and

that affects how everybody else receives my messages. And the problem is, they’re two of the leaders
in the dressing room and the best players. I will lose without them on board.’ Cruyff’s response was
blunt: ‘Get rid of them. You might lose one or two games, but then you will start winning and by then
you would have turfed those two sons of bitches out the team.’
Pep got rid of the pair, establishing his power in the dressing room and sending a clear signal to the
rest. The team did start playing better and winning, especially after Pep signed Chico, now at

Swansea, a player identified by Tito Vilanova as the central defender that the team needed. It was a B
team whose line-up also included Pedro and, in the latter half of the season, Sergio Busquets, who
worked his way from the bench into the team to become their best player. From four tiers down in the
Spanish league, Pedro and Busquets would become household names and world champions within
two years under Pep’s guiding hand.
Txiki Beguiristain was a regular visitor to the Mini Estadi to watch Pep’s B team throughout the
season, following more reserve games than he had ever done in his four years as director of football

at the club. He believed in Guardiola and realised he was watching the development of something that
could be used in the first team: variations in formation, for instance. Instead of playing the most
common 4-3-3 system at Barcelona, Pep occasionally used a 3-4-3 that had hardly been used since
the days of the Dream Team and subsequently only very rarely by Van Gaal. At other times, Pep
would play with a false number nine; even sometimes deploying Busquets, a central midfielder, as a
striker with three playing behind him. Pep’s do-or-die attitude from the sidelines (constantly

correcting and signalling during games, treating every match as if it were the last, intensely focused
on the job, passionate and occasionally over-exuberant) as well as his off-pitch behaviour (making
the team eat together, scouting rival players and teams, unheard of at the time in the third division)
suggested he was a leader, ready for management. Ready to lead at any level. Any team.
As the season went on, Txiki became convinced that everything Pep was doing could, if necessary,
be applied to the first team. Barça B finished the season as league champions, automatically sending
them into the play-offs to be promoted into the Second B division. People were starting to take notice

of Guardiola’s achievements, not just within the club, where he was acquiring a rapidly growing
legion of admirers, but beyond Barcelona. Juanma Lillo was one of them: ‘What Pep did with Barça
B is still of greater merit than what he did later with the first team. You only have to see how the side
played at the start of the season in the third division with “terrestrial, earthy” players, and how they
were playing by the end. The group progressed as a whole, but also the players as individuals. I still
laugh when I remember that people said he was too inexperienced to take over Barça B, let alone the

first team.’
And, of course, while all of this had been going on, as the B team was improving and behaving