Page 79 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

for his approach and this sense of continuity has been a good thing for the club. It’s allowed several
factors to become well established so that, in the future, projects won’t have to be started from
scratch. ‘We are a little bit like disciples of the essence that Cruyff brought here,’ said Guardiola,
who wrote more than a decade ago that ‘Cruyff wanted us to play that way, on the wings and using the

wingers, and I apply that whole theory ahead of everything. It was he, Johan, who imposed the
criteria for quick movements of the ball, the obligation to open up the field in order to find space. To
fill the centre of the pitch in order to play having numerical superiority, and, I don’t know, introduce a
lot more things so that everybody knew how Barça played and, above all, so it would be known how
to do it in the future. And that, in short, is the greatest thing that Cruyff left us. The idea of playing in a
way that no team has done before in Spain seduces me. It is a sign of distinction, a different way of
experiencing football, a way of life, a culture.’

But Cruyff was not the only influence upon Pep’s footballing philosophy. Louis Van Gaal’s Ajax
was a team that hypnotised him and he admitted to applying some of their methods. ‘The question is
that that Ajax team always gave me the impression that they tried to and could do all of the following:
play, sacrifice themselves as a team, shine individually and win games. All the players, of different
quality, without exception, were aware of their mission on the field of play. They demonstrated a
tactical discipline and enormous capacity to apply all of that at just the right time.’

As Jorge Valdano says, Pep is ‘a Catalan son of the Dutch school of football’. But Pep isn’t a
simple transmitter of ideas, as journalist Ramón Besa explains: ‘Rather, he takes the message,
improves it and spreads it with greater credibility.’
According to Víctor Valdés: ‘He insisted a lot on tactical concepts, on the system of play. His
philosophy is clear: first we should have the ball. With it, the opponent suffers and we have
everything under control. Secondly, we try not to lose the ball in compromising positions since it
could cause a dangerous situation. If they take the ball off us, it should be through the opponent’s own

merits, not through our mistakes. The third aspect is the pressure in the rival’s half. We must bite, be
very intense. We already did that with Rijkaard, but he put more emphasis on it. Each player has a
zone in which they should apply pressure. We should all help each other. You can’t lose
concentration ever. Guardiola says that these three concepts are our strong point, one of the things he
repeats most in the dressing room. When we apply all three, everything works.’

‘While we attack, the idea is to always keep your position, always being in the place you have to be. There is dynamism, mobility, but
the position has always got to be filled by someone. So if we lose the ball it will be difficult for the rival to get us on the counter-attack –
if we attack in order it becomes easier to then hunt down the opposite player with the ball when we lose possession.’

He gave a different edge to the defensive side of the game and that is where Barça became strong and
attractive: losing the ball but then, within five seconds, trying to win it back. The principle is simple

and comes from as far back as Van Gaal: after losing the ball there are five seconds of pressure to
win it back; if it isn’t recovered, the defensive phase would begin and players should quickly drop
back.

‘The better we attack, the better we defend.’

At a time of regression in the football world, when the majority of coaches deployed their teams using

a double-pivot (4-2-3-1), Guardiola went for a novel approach – a system with a midfielder and two
wingers, a choice that allowed him to discover first Pedro and then Busquets, as well as freeing up
Messi.
In his first season, Guardiola radically altered concepts such as starting moves from the defence,