Page 81 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

stretched when the full backs are advanced. It’s a similar role to the one Guardiola used to play in the
Dream Team, shared by Keita and Busquets in Guardiola’s first season, but it became one that
Busquets effectively made his own.

‘The right attitude is the most important thing when defending. We can talk about a thousand concepts but what unites a team, what
helps players defend, is the right attitude. If you want to, you can run for your team-mate because doing that he would improve; it is not
about making your team-mate better, but making yourself better.’

To the man in the street, the mention of Barcelona was always synonymous with attacking football,
and one of the great misconceptions about Pep’s Barcelona was that their football was entirely

focused on scoring at the expense of defending. But Guardiola’s thinking would surprise many. For
example, when Barça failed to score, the first thing he looked at was how his side were defending.
Again, counter-intuitive and in defiance of conventional wisdom. So, for example, Abidal explains
that before he arrived at Barcelona, every time he was called into action on the pitch, as a defender
he’d been taught to focus on winning the ball. As soon as he arrived at Barcelona, he was taught to
think one step ahead about what he could do with it once he’d got hold of it. ‘Now, every time I get
the ball I know what I should do because I have learnt to understand the game.’

There is a final tactical insight that is fascinating.

‘One of the best things that FC Barcelona do is run with the ball to provoke or tease, not to dribble.’

A trick to test an opponent, to pull them out of position to create space, leads them where you want
them. In a chat with Wayne Rooney, the Manchester United forward told me that he watched Xavi

doing that often: ‘He waits for one of us to get close to make the pass.’
André Villas-Boas is fascinated by it, too. ‘There are more spaces in football than people think.
Even if you play against a deep-lying team, you immediately get half of the pitch. You can provoke the
opponent with the ball, provoke him to move forward or sideways and open up a space. But many
players can’t understand the game. They can’t think about or read the game. Things have become too
easy for football players: high salaries, a good life, with a maximum of five hours’ work a day and so
they can’t concentrate, can’t think about the game.

‘Barcelona’s players are completely the opposite,’ continues the former Chelsea coach, ‘Their
players are permanently thinking about the game, about their movement.
‘Guardiola has talked about it: the centre backs provoke the opponent, invite them forward, then, if
the opponent applies quick pressure, the ball goes to the other central defender and this one makes a
vertical pass – not to the midfielders, who have their back turned to the ball, but to those moving

between lines, Andrés Iniesta or Lionel Messi, or even directly to the striker. Then they play the
second ball with short lay-offs, either to the wingers who have cut inside or the midfielders, who now
have the game in front of them. They have an enormous capacity not to lose the ball, to do things with
an unbelievable precision. But Barça’s 4-3-3 wouldn’t work in England, because of the higher risk of
losing the ball.’
The possibility of making it work in England is something that Pep Guardiola often wondered
about. He has asked at least two Premier League players if they could start a move as his players did
at Barcelona, despite the risk of losing possession close to their own goal. Does the Premiership, he

asked, have the quality of footballers with the confidence and understanding of the game necessary to
play that way? ‘It depends on the team,’ he was told. ‘And not all sets of fans would accept that
style.’