Page 87 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

time. You’ve had a lot of influences throughout your career, now evolve in your own way. You must
have lots of eyes, good helpers, good players, mark the path and those that don’t follow it.
‘Each player must be convinced that what he does is the best thing for him, for his team-mates and
for the general idea. The goal is to pass the “ABC” of football on to each player. For example, you

are an inside player, you must do this and not that, and nothing more. Once you learn what an inside
player must do, you can then think of variations. And when it doesn’t work, you must go back to the
“ABC”. The main thing is to have rules. You can only ask a player to do something that he knows and
nothing more. Ask for his quality. A footballer should have faith in what he does. It is better for a
player to lose the ball when he is dribbling, feeling over-confident, than for a blunder, a mistake due
to being scared of getting it wrong.
‘The whole team – coaches and players – should share the same idea. And don’t forget about

authority. If you don’t want to crash like other coaches, you must have control of your players. In
order to be coach of Barcelona, it is more important knowing how to manage a group of stars than
knowing how to correct a mistake made on the field. You have to have an influence over the group, to
be able to seduce and convince them. It’s necessary to take advantage of the “idol” image that players
have of you as their coach.’
The level of demands, Cruyff reminded him, should match their possibilities – technical, sporting

and economic. Cruyff never asked for the impossible, but he was capable of facing up to any of the
stars of the team – in front of the rest of the squad – to tell them things such as ‘Your performance
doesn’t match the wages you get, so what you are doing is not enough. You must give more.’ Cruyff
knew how to deal with players, well, with most of them, cooling the excitement of the regulars and
looking after the egos of the ones who were often on the bench. But he had a look that could kill and
some of his posturing could leave the players unsettled for weeks. ‘Cruyff is the trainer who has
taught me most, there’s no doubt about it,’ says Guardiola. ‘But Cruyff is also the trainer who has

made me suffer most. With just a look he gave you shivers that could chill your blood.’
Pep told his mentor that there was one thing that Johan could do, but that it would be a mistake for
him to imitate. ‘Johan, you used to call some of the players “idiots”. I cannot do that. Usted can, but I
cannot. I suffer too much. I cannot tell them that.’
Pep remembers on one occasion how Cruyff insulted Txiki Beguiristain and Bakero, two of his key
players in the Dream Team, and an hour later asked them to organise a meal for all of them and their

wives the following night. Pep envied that ability, but admitted that he is not made of the same stuff.
Subsequent meetings between the pair became frequent. Pep would visit Cruyff at his home or they
would visit restaurants of well-known chef friends. Where possible, about once every six months, a
group that would consist of Cruyff, Estiarte, chef Ferran Adrià, former journalist and now consultant
Joan Patsy and Guardiola would meet for a meal. After Pep left Barcelona, Adrià planned to reopen
the world-famous el Bulli restaurant just so that they could spend the day there.
But in that meeting a few months after Pep became the manager of Barcelona, and after two

disappointing results, the message from Johan Cruyff was as clear as it was simple: ‘Keep going,
Pep. It will happen.’ Guardiola himself had come to exactly the same conclusion.
Two games. One point. Barcelona in the bottom three.
That week, Pep Guardiola met director of football Txiki Beguiristain. Scratching his head as he
often did during the games, an unconscious nervous gesture that has always been apparent in moments
of doubt, Pep could not mask his anxiety. ‘If we don’t beat Gijón then I’ll be the first coach in Barça’s

history to be bottom of the league,’ he told Txiki, half joking.
‘The players haven’t been getting into the positions where we want them to be and the positions are