Page 92 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

At the beginning Pep was worried. He wanted to get Messi on his side because he had a feeling that
the lad, who at the time was just twenty-one years old, was a diamond in the rough. He foresaw that
Barça would depend on him and he was scared of losing him. So he had to establish with Messi a
dynamic, a relationship formed on common ground before they could work together. To do so, the

coach had to adjust his idea of the team to include an extraordinarily gifted and hungry individual,
while at the same time convincing the player – shy, quiet, even distant off the pitch – he had to accept
his leadership.
Unmoved by the status of legends or even the credit that an exceptional career in football gives
former players, in Messi’s eyes Guardiola was little more than just another coach. At the time of
Pep’s appointment, Messi was drifting into melancholy, having become increasingly disillusioned
during the last few months of the undisciplined Rijkaard regime.

The beginning of Pep’s tenure was a period of uncertainty for the young Messi. For all the faults of
the former regime, it must be remembered that Rijkaard had given Messi his debut and the
Argentinian felt protected under the Dutchman. Then along came Pep, a new boss, new regime, and
instantly got rid of Ronaldinho, Messi’s friend, mentor and neighbour (three houses away) in
Castelldefels. Messi understood the reasons for the changes and had recently grown closer to Puyol
and Xavi as he saw the damage Ronnie was doing to himself, but, nevertheless, it was a period of

change in the youngster’s life and he needed to establish a connection, the right one, with the new man
in charge.
Pep had wanted to impress upon Leo the idea of a group above everything else, not just because he
had been a midfield general but also because he understood that it was necessary for the type of
football that he wanted to put into practice. Guardiola had identified Leo’s drive but, crucially, he
had misunderstood it, mistaking it for selfishness. ‘I wanted to make Pep understand that it was
ambition, not selfishness. Leo is so self-demanding, wants to play every game, win every title, to such

an extent that he transmits that to others and it becomes like a tsunami,’ reveals Manel Estiarte, the
‘Messi of water polo’ in his day, and a man brought to the club by his friend Pep as player liaison.
Leo always wanted the ball, to be the main protagonist, to finish a move. ‘It’s like a demon inside you
that you don’t know you have, and you can’t control it. That is what has made him become the best
football player of all time. And I tried to explain all that to Pep.’
In contrast, Guardiola believed that the coach has to make the really big decisions every single day

on behalf of every player in his squad. This creates a false sense of power because you realise that, in
the end, the footballers are the ones who go out and follow your instructions. The coach’s ideas and
Messi’s talent and desire had to meet somewhere in the middle.
Deep down, Pep had never forgotten the lesson he learnt on that day that he missed out on Michel
Platini’s autograph. Now he reminded himself that it would be useful in this case.
Guardiola’s boyhood hero, it will be remembered, had been allowed to remain in the dressing
room while the rest of his team-mates warmed up. It confirmed that the greatest lie in football is that

all players are treated as equals. Later, when Pep was a teenager, Julio Velasco, the successful
volleyball coach, taught him that your best player could often be both your greatest asset and your
heaviest burden at the same time: ‘You must know how to seduce him, trick him into getting the best
out of him, because in our job we are above them, but we’re also below them because we depend on
them,’ he told Pep.
Guardiola understood what he had to do, knowing that he intended to love all his players equally –

but he wasn’t going to treat them all exactly the same.
Johan Cruyff had harboured just one doubt about Guardiola: ‘As a Catalan, would he be able to