Page 96 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

Barcelona controlled the game from early on. Twenty minutes into the match, Xavi had a clear shot
and Eto’o had another a few minutes later. But Madrid scored first. Higuaín found himself in space,
unmarked – and seized his opportunity. Guardiola was undaunted. Barcelona persisted with the game
plan. Their manager had made them believe in what they were doing and they just had to go along

with it. As Cruyff had told Pep right at the start of the season, and Pep repeated to his pupils: be
patient.
The culés didn’t have to wait long. Almost immediately after Higuaín’s goal, the score was brought
level by Thierry Henry. Soon after, Xavi pulled the rabbit out of the hat with a free kick. Before it
was taken, the midfielder started making curious hand signals to Puyol, repeating them insistently as if
possessed. A second later, he stopped. He turned his head, he seemed to see something that made his
mind up definitively and went back to the job at hand, again making those curious hand signals. The

next thing, Puyol was leaving the pitch, only to come back on and catch the Real defence unaware. 1-
2.
In the celebrations that followed the goal, the rest of the Barcelona players learnt that Xavi, Puyol
and Piqué had been practising that move alone, and that they had kept it a secret until that day. Four
years later they would repeat the exact same set piece in South Africa while playing for Spain against
Germany, the only goal of the semi-final of the World Cup.

Barcelona were in charge of the score and the game. Cannavaro and Metzelder did not know what
to do. If they both moved forward to try to help Gago and Lass against the three Barcelona players
who occupied the central positions, they left their back exposed to the movements of Eto’o and Henry
cutting in from the wings. If only one of the two centre backs moved forward, that gave Messi the
option of playing a one-on-one with a lot of space against a much slower defence outside their area.
Before the match, Juande Ramos had a plan to counter Messi – involving Heinze, the left back – but
on the night the Argentinian full back instead had his hands full dealing with Eto’o.

Xavi, Iniesta and Messi were quick with their decisions and passing, tempting the opponent
towards the ball then passing before contact. The game was becoming the perfect example of
technique, tactics and belief. It also heralded the beginning of the ‘Messi explosion’ that accompanied
his move from the wing to playing as a false number nine. It was a tactical switch that was going to
destroy opposition defences across Spain and Europe – and revolutionise world football.
And the key to all this lay with two gifted and privileged minds of this game, Guardiola and Messi,

both of whom understood the importance of positioning and the needs of the individual.
With Pep’s help and his own intuition, Messi started playing football with an accordion-like
movement: the further the ball was away from him, the more distance he would put between himself
and the ball. The closer it was to him, the closer he would move to get involved. Messi always wants
the ball and in order for him to receive it in the best circumstances, Pep has made him understand that
looking for the opposition’s weaker side, where there are fewer opponents, behind the line
demarcated by the deep-lying midfielders (pivotes) and distancing himself from the centre backs, the

ball will find him. Furthermore, in those areas, he will have a bit of extra space to rev his engine, to
work his way up through the gears, before hitting the opposition in full flow. And all this with very
little effort: he only needed to work up through the gears when he received the ball. Without it he was
allowed to take time to recover, to rest while he played. It sounds simple enough, but in mastering that
positioning and timing, Messi has shown a thorough understanding of the game and an ability to learn
in record time what many players take years to understand.

Barcelona grabbed their third just before the break. Messi. 1-3.
At half-time Guardiola warned his players not to get carried away by the scoreline nor the fact that