Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography Read Free Page A

to see Guardiola – even going through a disappointing year – stay and come back and insist with his philosophy. That would be interesting.’
    Guardiola’s mind is often in turmoil, spinning at 100 rpm before every decision – still questioning it even after he’s come to a conclusion. He couldn’t escape his
destiny (as a coach, going back to Barcelona) but he is incapable of living with the level of intensity that would eventually grind him down. His world is full of uncertainty,debate, doubts and demands that he can never reconcile or satisfy. They are ever-present: when he is golfing with his friends; or sprawled on the sofa at home, watching a movie with his partner
Cris and their three children; or unable to sleep at night. Wherever he is, he is always working, thinking, deciding, always questioning. And the only way he can disconnect from his job (and the
huge expectations) is to sever his ties completely.
    He arrived full of life as a novice coach with the B team in 2007. He left as first-team coach, drained, five years – and fourteen titles – later. Don’t take my word for it;
Pep himself said how exhausted he felt in the press conference when he confirmed that he was leaving.
    Remember when, before the 2011 Ballon d’Or event, you were once asked about Pep? You were both at the press conference that coincided with your lifetime achievement award and Pep’s
recognition as manager of the year. You were frank in your response: ‘Where is Guardiola going to go that will be better than at home? I don’t understand why he would want to leave all
that.’
    That same day, Andoni Zubizarreta, the Barcelona director of football and long-time friend of Pep, aware of the influence of that chat in Nyon and the esteem he holds you in, referred to your
words in conversation with Guardiola: ‘Look what this wise man, Alex Ferguson, full of real-world and football experience, is saying …’, to which Pep, having already told Zubi
that he was thinking of leaving at the end of that season, replied, ‘You bastard. You are always looking for ways to confuse me!’
    Sir Alex, just look at the images of Pep when he first stepped up to take charge of Barcelona’s first team in 2008. He was a youthful looking thirty-seven-year-old. Eager, ambitious,
energetic. Now look at him four years later. He doesn’t look forty-one, does he? On that morning in Nyon, he was a coach in the process of elevating a club to new, dizzying heights, of
helping a team make history. By the time of your brief chat overlooking Lake Geneva, Pep had already found innovative tactical solutions, but in the following seasons he was going to defend and
attack in even more revolutionary ways, and his team was going to win almost every competition in which they took part.
    The problem was that, along the way, every victory was one victory closer to, not further from, the end.
    A nation starved of contemporary role models, struggling through a recession, elevated Pep into a social leader, the perfect man: an ideal. Scary even for Pep. As you know, Sir Alex, nobody is
perfect. And you might disagree, but there are very, very few who can endure the weight of such a burden upon their shoulders.
    To be a coach at Barcelona requires a lot of energy and after four years, now that he no longer enjoyed the European nights, now that Real Madrid had made La Liga an exhausting challenge both on
and off the pitch, Pep felt it was time to depart from the all-consuming entity he had served – with a break of only six years – since he was thirteen. And when he returns –
because he
will
return – isn’t it best to do so having left on a high?
    Look again at the pictures of Pep, Sir Alex. Does it not now become clearer that he has given his all for FC Barcelona?

 
     
     
     
Part I

Why Did He Have to Leave?

 
     
     
     
1
THE ‘WHYS ’
     
     
     
     
    In November 2011, just before the last training session ahead of the trip to Milan for a