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

Champions League group game, Pep, who was in his fourth year with the first team, asked
the players to form a circle. He started to explain the secret that he, Tito Vilanova and the doctors had kept from the squad, but he couldn’t articulate what he wanted to say. The enormity
of the moment left him lost for words. He was anxious and uncomfortable. His voice wobbled and he moved aside. The doctors took over and explained the gravity of the situation to the players while
Pep kept looking at the floor and drinking from his ever-present bottle of water that was supposed to prevent his voice from quavering. It didn’t work on that occasion.
    The medical staff explained that the assistant manager, Tito Vilanova, Pep’s right-hand man and close friend, would have to undergo emergency surgery to remove a tumour from his parotid
gland, the largest of the salivary glands – and therefore he would not be able to travel to Italy with them.
    Two hours later the Barcelona players left town in a state of shock. Pep appeared distant, isolated, wandering separately from the group, deep in contemplation. The team ended up beating Milan
3-2 at the San Siro to top the Champions League group in a thrilling game in which neither side concentrated on defending, treating the fans to an end-to-end encounter with lots of chances. But,
despite the result, Pep remained understandably melancholic.
    Life, as the saying goes, is what happens when you are busy making other plans. It is also that thing that slaps you in the face and makes you fall when you think you are invincible, when you
forget falling is also part of the rules. Guardiola, who accelerated his inquisition of everything when he found out his friend was ill, wentthrough a similar thought process
when he was told that Eric Abidal had a tumour on his liver the previous season. The French left back recovered enough to play a brief part in the second leg of the semifinals of the Champions
League against Real Madrid in what Pep would describe as the ‘most emotional night’ he could remember at the Camp Nou. Abidal came on in the ninetieth minute, when the game was 1-1 and
Barcelona were on the verge of another Champions League final, having beaten Madrid in the first leg. The stadium gave him a powerful standing ovation which was something of a rarity. For Catalans
are very much like the English: they have a safety-innumbers approach to showing their feelings, until a collective wave of public emotion lets them release much of what they innately repress.
    Weeks later, Puyol, unbeknown to Pep or anybody in the squad, would give Abidal the captain’s armband to allow him to receive the European Cup from Platini. Almost a year later, the
doctors would tell the French left back that the treatment had failed and he needed a transplant.
    The health problems of Abidal and Vilanova left Guardiola shaken; they hit him very hard. It was an unforeseen, uncontrollable situation, difficult to deal with for someone who likes to predict
and micromanage what happens in the squad and to have a contingency plan when things come out of the blue. But with them he was helpless. There was nothing he could do. Much more than that –
the lives of people he felt responsible for were on the line.
    After that victory in Milan, Barcelona had to travel to Madrid to play a modest Getafe side. Defeat meant that neither Guardiola nor the team, who dominated that game but failed to make an
impact in front of their opponent’s goal, could dedicate a victory that night to Tito Vilanova, who was on the road to recovery following a successful operation to remove the tumour.
    Barcelona lost the game 1-0 in a cold, half-empty stadium, in the kind of ugly match in which it was becoming increasingly more challenging to inspire a group of players (and also the manager)
who had been the protagonists on so many glorious nights. Pep was upset at dropping three points, as their League campaign seemed to be