Read Online Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography by Guillem Balagué - Free Book Online
Authors: Guillem Balagué
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opportunity to become privileged spectators in the Nou Camp by handing out club leaflets on match days
or, after a long waiting list, becoming ball boys. There is a picture of a young Pep on the pitch, gleefully clapping alongside a couple of Barcelona players with Terry Venables carried aloft on
their shoulders in celebration after the final whistle the night FC Barcelona beat Gothenburg to reach the European Cup final in 1986.
Pep learnt an unexpected lesson as a ball boy when the teenager waited for his idol Michel Platini to come out for the warm-up before a Barcelona–Juventus game. He had been dreaming about
it for weeks, his first chance to see his childhood hero in the flesh, and he had a cunning plan to secure Platini’s autograph: pen and paper tucked away in his pocket, Pep planned to pounce
on the French star as he walked across the pitch to join his team-mates in the warm-up on the far side – he knew it was the only chance he was going to get without getting into trouble.
Cabrini, Bonini, Brio jogged out, then Michael Laudrup. But no Platini. It transpired that the French superstar didn’t always come out with the team to do some stretching. ‘Ah,’
Pep thought, ‘so not all players are treated as equals; it turns out they’re not all the same.’ The pen and paper stayed in his pocket, unused.
The Platini poster that hadn’t accompanied him to La Masía stayed on the wall of his bedroom in Santpedor for a few years, but gradually another player, this one far more
accessible, took centre stage: Guillermo Amor, future midfielder of the Johan Cruyff side, four years older than Pep and also resident at La Masía.
‘At the time, when I started to pay attention to everything that you did, I was thirteen years old,’ Pep wrote a decade ago in reference to Amor, in his autobiography
My People,
My Football
. ‘I didn’tjust follow every one of your games, but also the training sessions; I paid attention to your attitude, because you faced everyone as if
your life depended on it. I used to have my practical football lessons at 7 p.m. on an adjacent pitch; but I used to turn up two hours earlier, so I could listen in on the theory class on pitch
number 1: seeing how you carried yourself, how you encouraged your team-mates, how you asked for the ball, how you listened and how you earned the respect of everyone around you. I pay tribute to
you today for every one of those moments you gave us back then at La Masía on pitch number 1, during mealtimes, in the dressing room, throughout the holidays, away at hotels and even on
television.’
When Amor returned from away games with the B team – a side that also included Tito Vilanova, Pep’s future assistant and successor in the Camp Nou dugout – Guardiola would
pester him for the score and details of how they’d got along. ‘We won,’ would be the standard answer. Over the next few years, Amor, who embodied all the values instilled in
players at the club right through to the first team, became like a big brother to Pep, who intuitively understood that the club is not only about the bricks and mortar of the stadium or training
facility, but mostly about the footballing DNA shared by Guillermo and others like him. So when Pep took his first major decisions as a Barcelona manager, selling Ronaldinho and Deco or approving
Amor’s appointment as director of youth football, he did so with a desire to return the focus of influence in the dressing room to home-grown players.
Guardiola remained a lanky teenager with little muscle mass, the opposite of the ideal footballer’s stature. But great art is always born of frustration and since he lacked the pace and
strength to overcome the opposition, he substituted physical power with the power of the mind: instinctively developing a sense of spatial awareness that was second to none. He was capable of
leaving behind three players with one pass, widening or narrowing the field at will, so that the
or, after a long waiting list, becoming ball boys. There is a picture of a young Pep on the pitch, gleefully clapping alongside a couple of Barcelona players with Terry Venables carried aloft on
their shoulders in celebration after the final whistle the night FC Barcelona beat Gothenburg to reach the European Cup final in 1986.
Pep learnt an unexpected lesson as a ball boy when the teenager waited for his idol Michel Platini to come out for the warm-up before a Barcelona–Juventus game. He had been dreaming about
it for weeks, his first chance to see his childhood hero in the flesh, and he had a cunning plan to secure Platini’s autograph: pen and paper tucked away in his pocket, Pep planned to pounce
on the French star as he walked across the pitch to join his team-mates in the warm-up on the far side – he knew it was the only chance he was going to get without getting into trouble.
Cabrini, Bonini, Brio jogged out, then Michael Laudrup. But no Platini. It transpired that the French superstar didn’t always come out with the team to do some stretching. ‘Ah,’
Pep thought, ‘so not all players are treated as equals; it turns out they’re not all the same.’ The pen and paper stayed in his pocket, unused.
The Platini poster that hadn’t accompanied him to La Masía stayed on the wall of his bedroom in Santpedor for a few years, but gradually another player, this one far more
accessible, took centre stage: Guillermo Amor, future midfielder of the Johan Cruyff side, four years older than Pep and also resident at La Masía.
‘At the time, when I started to pay attention to everything that you did, I was thirteen years old,’ Pep wrote a decade ago in reference to Amor, in his autobiography
My People,
My Football
. ‘I didn’tjust follow every one of your games, but also the training sessions; I paid attention to your attitude, because you faced everyone as if
your life depended on it. I used to have my practical football lessons at 7 p.m. on an adjacent pitch; but I used to turn up two hours earlier, so I could listen in on the theory class on pitch
number 1: seeing how you carried yourself, how you encouraged your team-mates, how you asked for the ball, how you listened and how you earned the respect of everyone around you. I pay tribute to
you today for every one of those moments you gave us back then at La Masía on pitch number 1, during mealtimes, in the dressing room, throughout the holidays, away at hotels and even on
television.’
When Amor returned from away games with the B team – a side that also included Tito Vilanova, Pep’s future assistant and successor in the Camp Nou dugout – Guardiola would
pester him for the score and details of how they’d got along. ‘We won,’ would be the standard answer. Over the next few years, Amor, who embodied all the values instilled in
players at the club right through to the first team, became like a big brother to Pep, who intuitively understood that the club is not only about the bricks and mortar of the stadium or training
facility, but mostly about the footballing DNA shared by Guillermo and others like him. So when Pep took his first major decisions as a Barcelona manager, selling Ronaldinho and Deco or approving
Amor’s appointment as director of youth football, he did so with a desire to return the focus of influence in the dressing room to home-grown players.
Guardiola remained a lanky teenager with little muscle mass, the opposite of the ideal footballer’s stature. But great art is always born of frustration and since he lacked the pace and
strength to overcome the opposition, he substituted physical power with the power of the mind: instinctively developing a sense of spatial awareness that was second to none. He was capable of
leaving behind three players with one pass, widening or narrowing the field at will, so that the
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