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THE GUARDIAN: Sports Blog
Pep Guardiola reaps reward of hard work and high style
Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola has forged a remarkable team
by sticking to his principles
Posted by Sid Lowe
in Rome
Thursday 28 May 2009 20.57 BST
All roads lead to Rome, even in Scotland. FC Barcelona may wish to
pay homage to Caledonia for it was there that this historic season
began – with the voice of Josep Guardiola echoing round their
pre-season training camp at St Andrews. For Barça's players
there was no respite and nowhere to hide. When Xavi Hernández,
Carles Puyol and Andrés Iniesta joined the squad following Euro
2008, they could hardly believe the transformation, the sheer
intensity.
"Pressure" was the word, a mantra. "Pressure! Pressure! Pressure!"
Guardiola demanded that his team play high, asphyxiating the
opposition. Pulling Leo Messi aside, the new Barcelona coach told
him that it was all very good being the best with the ball, he had
to be the best without it too. The opposition must be offered no way
out. A possession game – Barcelona's game – requires you to win
possession in the first place.
Winning the ball is Guardiola's obsession. This summer he will
lecture at a coaching conference. Forget pass-and-move, the title
is Recovering Possession. After a pre-season match with Hibs he
revealed that his first session had been dedicated to it. After
the season's opening match he was furious, not because Barcelona
had lost to Numancia but because his players had not followed orders
– because they failed to pressure their opponents.
It did not happen again: Barcelona's strikers have committed more
fouls than any of their defenders, Dani Alves apart. According to
Johan Cruyff – Dream Team coach, Barça ideologue and the man
whose philosophy Guardiola admits trying to emulate – pressuring
high limits the amount of running players must do. When you win back
the ball, he explains, there are 30 metres to goal rather than 80.
"I want Messi as far forward as possible," Guardiola adds.
Intelligence and positioning are vital: Guardiola told Seydou Keita
to run less but run brighter. And yet there is no escaping the
intensity. Privately Thierry Henry says he has never worked so hard.
At the start of the season Guardiola stressed his side would "respect
our philosophy". He has also respected the profession.
The mistake many made was concluding that a commitment to creative
possession football inherently means turning your back on hard work
and discipline, on pragmatism and competitiveness; that the aesthetic
is by definition incompatible with the effective. Guardiola is every
bit as meticulous as, say, Rafa Benítez; every bit as much of a
control freak; every bit as pragmatic. And he is every bit as
determined to win. As the eulogies poured forth for the way Barcelona
were now playing, he kept repeating the same message: "It will be
meaningless if we win nothing." He meant it.
Guardiola's first season has challenged the clichés. Experience is
not age, it is learning how to confront and resolve problems.
Defending is not just about building a wall and stopping the
opposition getting close to your goal; it can also be about keeping
possession and stopping them getting close to the ball. Bravery is
not just launching into risky tackles, it is also remaining committed
to a risky style. Playing prettily and playing to win are not necessarily
mutually exclusive – certainly not when you have these players.
Guardiola knows there are risks to Barcelona's game but believes
the benefits outweigh them, that there is no contradiction between
style and competitiveness. He can think of no more practical way of
playing than the way his side plays. Luis Aragonés once claimed that
"cup finals aren't for playing, they're for winning". Asked if he
agreed, Guardiola grimaced. "They're for winning," he conceded,
"but I don't see how you can win without playing."
Guardiola has done the things normally considered effective too.
And why, he would doubtless respond, would he not? At 38, in his
first ever season, he has built a team playing creative, technical
football – a resilient, united, tough team that has won everything
there is to win. The day he told his staff they would win the league
wasn't the day they stuffed Madrid 6–2 but when they came back from
two down to draw 2–2 with Betis.
He has built a team that is fitter than it has ever been; one that
sits through - videos, that analyses its rivals, that rotates; one
that works on the defence; one that practises set plays.
It is one with talent, of course. Barcelona always had talent. But
of Rome's starting XI, only one – Gerard Piqué – was not there
last season when Barcelona finished empty-handed, 18 points behind
Madrid. That failure bequeathed Guardiola a receptive, hungry dressing
room. "We had," Rafa Márquez confesses, "let ourselves go." The new
coach was determined for it not to happen again. Young, handsome,
something of a loose cannon, Piqué in particular has noted the coach
breathing down his neck.
Guardiola has shown remarkable communication skills, an impressive
ability to connect to his players. His message is strikingly unambiguous.
He has imposed discipline and rules – six players were fined the day
after the Copa del Rey final for arriving one minute late to training.
And he has played to Barcelona's strengths: a footballing identity
running right through the club that he learnt from Cruyff and Xavi
and Iniesta learnt from him. "I would never have won anything this
season without these players," Guardiola said in Rome. And those
players might never have won anything without him this season, either.
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