Guardiola, el 'gentleman' de Santpedor
Una biografia de Guardiola arrasa a les llibreries del Regne Unit i descobreix als britànics, entregats al tècnic, els seus orígens, les seves passions i el que representa a Catalunya
Dissabte, 24 de novembre del 2012
BEGOÑA ARCE / Londres
Una
biografia de Pep
Guardiola publicada al
Regne Unit està pujant com l'escuma a les llistes de llibres esportius més
venuts del país. I el primer sorprès és el mateix autor. El periodista Guillem Balagué és ben conegut pels aficionats
britànics. Comentarista habitual dels partits d'equips espanyols a Sky Sports,
realitza a més altres múltiples col·laboracions. Aquests dies s'ha trobat que,
a tot arreu on va a presentar l'obra, l'aforament sempre s'omple. "Hi ha
una fam increïble pel Pep i per tot el futbol espanyol. En només cinc dies,
després de sortir al carrer, el llibre s'ha col·locat en el segon lloc de la
llista de biografies
esportives. Hi ha anglesos que estan explicant a Twitter que aquest és
el primer llibre que llegiran des de fa molts anys", explica.
L'obra
en qüestió,'Pep Guardiola. Another way of winning' ('Pep
Guardiola. Una altra manera de guanyar'), ofereix als britànics un
perfil més autèntic del personatge, a qui només coneixen pel seu glamur i els
seus èxits. "A Anglaterra hi ha una imatge idealitzada de Guardiola. El
tenen per algú molt ben vestit, molt elegant, amb molta classe. Però també és
algú que porta al cap molt passió, molta obsessió, molta intensitat i això és
una cosa --assenyala Balagué-- que, quan els ho dius, els sorprèn molt, segons
estic comprovant aquests dies".
.....................................
How Pep Guardiola got the Barcelona players on his side to halt team's decline into decadence
Frank Rijkaard’s Barcelona were suffering an unstoppable decline into decadence, the dressing room lacking discipline and spirit. Ronaldinho had lost his status as the most exciting player on the planet, the president Joan Laporta had only just survived in office and Catalan self-esteem was at its lowest ebb for decades. At that point Pep Guardiola was appointed first-team coach of FC Barcelona.
Pivotal moment: Pep Guardiola got his message across to Barcelona's players during a meeting at St
Andrews Photo: GETTY IMAGES
6:00AM GMT 17
Nov 2012
Two trophy-less years had passed
them by. A change was needed. Important decisions had to be made.
But, first Pep had to get the
team on his side. A face-to-face meeting with the squad was still pending. It
took place on the first day of training at the world-famous St Andrews, in Scotland, in a
basement conference room of a hotel.
As he made his way to the room,
Pep repeatedly told himself: “Be yourself. Be yourself.” He felt that he had
been through a similar experience at least once before, with the [Barcelona] B team: the
faces were different but the ideas that were going to be put across were
practically the same. And he had the same nervous feeling in the pit of his
stomach.
The squad filled the room in
seats set out in rows facing the front, like a classroom, with little room to
spare. The medical staff, the assistants, the press guys, everybody who had
travelled to Scotland,
was invited. In the following half-hour he put across a message that mesmerised
the group.
The players sat in silence,
listening to Pep as he paced the room, making eye contact with his listeners,
showing a mastery of communication skills. According to the recollections of
many of those present (Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, Gerard Piqué, Tito Vilanova,
Thierry Henry, Samuel Eto’o and Lionel
Messi among others) we are able to piece together Pep’s words from
that pivotal moment.
“Gentlemen, good morning. You can imagine what
a huge motivation it is for me to be here, to coach this team. It is the
ultimate honour. Above all, I love the club. I would never make a decision that
would harm or go against the club. Everything I am going to do is based on my
love for FC Barcelona. We need and want order and discipline.
“The team has been through a time
when not everybody was as professional as they should have been. It is time for
everybody to run and to give their all.
“I’ve been part of this club for
many years and I am aware of the mistakes that have been made in the past, I
will defend you to the death but I can also say that I will be very demanding
of you all: just like I will be with myself.
“I only ask this of you. I won’t
tell you off if you misplace a pass, or miss a header that costs us a goal, as
long as I know you are giving 100 per cent. I could forgive you any mistake,
but I won’t forgive you if you don’t give your heart and soul to Barcelona.
“I’m not asking results of you,
just performance. I won’t accept people speculating about performance, if it’s
half-hearted or people aren’t giving their all.
“This is Barça, gentlemen, this
is what is asked of us and this is what I will ask of you. You have to give
your all. A player on his own is no one, he needs his team-mates and colleagues
around him: every one of us in this room, the people around you now.
“Many of you don’t know me, so we
will use the next few days to form the group, a family even. If anyone has any
problems, I’m always available, not just in sporting matters but professional,
family, environmental.
"We’re here to help each
other and make sure there is spiritual peace so that the players don’t feel
tension or division. We are one. We are not little groups because in all teams
this is what ends up killing team spirit.
“The players in this room are
very good, if we can’t get them to win anything, it will be our fault. Let’s
stick together when times are hard. Make sure that nothing gets leaked to the
press. I don’t want anybody to fight a battle on his own.
"Let’s be united, have faith
in me. As a former player, I have been in your shoes, I know what you are going
through, what you are feeling.
“The style comes dictated by the
history of this club and we will be faithful to it. When we have the ball, we
can’t lose it. When that happens, run and get it back. That is it, basically.”
The squad, the group, were seduced.
Upon leaving the room, Xavi commented to a team-mate that everything that they
had needed to know was there in that talk. There would be many more team talks,
but the one at St Andrews laid the foundations
for the new era at FC Barcelona.
“There are talks that just come
to you and talks that begin from a few ideas based on what you have seen,” said
Guardiola. “What you can’t do is study the talks, learn them by heart. Two or
three concepts are all you need ... and then you have to put your heart into it.
You can’t deceive the players, they are too well prepared, intelligent,
intuitive.
"I was a footballer and I
know what I’m saying. In every talk, from that one in St
Andrews to the last one, I have put my heart into them. When I
don’t feel it, I don’t speak, it’s the best way. There are days when you think
that you have to say something, but you don’t feel it, so at times like that it
is better to keep quiet.
“Sometimes you show them images
of the rivals, and sometimes you don’t show them a single image of the
opposition because on that day you realise, for whatever reason, that in life
there are more important things than a football game, you tell them other
things, unrelated to the game.
"Stories of overcoming
difficulties, of human beings acting in extraordinary ways. This is the
beautiful thing about this job, because each rival, each situation, is
different to the previous one and you always have to find that special
something, to say to them: ‘Guys, today is important ...’ for such and such a reason.
It doesn’t have to be tactical.
"When you have been doing it
for three or four years it is a lot easier to find. When you have been doing it
for four years, with the same players, it is more difficult.’”
Although he wanted an element of
democracy within the group Guardiola did not delay in imposing a number of
strict rules in his first few days in charge: such as insisting upon the use of
Castilian and Catalan as the only languages spoken among the group and
arranging a seating plan at meal times to encourage the players to mix.
Pep continued the methodologies
introduced at St Andrews when the team returned to Barcelona. The new training complex was
shaped according to Pep’s instructions. He changed things so that the players
felt like employees of a football club and not Hollywood
stars.
A dining room was designed to
encourage all the players to sit down at meal times together, previously
unknown in the first team at Barcelona.
Whereas previous training
sessions that used to take place on a training pitch next door to the Nou Camp
that had a fairly high-profile feel about them because of their location, the
Joan Gamper training ground, to which the first team moved in January 2009, was
strictly off limits to press and public. The media christened it ‘La Ciudad
Prohibida’ – ‘The Forbidden City’.
Pep also bucked the Spanish
tradition of getting the team together in a hotel the day before a match. As
Guardiola explained at the time: “People don’t spend the day before they go to
work locked up in a hotel. If they don’t rest, they’re not looking after
themselves and that means they’ll play worse and lose their jobs.
"I judge my players on the
work they do, not on their private lives. I’m not a policeman. I’m in bed at 10
o’clock and I’ve got no urge to go and check up on my players. That’s why I’d
rather have them at home and not cooped up in a hotel with nothing to do.
“For me, two of the most
important novelties were the move to the training ground and getting rid of the
hotel meetings,” said Xavi. “It helped too that he made us eat together after
training sessions. That way we watch our diet. At the start, it was a bit of a
pain for me because I couldn’t make plans, but you get used to it. With the
meetings it was the same.
“I wasn’t used to being at home a
couple of hours before the match and at first it was very strange for me. I
felt like I wasn’t well prepared. It felt like I was too switched off. I even
thought that fate would punish me with a bad game for not giving 100 per cent
of my time to it beforehand.
"But I soon realised that,
with these new rules, I would also benefit. Thinking too much can put too much
pressure on you; this turns into nerves and I have learnt to analyse what is
really important. Minimising the meetings reduces our stress levels all year
round.”
Pep Guardiola: Another Way of
Winning by Guillem Balague (Orion, RRP £20) is available from Telegraph Books
at £18 + £1.35 p&p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk
Baixat del EL PERIODICO- BEGOÑA ARCE / Guillem Balague - Londres
Víctor Lluelles i Cardona
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