Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography by Guillem Balagué Read Free Book Online

stay’. The majority of players thought that the meeting before training was merely to
receive confirmation that Guardiola was staying. ‘He seems all right,’ they said to each other. They were hoping he had managed to shake off his fears and doubts and stay a bit longer,
even one more season.
    Only a handful of people knew for sure what was going to be said. The players gathered in the dressing room at the training ground. There were no jokes, just a low murmur of conversation which
turned to silence once Pep walked in and started speaking. As the players were being told, Sky Sports News reported his decision. What he revealed was a shock. The Barcelona manager was
departing.
    ‘You’re the best and I’m proud of you all. But now I have not got the energy to continue and it is time to leave. I’m drained.’ He appeared relaxed but his voice
betrayed his emotions. He was using the same tricks that were so common to him when he wanted to show them where the weakness of the rival team was: he was trying to convince them it was the best
that could happen and to do so he dwelt on his players’ feelings. ‘Around October I told the president that the end ofmy time as manager was close. But I
couldn’t tell you then because it would have been problematic. Now it is definite. The next manager to come in will give things that I can no longer give. He will be strong. It would have
been a risk for me to continue because we would have hurt each other. I think a lot of you all, and I would never forgive myself. There have been many moves that I have imagined that you have made
a reality. So I will leave with the feeling of having done the job well, of having fulfilled my duty. This club has an unstoppable power, but I am the third coach in its history with the most
number of games played – in just four years. What we have done has been exceptional because Barcelona coaches don’t last long. And we have lasted this long because we have won. But
while that was happening, my strength was disappearing. I am leaving as a very happy man. The president has offered me another position but I need to be away from it all if I want to recharge
again.’
    There was further silence after those words were spoken. So he continued. ‘I wanted to tell you now that we are out of the big competitions so I have time to say goodbye to everyone
– and call you individually into the office to thank you personally. I don’t want applause or anything, so ... let’s get to training.’
    And Pep clapped his hands together to emphasise that the talk was over; it was an order to get up and move on. In less than a quarter of an hour, the history of the club had received a
definitive twist. Players were confused, bewildered.
    Pep asked very little of his footballers that day on the training ground. He knew that he had dealt them a bitter blow. For the players running out on to the pitch, that session represented the
first steps on the road to healing. For Pep, it represented the beginning of the end of a journey that had begun around three decades earlier, in a sleepy little Catalan village called
Santpedor.

 
     
     
     
Part II

From a Santpedor Square to the Camp Nou Dugout

 
     
     
     
    Main square of the village of Santpedor. Almost any given morning in 1979
    As you approach Pep’s childhood home in Santpedor, there is a striking view across the immense valley in which the village is situated. The air is fresh but it carries the
smell of the dry earth. Looming on the horizon, the rocky outline of Montserrat, Catalonia’s striking iconic ‘serrated’ mountain, soars up out of the valley like a giant cardboard
cut-out, providing a majestic backdrop for the sleepy Catalan village situated seventy kilometres from Barcelona.
    One of the first buildings you come across on the outskirts of this village of only 7,500 inhabitants is the new home of Guardiola’s parents – built by Pep’s father, a
bricklayer – a modern,