Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography Read Online Free PDF Page A

assistants, the resultant cost and, above all, the signing of Cesc Fàbregas.
    When Rosell, who was reluctant to end the feud with his nemesis, brought a civil lawsuit against Laporta for alleged financial maladministration of the club, which could have meant the freezing
of Laporta’s properties and assets, Pep met the former president for dinner. He watched as his friend, the man who had given him his first coaching job, cried openly. He was about to lose
everything and his personal life was falling apart. A few days later Guardiola admitted in a press conference that he felt sorry for Laporta. That was, according to Rosell’s acolytes, an
‘unpleasant surprise’.
    The situation was defused and the civil lawsuit abandoned, but nothing gets forgotten in the Camp Nou!
    So it is no wonder Guardiola never had the same level of mutual devotion with Rosell as he had with Laporta. But a president doesn’t have to love you. When Rosell was asked in London,
after the club had been awarded the Laureus as the World Team of the Year, ‘What would happen if Pep left at the end of the season?’, the president answered, ‘There was life at
the club before him and will be after him.’
    No, he doesn’t have to love you, but it would have been beneficial for the club if it hadn’t been so obvious that the two men were on completely different wavelengths.
    ‘Make a list of the things that you would like to do next season. It will help you to reflect and see if what you write down is exactly what you want to do.’
Zubizarreta kept trying. He had thought of a good way to make Guardiola reflect on a decision that seemed to be taking form in his mind. Pep laughed: ‘It’s not the time,’ he
repeated.
    The very light pressure was not working, so it was almost better not even to mention it. Zubi’s tactics changed again and the topic hardly ever came up in conversation
between the president, the sporting director and the coach from that moment on. It would be up to the manager, whenever he was ready, to tell them what he wanted to do.
    There were occasions during the season when Pep would look through a talkative Zubizarreta, a half-smile on his lips perhaps, and his friend would know that the coach was miles away – and
that it was the wrong time to talk about that or really anything significant, that there was no way at that point to communicate with Pep.
    His players will tell you that, like Zubizarreta himself, they feel they know him pretty well. They recognise the guy who jokes with them, the one who has a presence that makes them sit up and
pay attention. A coach whose care for the smallest detail improves them, who can see and communicate the secrets of a game. But they would also say that there is a lot they cannot understand about
their boss. They see a complex man with so much on his mind, always mulling things over, excessively so sometimes. Players say they are sure he would love to spend more time with his wife and kids,
but he can’t, because he dedicates the vast majority of his time to winning games. He lives for that, but sometimes even they wonder: does he overdo it?
    For Pep, that excessiveness is exactly what he needs to find that flash of inspiration: that moment when he realises what the next game will be like or discovers how it can be won; that moment
that ‘gives sense to his profession’, as he puts it.
    Despite having twenty-four assistants, he worked longer hours than most of them and although the club offered him a unit of experts who could analyse games, he could never bring himself to
surrender control of that part of the job. ‘For me, the most wonderful thing is planning what is going to happen in each game,’ Guardiola has explained. ‘Which players I have at
my disposal, which tools I can use, what the opposition is like ... I want to imagine what will happen. I always try and give the players the security of knowing what they’ll encounter. This
increases the possibility