UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: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 Barcelona's players there was no respite and nowhere to hide. When Xavi Hernandez, Carles Puyol and Andres 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, Barcelona 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 Benitez; 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 cliches. 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 Aragones 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 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 Pique – was not there last season when Barcelona finished empty-handed, 18 points behind Madrid. That failure bequeathed Guardiola a receptive, hungry dressingroom. “We had,” Rafa Marquez confesses, “let ourselves go.” The new coach was determined for it not to happen again. Young, handsome, something of a loose cannon, Pique 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 learned from Cruyff and Xavi and Iniesta learned 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.
