“I am satisfied that we have done it,” Pep Guardiola told Sky, via Goal. His team, Bayern Munich, had just clinched the Bundesliga title with a 3-1 victory over Hertha Berlin.
On March 25.
With seven games still to go—a league record.
Guardiola, to that point, had answered the lingering question at Bayern, the one succinctly outlined by Sky Sports‘ Adam Bate: “What do you buy the girl who has everything?”
Indeed, the task had been a daunting one, taking over from Jupp Heynckes who had steered the Bavarian club to an emphatic treble the season prior. Guardiola’s task in 2013-14—and beyond—was to make them, somehow, better.
Some will tell you he did. Others will argue he didn’t. But in the league, at least, his team’s record—or, more precisely, the records broken—tell their own story: fastest ever team to a Bundesliga title (27 matches), most consecutive wins (19), longest ever unbeaten streak (53), most consecutive away wins (10), longest unbeaten run to start a Bundesliga season (28), longest run of two-goal performances in winning matches (19) and most away goals in a season (46).
Guardiola’s opinion? “They have got even better,” he declared without hesitation.
In his first season at the club, the Catalan had taken his iconic, Latin style to Germany, implemented it, despite doubts, to force through a phase of rapid evolution at Bayern and lifted the league trophy in a more dominant fashion than any other in history.
This season, on current pace, could produce more of the same.
Of course, there will always be those connected to the club who are unsure of Guardiola, uneasy with his presence at the helm—a group who grew in number after the 4-0 loss to Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-final. But that’s also part of who he is; he can be a figure who polarises opinion. It was the same at Barcelona, where his ascension to first-team coach in 2008 was initially viewed cynically.
And at Bayern, much like he was in Catalonia, Guardiola is a perfect fit for the German powerhouse.
“Since my arrival I have tried to care for the heritage of the club,” he said after capturing the 2013 Club World Cup. Things such as heritage, tradition and identity are extremely important to the 43-year-old—winning football games is his job; upholding values is a duty. At Barcelona, he became a standard-bearer, a sort of moral compass, for both a football club and a region in need of positive and influential figures.
It’s why, according to Guillem Balague in Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning, the former Barcelona manager chose to pursue Bayern despite offers from clubs in England and Italy. The club has a grand history, a defined structure and way of doing things, a strong connection with its members and a focus on homegrown talent.
Like his beloved Barcelona, Bayern, in his eyes, stands for something. Embracing that and building upon it was the appeal. Just as it had been in Spain.
In his first year in charge at the Camp Nou, he propelled Barcelona, with a method that would become world-renowned and admired, to the most historic of campaigns with the unprecedented capture of six titles. Adapting that method to his work in his first season at the Allianz Arena led Bayern Munich to the capture of four.
For any other manager, such a haul would have constituted an overwhelming success. For Guardiola, it was considered by some as underachievement.
That’s how high he’s set the bar.
“Give me the B team,” Guardiola said, according to Balague.
“What!? You must be crazy,” was the response of Txiki Begiristain, the club’s director of football who’d wanted to place the former player into a coordinator-style role, an overseer of all things at the academy level, upon his return to Catalonia.
But Guardiola didn’t budge. He wanted to coach, not administrate. The B team was a perfect start—a team that, like the first team at the time, was struggling through a malaise and had just been relegated into the fourth tier of Spanish football from the Segunda Division B.
Though some thought he was mad, he was unveiled as B-team coach in the summer of 2007. He had one personal goal: to earn promotion.
As Bayern Munich have witnessed, and Barcelona before them, Guardiola’s approach to management is fanatical; obsessive almost. His attention to detail on the training pitch is staggering, he studies opponents for days, he monitors himself what players eat, his tactical brain never stops, he conjures footballing answers to every question before creating more questions and his passion to coach—to actually teach—might be unrivalled.
He took that approach with the B team. In the Spanish fourth division.
Instilling a ferocious work ethic in the club’s youth players and altering the academy’s structure, Guardiola rejuvenated La Masia.
By the end of the 2007-08 season, and with the help of two players groomed by him named Pedro and Sergio Busquets, Guardiola’s B team secured promotion.
If Frank Rijkaard’s Barcelona became known for complacency, a loss of standards and the wasting of talent, Guardiola’s Barcelona, aside from dominance and staggering excellence, became known for the polar opposite of such labels.
Describe his Barcelona and—once you get away from the beauty of the goalscoring and the sheer number of the trophies—you automatically begin to speak of his team’s intense pressing, their perpetual motion, the positional awareness, the defence through attack, the players’ tenacity and the squad’s durability.
Typically, such a process takes time.
Not for Guardiola, though.
In the space of 12 months, the Catalan took the Blaugrana from decadence to dominance. He transformed a club that was 18 points off the pace of champions Real Madrid in 2007-08 and without a trophy in two years to the most talked-about sporting institution on the planet.
After little more than one year in charge, Guardiola’s record read: one Champions League title, one La Liga title, one Copa del Rey title, one UEFA Super Cup title, one Spanish Super Cup title and one Club World Cup title.
Those who view him as a manager of great sides rather than a great manager should take note: He inherited a dysfunctional group of underachievers and turned them into the greatest force the sport has known.
The key ingredient? The same obsessiveness and attention to detail that saw him win promotion with the B team—themes that were set when he first addressed Barcelona’s stars at St Andrews in Scotland in 2008.
According to Guillem Balague in the Telegraph, Guardiola’s first message mesmerised the group (you can find all of it here):
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 Barca, gentlemen, this is what is asked of us and this is what I will ask of you.
Naturally, the distracted Ronaldinho didn’t fit into his vision. Nor did Deco. Samuel Eto’o, who has since spoken of his dissatisfaction with Guardiola, lasted just a season before he was discarded, too.
The manager carried forward the essence of Johan Cruyff’s tenure, but added to it a work ethic and fanaticism that set Barcelona apart. His players would eat together sitting in an enforced seating plan that varied. They would only speak Catalan or Castilian. Staff with a long-running passion for the club were brought in. Their training ground was moved away from the Camp Nou to the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper to reduce the feeling of stardom within the group.
Every decision was made to boost professionalism and the squad’s collective strength. That itself benefited immeasurably from Guardiola’s unrelenting and unmatched passion to teach, his carefully constructed winning strategies and the devising of a style, an ethos, based on percentages, efficiency and effectiveness.
The result was six titles in a calendar year.
Not bad, for a club that claimed one point in its opening two league games under its prodigal son.
In the history of Barcelona, the 2008 Olympic Games stand as a critical juncture in the club’s fortunes. Perhaps the most significant juncture of all.
Guardiola, having just replaced Rijkaard, was confronted at the time with a displeased Lionel Messi, who, initially, had been denied the opportunity to represent Argentina at the global event in Beijing by his club.
The new manager, despite having impressed his players immediately, knew tension with his finest talent must be avoided. For modern football, like many sports, hinges on star power. And though yet to hit his peak in 2008, the club was well aware Messi was one of those. A star above them all.
As such, it represented an opportunity for Guardiola. In a dispute between the club and its biggest star, the manager had the chance to side with the player and win the affection and trust of the Argentinian.
He took it.
“It’s the best decision as, although with Leo we’re a better side, these are exceptional circumstances,” Guardiola announced at a press conference in August 2008 to explain Messi’s involvement in the Olympic Games.
Begiristain, who, according to Balague in Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning, had been persuaded by Guardiola to allow the Argentinian to compete in the games, added: “We want the player to be happy and his happiness is there for all to see.”
Guardiola, instantly, had won over a player who would become one of the greatest individuals the sport has ever seen.
“I’m very grateful to Pep Guardiola,” Messi later said after winning the gold medal. “I want to reach to him and give him a hug because he understood where I was coming from and it was such a nice gesture.”
It wasn’t the first moment of significance for Barcelona that season.
In the lead-up to the Blaugrana’s meeting with Real Madrid in La Liga in May 2009, Guardiola was sitting in his office contemplating ways to expose weaknesses in the defending champions: Where are the gaps? Where are the deficiencies? Where can Real be attacked?
In his book, Pep Confidential: Inside Guardiola’s First Season at Bayern Munich, Spanish journalist Marti Perarnau, while reflecting, provides insight into how the then-Barcelona boss propelled a star into a legend with one tactical switch:
Having watched a previous match between the two teams, Pep noticed how much pressure Real’s midfielders Guti, Fernando Gago and Royston Drenthe put on his own players, Xavi and Yaya Touré. He also noticed the tendency of the central defenders, Cannavaro and Metzelder, to hang back near Iker Casillas’ goalmouth. This left a vast expanse of space between them and the Madrid midfielders.
It was 10pm and Pep was alone in his office. Everyone else, including his assistants, had gone home. He sat in that dimly lit room imagining Messi moving freely across that enormous empty space in the Bernabéu. He saw him face-to-face with Metzelder and Cannavaro, the two players frozen on the edge of the box, unsure whether or not to chase the Argentine. The image was crystal clear and he picked up the phone and dialled Messi’s number.
According to Perarnau, Guardiola called Messi into his office late that night and explained to him his plan and how it would transpire. Messi agreed.
The next day, with Messi instructed to play as a false No. 9, the Argentinian scored twice. Barcelona defeated Real Madrid 6-2 at the Santiago Bernabeu.
Eighteen months later, with Messi deployed in exactly the same manner, the Blaugrana went better again: Barcelona 5-0 Real Madrid.
Of course, Guardiola hadn’t conceptualised the false No. 9; he’d just positioned one of the greatest talents of all time in such a manner.
The results were devastating.
“They are the best team we have ever played,” Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson said.
Two years earlier in 2009, the Scot believed his team had thrown away the opportunity to claim consecutive Champions League titles, but, on this occasion, he was left in no doubt as to where the trophy deserved to be.
“We were beaten by the best team in Europe,” Ferguson declared.
The occasion, of course, was the 2011 Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United at Wembley—a repeat of the 2009 final in Rome.
Barcelona, under Guardiola, had already claimed three straight La Liga titles, but Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan had stopped their European charge in 2010. The 2011 final of the continental competition was the chance to reassert their dominance in Europe.
Goals to Messi, Pedro and David Villa did just that. The match ended 3-1 to Barcelona, the Spanish club starting seven players, and eventually fielding eight, who had progressed through La Masia—the revered youth setup rejuvenated by Guardiola.
Again, Barcelona had not only been recognised as Europe’s finest, but also as an example of a certain type of footballing purity. They’d triumphed their own way, Guardiola’s way.
As his players celebrated, Guardiola, according to Balague, turned to his assistant Manel Estiarte and said remorsefully: “I will never forgive myself. I have failed.”
He’d just won the Champions League for the second time in three seasons. In doing so, he’d just captured his 10th major title in that time.
But Guardiola, the perfectionist, the obsessive manager with an unrivalled work ethic, thought he could have done better.
That’s who Bayern Munich have now.
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