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

faltering far too early in the season. Real Madrid, who had
beatentheir city rival Atlético de Madrid 4-1 away, were now five points ahead and they seemed unstoppable, hungry for success and with a burning desire to bring
Guardiola’s era to an end.
    La Liga wasn’t the only reason for Pep feeling low – and his appearance after the game worried members of the team. On the flight back to Barcelona, in the early hours of Sunday 27
November 2011, Pep had never looked more isolated, down in the dumps and untalkative: far more bitter than he would have been had it just been a case of dealing with a defeat. There was a space
next to him on the plane, an empty aisle seat – and nobody wanted to fill it. It was where Tito Vilanova would have sat.
    It would be difficult to pinpoint a lower moment for the Barça coach’s morale.
    ‘It would be silly not to see the job through.’ That is what Sir Alex Ferguson would have told Pep before he made his decision. But the Manchester United manager might have thought
differently had he had seen Pep, alone, on that flight.
    Andoni Zubizarreta had witnessed first hand the effect of Tito’s illness on Pep; he’d seen it on the trips to Milan and Madrid and in the way the coach behaved at the training ground
around those games. It was as if he’d had a puncture and all his energy was leaking out through the hole. He seemed deflated, thinner, stooped, suddenly older and greyer.
    Zubi wished now he’d known then what to say to Pep, how to comfort and support him. It might not have changed anything, but the feeling of regret persists.
    Of course, Tito pulled through, but that week confirmed Pep’s worst fears – he was not ready for more: more responsibility, more searching for solutions, more crisis avoidance and
endless hours of work and preparation, more time away from his family.
    It confirmed a nagging doubt that had persisted since October, when just after the Bate Borisov Champions League game, he told Zubi and president Sandro Rosell that he didn’t feel strong
enough to continue for another season: that if he was asked to renew his contract right then, his answer would be ‘no’. It was not a formal decision, but he was making his feelings
known. The reaction ofthe club was instant: he would be given time, there was no need to rush.
    Zubi, a lifelong friend and colleague, understands Pep’s character – and knew that it was best not to put pressure on him. The director of football hoped that Pep’s revelation
could be attributed to him feeling a little tired, understandably low: something of an emotional rollercoaster that he had seen Guardiola riding on a few occasions when they were team-mates.
    Yet Zubizarreta also recalled a meal he had with Pep in his first season with the first team. It was a meeting between friends. Zubi wasn’t working for the club at that point and Pep was
still very excited about what he was doing with the side and how well everything was being received. His enthusiasm was contagious. Yet he reminded Zubizarreta that his job at Barcelona came with
an expiry date. It was a defence mechanism for Pep, because he knew as well as anybody that the club could chew up and spit out managers mercilessly. Pep was insistent that one day he would lose
his players, his messages wouldn’t carry the same weight, that the whole environment (the media, the president’s enemies, talk-show panels, former coaches and players) would be
impossible to control in the long term.
    A friend of Pep’s, Charly Rexach – former player, assistant manager to Johan Cruyff and Barcelona first-team coach, an icon of the Catalan club and legendary public philosopher
– always said that a Barcelona manager dedicates only 30 per cent of his efforts to the team: the other 70 per cent is spent dealing with the rest of the baggage that comes with such a huge
institution. Pep sensed this when he was a player, but as a coach he quickly experienced that interminable