A tribute to Pep Guardiola
(Barcelona circa 97-98 - go on, see how many people you can pick out. It's too bad Mourinho's not in this one too.)
...and a nostalgia trip featuring the Barca 'Dream Team', Ronaldo (the Brazilian one), Rivaldo, Luis Figo, current Barca captains Xavi and Puyol, Real Madrid captains Raul and Fernando Hierro, Gabriel Batistuta, Roberto Baggio and various other Spaniards and Italians.
The current incarnation of FC Barcelona has great players, some of whom also happen to home-grown, but while captain Carles Puyol is a Cule born and bred, he's a quiet leader who confines his public life to football. His potency as a widely respected symbol is not yet as great as Milan's Paolo Maldini or Real Madrid's Raul. Arguably the last Barca captain to reach that level is Pep Guardiola, club legend, former captain of both Spain and Catalunya, and current coach of Barcelona B.
This is how Gabriele Marcotti describes him:
...Guardiola is the kind of man who was always going to stand out.
Handsome and intelligent, sophisticated and stylish, he is far removed from the football player stereotype - to the point that, like Graeme Le Saux, he was also wrongly rumoured to be gay, evidence that English supporters do not have a monopoly on troglodyte attitudes.
This is how he describes himself as a player: "I am not quick, I never had the stamina to run and run for 90 minutes like central midfielders have to do today. I am not particularly good in the air, I am not physically strong, I don't dribble past opponents and I am not a good tackler. But I can pass the ball fairly well."
It's an incredible understatement, since he was the metronome that kept the fabled Dream Team ticking over, and players such as Xavi, Xabi Alonso, Cesc Fabregas and Mikel Arteta cite him as an inspiration. Because of Guardiola, Barca's academy has continued to produce an extraordinary number of midfielders of his type.
He's also responsible for one of my favourite quotes about footballers:
"Footballers have their brains in their feet, it's said. But you can't generalize. There are those who think about the rest of the world, and those who don't."
Guardiola definitely falls into the former category. He's an almost obsessive reader who became an eloquent spokesman for those who desire greater autonomy for Catalunya. Within the world of football, his analysis of events always surprises listeners with its clarity and vision.
But his beginnings were pretty humble. Guardiola was born to poor parents and to all intents and purposes his move around the age of 13 to La Masia (Barca's youth academy) meant that the club adopted him. For older fans, their first memory of Guardiola is often that of a skinny, smiling ball boy, running on to the field in his excitement at Barca's 10th league title win in 84-85.
(The little boy in the background. If the picture was better, you'd be able to see the wide grin on his face. By the way, if I'm not much mistaken, the player with the impressive moustache is Bernd Schuster.)
Sometime around 1989, the departure of Luis Milla to Real Madrid meant that Barca were one midfielder short. Instead of buying a star, coach Johan Cruyff went to La Masia and picked Guardiola out as he played a game for the B team.
(Still very, very young, at the very beginning of what was to be a very successful career.)
It was a brilliant move, because Guardiola was the last piece in the puzzle, and what came to be known as the Dream Team was born.
(Spot the now-coach/technical director: Zubizarreta, Koeman, Michael Laudrup, Stoichkov, Txiki Begiristain, Jose Mari Bakero...)
Guardiola's presence in a team mostly dominated by non-Catalan players reassured the fans that the club had not lost sight of its roots, and gave them a symbol to look towards. And of course he was a fantastic player too. Additionally, Guardiola served as a conduct for Cruyff's ideas about football, ideas that he still believes in to this day.
(Unlike most players, Guardiola's relationship with Cryuff never seemed to grow frosty, and he remains one of the few former charges Cruyff is willing to speak of as a human being, not just a player.)
The team went on to win La Liga four times in a row, and most importantly bring home Barca's first European Cup.
Times were great. And then they weren't. A mass exodus of the backbone of the Dream Team, combined with and caused by internal unrest at the club, especially between the president Nunez and Cruyff (which led to Cruyff's eventual sacking) changed everything. Expensively, the club began to rebuild.
One component of the rebuilding was Luis Figo, signed in 1995 from Sporting Lisbon. Figo and Guardiola apparently became quick friends, and a fruitful on-field partnership was also born.
(In training. Figo looks so young here, it always surprises me. Lurking in the background is Ivan De La Pena, another player cast in the Guardiola mold, who now plays for Espanyol.)
(I think I spot Puyol's hair in that pile. That, and lots of Dutch players - a characteristic of the van Gaal era, more on which later.)
(I think that's the Cup Winner's Cup, which Barca won in 97-98, coached by Sir Bobby Robson and powered along by a young and brilliant striker by the name of Ronaldo.)
Some of the names familiar to Barca fans also made their debuts around this time. Xavi Hernandez got his start in the first team by filling in for Pep when he was injured. For a player who has been compared to Guardiola ever since he turned up at La Masia, Xavi's done well to leave Pep's shadow behind.
(Xavi says that Pep is his 'blueprint' as a player.)
(My filename for this picture: 'Puyol and Pep freezing their asses off in Liverpool'.)
(Having a Moment with Real Madrid captain Fernando Hierro, more on him later.)
By 1997, Pep had been made captain, with Figo taking his place when he had to take time off because of injury, an occurance which was becoming increasingly frequent. Barca won La Liga in 98-99 and 99-00, but the fans were increasingly unhappy with Dutch coach Louis van Gaal, who had replaced Sir Bobby. van Gaal clashed repeatedly with the press and was seen as far too eager to fill the team with Dutch stars. (Barca love the Dutch, but there's such a thing as going too far.) This coupled with the club's lack of success in Europe led to president Nunez and van Gaal both resigning in 2000.
(To me, this image is perfect: Pep lifting the La Liga trophy as captain in the club's centenary season.)
The changes at the top of the club signaled the beginning of the end. Barca was going to enter one of its worst barren spells in recent history, and Pep would - unthinkably - leave Barca behind to seek new adventures elsewhere. (One year before Pep's departure, which is still controversial and shrouded in mystery, new president Gaspart's blundering had already led to the devastating and infamous loss of a star player - Luis Figo.)
Before we leave Spain, though, an interlude for a few words on Guardiola's international career. Pep was never a physical player, and injury problems dogged him throughout his career. They forced him to come into almost the major international tournaments in his long career either injured or recovering from major injury. (The one exception, I believe, is Euro 2000. And then there's the glorious Olympic Gold Medal win at the Camp Nou in the 1992 Games, with an unprecedented 120,000-strong crowd cheering Spain on Barcelona's turf.) He still managed to serve Spain with distinction, captaining the team on occasion and earning the respect of even the Bernabeu crowd.
(With a young Raul, of whom he has spoken very highly in the past: "...you have to look at what (Raul) has done and is doing at 24. He's the best in the world because he knows his limitations but you never see those limitations.")
(With Fernando Morientes, also looking strangely young.)
(A Moment with Ivan Helguera.)
(Another Moment with Fernando Hierro. I've always found it fascinating how someone so nationalistic like Hierro could get along with someone so committed to the idea of Catalunya as a nation, like Guardiola, but apparently they managed.)
Guardiola's announcement that he was leaving Barca when his contract expired in 2001 caused widespread shock and confusion in Spanish football. (Sort of like if a 30-year-old Maldini said that he was leaving Milan because he fancied trying out some of the other leagues.) Few could understand his decision. He had spent 17 years - his entire career up to that point - at the club and given his best years to Barca.
The transfer window came and went, and while Newcastle seemed a likely destination at one point, where he would be reunited with Sir Bobby Robson, Guardiola eventually materialized somewhere rather unexpected: at Brescia, in Italy.
Here he met one of the great figures of Italian football, one Roby Baggio. The two became fast friends.
"I have been a teammate of Koeman, Laudrup, Romario, Ronaldo and Stoitchkov but I have never seen anyone like Baggio," Guardiola said. "He's one of the three best players in the world."
(One of my favourite football images ever - Pep giving the captain's armband to Roby as he makes a comeback from injury.)
(Celebrating with the fans.)
(Out and about town.)
Now here's an image I find amazing:
(Yep, that's Luca Toni. And Stephen Appiah.)
Unfortunately, the good times didn't last long. Guardiola tested positive for the banned substance Nandrolone soon after joining Brescia. There was a bit of a strange atmosphere around this time, as a wave of positive tests suddenly emerged in Italian football. Like Guardiola, all players involved vehemently protested their innocence even while serving out their ban. Unlike Guardiola, most of them let the matter drop after that.
Leading figures in Spanish football at the time leapt to Pep's defence and professed their belief in his innocence, including Hierro, Figo, Rivaldo, then Spain coach Camacho and then Barca coach Rexarch and president Gaspart. Former team mates Frank De Boer and Miguel Angel Nadal (uncle of Rafael - yeah, that one) said that they'd hold their hands in the fire to vouch for his innocence.
Pep himself has always maintained the same adamant stance:
"If I am guilty, the punishment should have been four years. If I am innocent, as I will prove someday, then I didn't deserve a single day."
He has been as good as his word, persisting with the case in the Italian courts until his name was finally cleared six years later in October of 2007.
After Guardiola served his ban, he went to AS Roma for a year, where he played alongside yet another footballing legend in the formidable form of Gabriel Batistuta.
(Ah, Batigol.)
(Playing against old friend Figo for Roma.)
Unfortunately, Roma's coach at the time, one Fabio Capello, was not particularly fond of midfielders who couldn't defend, and Pep found his playing time limited. He went back to Brescia, and then on to Qatar, where he met Batigol again and was voted player of the season alongside him.
From there, he moved on to Mexican club Dorados de Sinaloa at the invitation of the coach, who was an old friend of his. At the end of 2006, his patched together body finally gave out, and he announced his retirement.
The happy flipside of having to leave his playing career behind has come in the form of a return to Barca, where the fans have always seen Guardiola as one of their own, and where he's always been welcome. In June of 2007, he was officially named coach of Barcelona B.
(With Frank Rijkaard, during training.)
Pep was appointed to guide the B team, who were disastrously relegated at the end of last season, back to the Third Division, and he's been doing a great job so far. For the fans, it's just great to see him back.
A few more pictures:
Being young and shy.
Captaining Catalunya.
Silly watermark.
Taken from the press conference at which he announced his departure. There's one with tears, but it makes me far too sad to look at.
Notes: This is the Guardiola spam I've been threatening some of you with for ages. Finally went ahead and finished writing it up ahead of writing my cornerflag fic around a similar topic. Thanks for reading!