TIP OF THE WEEK. Pep Guardiola first day in Barcelona!!!
Gentlemen, good morning.
You can imagine what a huge motivation it is for me to be here, to coach this
team. It is the ultimate honor. Above all, I love the club. I would never make
a decision that would harm or go against the club. Everything I am going to do
is based on my love for FC Barcelona. We need and want order and discipline.
“The team has been through
a time when not everybody was as professional as they should have been. It is
time for everybody to run and to give their all.
“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 Barça, gentlemen,
this is what is asked of us and this is what I will ask of you. You have to
give your all. A player on his own is no one, he needs his team-mates and
colleagues around him: every one of us in this room, the people around you now.
“Many of you don’t know me,
so we will use the next few days to form the group, a family even. If anyone
has any problems, I’m always available, not just in sporting matters but
professional, family, environmental.
"We’re here to help
each other and make sure there is spiritual peace so that the players don’t
feel tension or division. We are one. We are not little groups because in all
teams this is what ends up killing team spirit.
“The players in this room
are very good, if we can’t get them to win anything, it will be our fault.
Let’s stick together when times are hard. Make sure that nothing gets leaked to
the press. I don’t want anybody to fight a battle on his own.
"Let’s be united, have
faith in me. As a former player, I have been in your shoes, I know what you are
going through, what you are feeling.
“The style comes dictated
by the history of this club and we will be faithful to it. When we have the
ball, we can’t lose it. When that happens, run and get it back. That is it,
basically.”
The squad, the group, were
seduced. Upon leaving the room, Xavi commented to a team-mate that everything
that they had needed to know was there in that talk. There would be many more
team talks, but the one at St Andrews laid the foundations for the new era at
FC Barcelona.
“There are talks that just
come to you and talks that begin from a few ideas based on what you have seen,”
said Guardiola. “What you can’t do is study the talks, learn them by heart. Two
or three concepts are all you need ... and then you have to put your heart into
it. You can’t deceive the players, they are too well prepared, intelligent, and
intuitive.
"I was a footballer
and I know what I’m saying. In every talk, from that one in St Andrews to the
last one, I have put my heart into them. When I don’t feel it, I don’t speak,
it’s the best way. There are days when you think that you have to say
something, but you don’t feel it, so at times like that it is better to keep
quiet.
“Sometimes you show them
images of the rivals, and sometimes you don’t show them a single image of the
opposition because on that day you realize, for whatever reason, that in life
there are more important things than a football game, you tell them other
things, unrelated to the game.
"Stories of overcoming
difficulties, of human beings acting in extraordinary ways. This is the
beautiful thing about this job, because each rival, each situation, is
different to the previous one and you always have to find that special
something, to say to them: ‘Guys, today is important ...’ for such and such a
reason. It doesn’t have to be tactical.
"When you have been
doing it for three or four years it is a lot easier to find. When you have been
doing it for four years, with the same players, it is more difficult.’”
Although he wanted an element
of democracy within the group Guardiola did not delay in imposing a number of
strict rules in his first few days in charge: such as insisting upon the use of
Castilian and Catalan as the only languages spoken among the group and
arranging a seating plan at meal times to encourage the players to mix.
Pep continued the
methodologies introduced at St Andrews when the team returned to Barcelona. The
new training complex was shaped according to Pep’s instructions. He changed
things so that the players felt like employees of a football club and not
Hollywood stars.
A dining room was designed
to encourage all the players to sit down at meal times together, previously
unknown in the first team at Barcelona.
Whereas previous training
sessions that used to take place on a training pitch next door to the Nou Camp
that had a fairly high-profile feel about them because of their location, the
Joan Gamper training ground, to which the first team moved in January 2009, was
strictly off limits to press and public. The media christened it ‘La Ciudad
Prohibida’ – ‘The Forbidden City’.
Pep also bucked the Spanish
tradition of getting the team together in a hotel the day before a match. As
Guardiola explained at the time: “People don’t spend the day before they go to
work locked up in a hotel. If they don’t rest, they’re not looking after
themselves and that means they’ll play worse and lose their jobs.
"I judge my players on
the work they do, not on their private lives. I’m not a policeman. I’m in bed
at 10 o’clock and I’ve got no urge to go and check up on my players. That’s why
I’d rather have them at home and not cooped up in a hotel with nothing to do.
“For me, two of the most
important novelties were the move to the training ground and getting rid of the
hotel meetings,” said Xavi. “It helped too that he made us eat together after
training sessions. That way we watch our diet. At the start, it was a bit of a
pain for me because I couldn’t make plans, but you get used to it. With the
meetings it was the same.
“I wasn’t used to being at
home a couple of hours before the match and at first it was very strange for
me. I felt like I wasn’t well prepared. It felt like I was too switched off. I
even thought that fate would punish me with a bad game for not giving 100 per cent
of my time to it beforehand.
"But I soon realized
that, with these new rules, I would also benefit. Thinking too much can put too
much pressure on you; this turns into nerves and I have learnt to analyze what
is really important. Minimizing the meetings reduces our stress levels all year
round.”
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