Pep Guardiola Quotes

Solo sé que un buen líder es aquel que no tiene miedo a las consecuencias de sus decisiones, y que toma el paso que le dicta su intuición, pase lo que pase.

Pep, for instance, created collective conditions to create one v ones for Messi. As simple and common place as that may sound now, it was not so at the time.

«Si nos levantamos pronto, pero muy pronto, y sin reproches, y nos ponemos a trabajar, somos un país imparable».

No se dan cuenta de que el fútbol es un monstruo al que solo puedes vencer y enfrentarte si siempre te mantienes fiel a ti mismo, en cualquier circunstancia.»

Ideas belong to everyone and I have stolen as many as I could.

Under Cruyff, dominating the ball became the first and most important rule. ‘If you have the ball, the opposition doesn’t have it and can’t attack you,’ Cruyff would repeat daily. So the job became finding the players who could keep possession and also doing a lot of positional work in training.

Pep had analysed Real Madrid in detail and, an hour and a half before the game, he got Messi, Xavi and Iniesta together: ‘You three against Lass and Gago have got the game. If you do it right, three against two, we’ve beaten them.’ Lass and Gago were going to find a third man to defend, Messi would position himself as a false striker in between the centre backs and those two.

Why do we open up the field?’ Cruyff would explain. ‘Because if we have the ball and we are open, it is more difficult for the opponent to defend.’ Or: ‘People criticised me because I played with three at the back, but those criticisms were really ridiculous: what we did was fill the zones on the field where the game required it. If the opponent played with two up front, which was common then, and my team went out with four defenders, I had one too many, so I moved him forward towards the midfield.

I’ve got a problem,’ he told his mentor. ‘I’ve got these two guys who I don’t know if I can control, they don’t listen to what I say and that affects how everybody else receives my messages. And the problem is, they’re two of the leaders in the dressing room and the best players. I will lose without them on board.’ Cruyff ’s response was blunt: ‘Get rid of them. You might lose one or two games, but then you will start winning and by then you would have turfed those two sons of bitches out the team.

Although he wanted an element of democracy within the group, with players using their initiative, making suggestions and keeping an open mind to new ideas, 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, arranging a seating plan at meal times to encourage the players to mix and to prevent the team forming up into different cultural or national groups and cliques.

It wasn’t enough for him to have had first-hand experience of the methods of Cruyff, Robson, van Gaal, Mazzone or Capello, so he travelled to Argentina to deepen his knowledge. There, he met Ricardo La Volpe (a former Argentine World Cup-winning goalkeeper and the former coach of the Mexican national team), Marcelo Bielsa (the much admired former Argentina and Chile national coach, and Athletic de Bilbao manager) and ‘El Flaco’, César Luis Menotti (the coach who took Argentina to the World Cup in 1978) to talk at length about football.

According to the principles Johan Cruyff introduced to Barcelona, coaches should lead by example: play football, be on the field during training and teach, because there is nothing better than stopping the game, correcting and instructing, explaining why someone needed to pass to a certain player, move to a particular position or change an element of their technique. That’s how Carles Rexach, Cruyff ’s assistant for eight years at Barcelona, explains it: ‘One word from Johan during a training drill is worth more than a hundred hours of talks at the blackboard.

1. Linus Malthus "Winning is just the snow that came down yesterday"   Founder of total football. Tactical revolutionary who created the foundation of modern football  저희는 7가지 철칙을 바탕으로 거래를 합니다. 고객들과 지키지못할약속은 하지않습니다 1.정품보장 2.총알배송 3.투명한 가격 4.편한 상담 5.끝내주는 서비스 6.고객님 정보 보호 7.깔끔한 거래 [경영항목] 엑스터시,신의눈물,lsd,아이스,캔디,대마초,떨,마리화나,프로포폴,에토미데이트,해피벌륜등많은제품판매하고있습니다 믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다. 제품효과 못보실 그럴일은 없지만 만의하나 효과못보시면 저희가 1차재발송과 2차 환불까지 약속합니다 텔레【KC98K】카톡【ACD5】라인【SPR331】 The only winner in the international major tournament, Holland, the best soccer line of football 2. Sir Alex Ferguson Mr.Man Utd   The Red Boss The best director in soccer history (most of the past soccer coach rankings are the top picks) It is the most obvious that shows how important the director is in football.   Manchester United's 27-year-old championship, the spiritual stake of all United players and fans, Manchester United itself 3. Theme Mourinho "I do not pretend to be arrogant, because I'm all true, I am a European champion, I am not one of the cunning bosses around, I think I am Special One." The Special One The cost of counterattack after a player Charming world with charisma and poetry The director who has the most violent career of soccer directors 4. Pep Guardiola A man who achieved the world's first and only six treasures beyond treble. Make a team with a page of football history 5. Ottmar Hitzfeld Borussia Dortmund and Bayern are the best directors in Munich history. Legendary former football manager of Germany Sir Alex Ferguson's rival

No pensamos para conocer. Pensamos para actuar. El talento es, por lo tanto, la inteligencia actuando de manera adecuada, brillante, eficiente».

Improbable is not impossible... you have to believe.

a victim of his own dedication and perfectionism, and also of his own torments and the difficulty he has in allowing people to help him.

They don't realise football is a monster that you can only beat and face if you are always yourself: under any circumstance.

Pep Guardiola didn’t just change football. He has been changing football for fifteen years! And he could only do that because he has been changing himself all along.

I like to win. I like to train, but above all, I want to teach people to compete representing universal values: values based on respect and education. Giving everything while competing with dignity is a victory, whatever the scoreline suggests.

if you are humble, you are capable of learning – and the capacity to learn is the capacity to improve.

Para Guardiola, el éxito consistía en organizar al equipo.

locked in his office, making decisions, using common sense, surrounding himself with good people, being demanding of all around him on a daily basis – it had all been worthwhile.

where his side could gain the upper hand in two v ones; endlessly replaying the key battles.

The German team became more German than ever. They used in their performance the ‘Mia San Mia’ motto that the players wear on their shirts, which on the pitch manifests itself in a supreme belief, intensity and constant waves of attack.

Failure is when a player does not have a good training session, when the coach relaxes and stops caring, when the team doesn’t care either about whatever is going on,’ Manel Estiarte said.

He jokes about only wanting to see the restaurants, but it is all about learning . . . about new cultures, and how to then incorporate those cultures into his coaching.

Ramon Besa put it wonderfully: ‘He is a bit of a Quixote. In an era of fast food, Pep wants degustation football, as if it were a wine.

I became a coach because I thought I could dominate the game with what I say, what I do, what we train and how I try to convince players.

He wanted players who controlled the ball with their first touch, who had quick feet, who retained the ball and created superiority from individual technique and group work.

He said that if you pass the ball well, you receive it well and have good control; then you have far more possibilities.

(the difference between a good and bad footballer, according to Cruyff, is how well you control the ball and where you place it with your first touch, accommodating it for yourself in the right direction or sending it accurately to your team-mate). It needed players who were able to be in the best positions to receive the ball, capable of constantly assisting, of one-twos, of keeping their heads up, of looking for the next pass before receiving, of anticipating play. But, more importantly, they had to be footballers capable of understanding the game.

The players who go through La Masía are taught to behave with civility and humility. The theory being that, not only is it pleasant to be unassuming, but also if you are humble, you are capable of learning – and the capacity to learn is the capacity to improve. If you aren’t capable of learning you won’t improve.

In the junior categories we wanted to mould the player. You must know what his strengths and weaknesses are, work on them and correct them.

No quiere ser nada más que un entrenador, un buen entrenador. Lo otro, lo demás, lo bueno y lo malo, se lo echa encima una sociedad necesitada de modelos. Quizá hastiada de tramposos, de ventajistas, de canallas, de gente que impone valores de egoísmo, oportunismo y egolatría, desde la tribuna privilegiada de la televisión o los medios o los negocios o la política. Él pertenece a esa sociedad. Y la dignifica, de una manera muy simple, tratando de hacer bien su faena, ayudando a hacer prosperar el sentido común desde su parcela de exposición pública. Con la misma callada dignidad con la que un buen albañil, sin que nadie mire ni aplauda, pone un ladrillo sobre el cemento.»

I can see that he is capable of doing it because he has made a great deal of decisions in a short space of time.

Guardiola believed in handing greater responsibility to the footballers, trusting that their intuition could help solve a great amount of their problems. As a coach, Pep remained true to this idea and was determined to let his charges take the initiative.

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.

We are one. We are not little groups because in all teams this is what ends up killing team spirit.

When we have the ball, we can’t lose it. And when that happens, run and get it back. That is it, basically.’ The squad, the group, was seduced. Not for the last time; far from it. Upon leaving the room, Xavi commented to a team-mate that everything that they had needed to know was there in that talk. A breath of fresh air, order and discipline. A reminder of the style he wanted to reinforce. All that was established from day one.

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, 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. And when I don’t feel it, I don’t speak, it’s the best way.

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

The director of football went away and started doing some digging around, gathering second opinions about Pep’s qualities as an actual coach.

Pep and Bielsa have much in common: they love teams that dominate, that want to be protagonists on the pitch, to seek out the opposition goal as the main priority.

Bielsa’s teams ‘can play badly or well, but talent depends on the inspiration and the effort depends on each one of the players: the attitude is non-negotiable’, Marcelo, ‘el loco’, told him, adding that his sides cannot win if he cannot transmit what he feels. Pep agreed, taking notes all the time.

At the end of his spell in Argentina he felt that he was better prepared than ever before; not totally, because Pep will never allow himself to be completely satisfied, but he felt ready enough to start putting everything he had learnt to the test.

Football was his passion, his obsession, the thing he knew best, and Serie A was considered the league that practised the most advanced defensive tactics since Sacchi. His Milan of the eighties were regarded as having set the benchmark in terms of work rate and defensive strategy over the previous two decades – and Pep was determined to learn as much as he could from his time in Italy.

Rijkaard was aware of the stars’ behaviour, but indulged them, ever the optimist that the players were mature and responsible enough to know when to draw the line. It was a mistake. And, by the middle of the 2006–07 season that started poorly in Monaco, it was a trend far too late to reverse as Barcelona’s results and their performances reflected the breakdown in discipline.

that coronation of the team’s achievements paradoxically heralded the beginning of the end for Rijkaard’s Barcelona, as the first signs of indiscipline became apparent.

Guardiola signed for Roma in the summer of 2002, motivated less by the opportunity to play for a bigger club than to be coached by, and to learn from, Fabio Capello, a manager he greatly admires despite their differing approach to the game. Pep was eager to experience Capello’s defensive rigour and discover his secrets in terms of how to apply pressure upon an opponent.

Pep used to feel unprepared when it came to certain topics like defensive concepts or particular training methodologies. When he needed answers he would turn to Lillo at any time of day: ‘How do you solve this type of situation?’ ‘If I do this what will happen?’ According to Pep, Lillo is one of the best prepared coaches in the world and a leader in his field when it comes to developing a vision of the game, despite the fact that the world of elite sports hasn’t been kind in rewarding him.

I’d love to work with the youth side, with the kids, because I’ve no pretensions that I’m ready to work at a higher level yet. You have to respect the fact that this is a process, a learning curve. The first steps are vital and there are no second chances once you step up.

Rijkaard and Ten Cate made the perfect double act; the ultimate good cop/bad cop routine, but without Henk banging his fist on the table, Rijkaard’s nice guy routine led to chaos.

Guardiola has taken certain areas to another level – such as pressing the ball – and Barcelona’s disciplined style of play and work ethic have become a trademark of all his teams.

I’ve been successful at Manchester United for many years and it’s not without its problems – every hour of every day you have to deal with something.

He was given one more chance, invited back for a third day. The coach moved him into central midfield where, suddenly, Pep was a magnet for the ball, directing the forward play and dictating tempo. He’d done enough. Barcelona decided they wanted him to join them.

The ball runs faster than any human, so it’s the ball that has to do the running!’ which, in seventeen words, just about encapsulates his philosophy.

Look at him! Him, that one there! He’s hiding! Your team-mates need to know that you are always available!’ he’ll shout, pointing a finger at the culprit. ‘Before passing the ball, you need to know where you’re passing it to; if you don’t know, it’s better to keep it; give it to your goalie, but don’t give it to your opponent

Ingla and Txiki set out a plan for the rest of the season which saw them working and consulting simultaneously with both Rijkaard and Pep, talking about players, injuries and recoveries and principally how to shake up the working model of the club. The primary goal was to professionalise the first team.

Nobody has paid any attention to the fundamental fact that Guardiola is a bricklayer’s son. For Pep, his father, Valentí, is an example of integrity and hard work.

Guardiola remained a lanky teenager with little muscle mass, the opposite of the ideal footballer’s stature. But great art is always born of frustration and since he lacked the pace and strength to overcome the opposition, he substituted physical power with the power of the mind: instinctively developing a sense of spatial awareness that was second to none. He was capable of leaving behind three players with one pass, widening or narrowing the field at will, so that the ball always travelled more than the player. Usually when children start to play football, they want to learn to dribble. Guardiola didn’t: he learnt how to pass the ball.

I always try and give the players the security of knowing what they’ll encounter. This increases the possibility of doing things well.

That work ethic, instilled in him by his parents, is very much part of the Catalan character: saving the soul through industry, effort, honest labour and giving your all to the job.

anxiety to become good enough for Johan Cruyff to notice us cannot be put into words. Without that desire, none of us would be who we are today.

a passer of the ball positioned in front of the defence who could provide the platform from which every Barcelona attack would begin.

He also taught his players how to mark an opponent, teaching them to focus on a rival’s weaknesses – while accentuating what you were good at, to fight the battles you could win, in other words. It was a revelation for Pep, who lacked the physique to beat a tall, powerful, central midfielder in the air – so he learnt, under Cruyff, to avoid jumping with his rival, but to wait instead. Cruyff ’s theory was: ‘Why fight? Keep your distance, anticipate where he’ll head the ball and wait for the bounce. You’ll be in control while he’s jumping around.

He was a bit like me. You must have a lot of technique, move the ball quickly, avoid a collision – and to avoid it you must have good vision.

his leadership skills must not be forgotten either; as it soon became evident in his playing career; he didn’t just pass the ball to his team-mates, he talked to them constantly. ‘Keep it simple, Michael!’ shouted a twenty-year-old Guardiola on one occasion to Laudrup, the international superstar. The Danish player had tried to dribble past three players too close to the half-way line, where losing the ball would have been dangerous. ‘That was simple,’ Michael replied with a wink. But he knew the kid was right.

Before heading out on to the pitch, Johan Cruyff gave his players a simple instruction: ‘Go out there and enjoy yourselves.’ It was a statement that embodies an entire footballing philosophy and was central to Cruyff ’s principles; yet for others, its simplicity, ahead of such a key game, might be considered an insult to the coaching profession.

I saw Guardiola as a mystical type of person. The way he dressed – always in black – he was sometimes very quiet, constantly analysing things, thinking things over: why we won, why we lost, why he’d lost the ball. Sometimes his obsessiveness was excessive.

touching the ball a thousand times a match and never for more than a second each time,

My role was to move the ball around the pitch for my team-mates to finish off the move,’ he says. The

some key principles were quickly instilled in him: ‘Don’t stamp on anybody but don’t let anybody stamp on you; keep your head high; two-touch football; keep the ball on the ground.

He continually learnt from everything he saw around him, from other teams, from coaches, from older team-mates. On one occasion, he asked a couple of his colleagues to repeat a free-kick routine he had seen the B side perform the previous weekend. The move led to a goal and their coach asked, ‘Whose idea was that? And where did you pick that up?’ ‘From the grown-up players,’ responded a fifteen-year-old Pep Guardiola.

The coach sat down with president Laporta, Beguiristain and Estiarte in the suite of the hotel in which the team were staying in the United States for a pre-season tour. He explained that if the club could ignore the ruling and let Messi go to the Olympics, the long-term gain outweighed the short-term loss: it would allow him to get the best out of Messi.

With Pep’s help and his own intuition, Messi started playing football with an accordion-like movement: the further the ball was away from him, the more distance he would put between himself and the ball. The closer it was to him, the closer he would move to get involved.

I know that we have to start work quickly and intensively, whoever wants to be with us from the start will be welcomed. And the rest, we will win them over in the future.

In life there are two ways of telling people what to do: either give them orders or set an example and encourage them to follow it. Pep is very much of the latter school of thought.

For Guardiola, tactical concepts are taken in if the players have the right attitude and understand what they are doing.

Johan, who imposed the criteria for quick movements of the ball, the obligation to open up the field in order to find space. To fill the centre of the pitch in order to play having numerical superiority, and, I don’t know, introduce a lot more things so that everybody knew how Barça played and, above all, so it would be known how to do it in the future.

within that meticulous preparation there co-existed a high degree of expression, always bearing in mind that this is football, that players must think in tenths of a second and that there should be some freedom to show on the pitch, to do things that weren’t planned off it.

Little by little, the plan changed because one of the pillars of Pep’s methods is based on the evolution of the process. Guardiola has never believed in absolute truths, which gives him flexibility when it comes to interpreting life.

Abidal explains that before he arrived at Barcelona, every time he was called into action on the pitch, as a defender he’d been taught to focus on winning the ball. As soon as he arrived at Barcelona, he was taught to think one step ahead about what he could do with it once he’d got hold of it.

the ball goes to the other central defender and this one makes a vertical pass – not to the midfielders, who have their back turned to the ball, but to those moving between lines, Andrés Iniesta or Lionel Messi, or even directly to the striker. Then they play the second ball with short lay-offs, either to the wingers who have cut inside or the midfielders, who now have the game in front of them.

On the field of play, in the heat of the action, it enabled Guardiola’s Barcelona to switch formations or positions as many as five or six times in the same game. When players understand why, it is easy to react to what is being shouted from the touchline in the heat of battle. However, Guardiola also drilled patience into his sides, because, despite that ability to get his team to react, he and his players also had enough faith in their strategy to know when to avoid a knee-jerk reaction to a tough passage of play or an opposition goal.

It is important in football, as in any walk of life, to appear calm in times of crisis. To hide weaknesses. Pep told them with conviction that they were on the right path.

From his very first day in the job as coach, Pep went out of his way to appeal to the feelings of his players: demanding solidarity and effort from everyone. Those values represent a reflection of himself. He knew that in order to lead the group he must be consistent, manage the little details and big egos – and convince everyone, not only to do as he asked, but to believe in what he was asking them to do.

he’ll tell you the road to success in that particular match. He will make you see it, visualise it.

The pre-match talks are in the hotel if it is an away game, or, if it is a home game, in the Pictures room. First of all he shows footage of the opponents, explaining their strong points and how we can hurt them. The strategy is explained, both ours and the opponents’.

Believe, believe with all of your hearts that we can score, because then we will definitely score.’ There was also the tactical instruction: they should play fast balls down the wings, because Chelsea allowed them to start moves from the back and neither Anelka nor Malouda closed down that area particularly well.

defensively, the young Busquets, promoted from the B team, had been the best player on the field. He had recovered 10 balls. And 48 out of his 50 passes had reached their intended target.

When Pep signed a marketing agreement with Sabadell Bank, committing to a number of lectures and personal interviews as part of the deal – while still refusing to give one-to-one interviews to the media – he was initially labelled a money-grabber by some of his critics. However, he was soon vindicated when it emerged that he had shared out all the money he received from the bank between his staff as a way of acknowledging their dedication to a project in which each person had done his bit. Meanwhile, the bank was delighted with an upturn in their number of clients, a 48 per cent increase in Catalonia and 65 per cent in Madrid.

Ronaldo also dropped deep to receive the ball, turn round and run towards goal – and he always found space as the centre backs didn’t follow him closely.

Guardiola told me that if there is a hint of disharmony within the group he removes it, as he did with Eto’o and Ibrahimović, who wanted to be stars in a team where no one feels a star.

Superiority in midfield, as predicted by Pep, was the key to the game.

We have to transmit trust and security in all the decisions we make. ‘That trust, security and sincerity are the fundamental pillars for a good coach. The players have to believe in the manager’s message. He must always speak to the player fearlessly, sincerely and tell him what he thinks. Without deceiving him.

The secret is in the details and in observing a lot. You have to pay a great deal of attention, constantly, to what happens every day, more so than to the weekend’s game: we are always aware of every aspect, of a player’s moods, their expressions, of thousands of almost unfathomable things that could make a difference. Observation is key.

The key is to have a strong dressing room, knowing that we are stronger together than one person on his own.

there are few pure footballing training sessions and there is a lot of co-existence and it isn’t easy. But the lucky thing in this team is having found people with important human values.

If each person does their job, and they know what it is because I make sure they know, then we are a team that is difficult to beat.

all of them, no matter how many times they won, carried around one commandment: ‘I am in a huge club even in the hard times. I try not to betray the club’s principles nor the idea of team play nor the legacy of my predecessors.