Barcelona was in search of a new manager in the summer of 2008 after a succession of failures. There were two candidates: Jose Mourinho, the brightest star at the time, and Pep Guardiola, who had no experience as a manager in either La Liga or European competitions. Although a significant part of the board voted in favor of Mourinho, the team was ultimately entrusted to Guardiola. So what happened behind the scenes of this result? Here is the answer…
When the calendars showed 2008, Barcelona under Frank Rijkaard was going through hard times. The team, which had gone without a trophy for the second season in a row and was certain to finish third in La Liga, was playing away to Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium.
Barcelona players had to congratulate their arch-rivals on the pitch, as the Madrid team had already secured the title days before. Moreover, the match ended with a clear 4-1 victory for Real Madrid. As if that wasn’t enough, the Madrid stands erupted with chants of “Laporta, please don’t go!” in reference to Barcelona’s president Juan Laporta, who was under pressure to resign.
The team’s problems were not limited to these defeats. Ronaldinho, the leader of the locker room, was often reported in the press as spending more time in nightclubs than on the training grounds. The rumors that the Brazilian footballer, who was gaining weight, slept until the evening some days in order to erase the traces of his nightlife were not far from the headlines, while team discipline was almost zero. On the other hand, all the questions asked to Rijkaard at press conferences included the word “resign”.
While the echoes of the Real Madrid fans’ slogan “Please don’t go” continue, President Laporta made an important statement. Not even 24 hours after the final whistle of the match in Madrid, it was announced that Rijkaard was dismissed.
So who would replace the Dutch manager?
EXPERIENCED STAR OR YOUNG TALENT?
The first name that came to mind was Jose Mourinho, the highest paid manager of the era. Mourinho had worked as assistant to Bobby Robson and Louis van Gaal at Barcelona in the past and had a friendly relationship with the club.
What’s more, his CV was better than any other manager coaching teams in Europe at the time. Mourinho had won the UEFA Cup and Champions League titles at Porto, and was on an unprecedented winning streak in the Premier League with Chelsea.
But instead of making an offer for this star, Barcelona did the unthinkable. They put Pep Guardiola, the inexperienced coach of their B team, in charge of their A team.
Guardiola had only recently become manager. His team was struggling in Spain’s fourth tier and the Catalan regional league. So no one knew how he would perform in La Liga.
Therefore, the Barcelona management’s choice of Guardiola over Mourinho caused great controversy. What was behind this football-changing decision?
THE DECISION HAS ITS ROOTS IN THE 70S
BBC Sport’s recently aired documentary ‘Pep Guardiola: Chasing Perfection’ emphasizes that the answer to this question lies much further back in the 1970s. The documentary underlines that in order to understand Pep, one must first understand Johan Cruyff.
Cruyff is a sportsman whose name is synonymous with Barcelona. The Dutch legend, who led Barcelona to the 1974 La Liga and 1978 Copa del Rey (King’s Cup) titles during his playing days, was the head coach of the team between 1988 and 1996. During this period, Barcelona won the league title four years in a row as well as the European Cup.
Cruyff had an incredible influence on Guardiola’s career. In 1990, at the age of 19, Cruyff took Guardiola off the bench and made him part of a team full of international stars like Michael Laudrup and Ronald Koeman.
‘SENY’ AND ‘RAUXA’
Journalist Lu Martin, the ghostwriter of Guardiola’s 2001 book ‘La Meva Gent, El Meu Futbol’ (My People, My Football), is one of the people who knows Guardiola best. “In Catalan we use the words ‘seny’ and ‘rauxa’,” Martin told BBC Sport. For example, [Barcelona’s legendary captain Carles] Puyol has ‘rauxa’, meaning impulse,” Martin told BBC Sport:
“The ‘seny’ of Barcelona, the brain, was Pep. Pep gave the team meaning because he understood exactly what Johan wanted from him. Johan had two sons. Jordi was his flesh and blood son and Pep was his son in the world of sport.”
Jordi Cruyff had similar things to say about the close relationship between his father and Guardiola.
“I know that Pep and my father were in close contact at the time. I think my father had an instinct that allowed him to feel who would be a good manager,” Jordi said, expressing his father’s confidence in Guardiola, who took over as manager after ending an unimpressive playing career with Brescia, Roma, Al-Ahli and Dorados in 2006.
HAS HE ALWAYS PLAYED FOR BIG TEAMS?
One of the most common criticisms of Guardiola is that he has always coached big budget teams with star players like Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City. In other words, it is argued that Guardiola would not have been as successful in a more modest team.
However, Barcelona’s performance in the B team belies these criticisms.
Guardiola, who was 37 at the time, said in his first press conference after taking over the team, “Yes, I was a player, but as a manager I am starting from scratch.” At the time, Guardiola’s acceptance of this position was even surprising. Because everyone believed that he would be heading the academy, a much more prestigious position.
On the other hand, just like Guardiola, the Barcelona B team was starting from scratch. After failing to win in the last 10 games of the previous season, the team was relegated.
HE ALSO CONSIDERED CHANGING THE SYSTEM, BUT…
Guardiola’s first game in charge was a friendly against Banyoles. The unevenness of the small artificial turf pitch was a sign that Guardiola was in for a tough time.
Barcelona B has one win in the first three games.
After a 2-0 defeat to Manresa, who will be relegated at the end of the season, Guardiola began to question his system of possession-based play. Could it be that this system wasn’t working in the small spaces of the fourth tier?
On the way to Wednesday’s training session, Guardiola had made his decision. This is how he would describe those days years later:
“I thought we need to change the system because the pitches are too small. For two days I turned it over and over in my head, but at that moment I made up my mind: If I could win and play good football on a small pitch, I could do the same thing at a higher level on better pitches with better players. I went to training and I said ‘I believe in this’. I wasn’t convinced by the alternatives, the changes we could make. So I couldn’t change. It was an important moment because I was new, inexperienced. I was 37 years old and I had never coached big players. I had to prove myself.”
TORRENT: “PEP IS LIKE A SPONGE”
One person Guardiola didn’t have to prove himself to was Domenec Torrent. Torrent, who also coached Galatasaray in the 2021-22 season, was then coaching another Spanish fourth-tier side, Girona. When Guardiola knocked on his door, having admired his play, Torrent eagerly accepted the opportunity to help the young manager.
Torrent, who spent 11 years as Guardiola’s assistant before leaving in 2018 to take charge of New York City FC, told BBC Sport: “I’ve always said that Pep is a very seductive person. He is someone who can convince the players during his daily work. He is like a sponge. He knows everything and everyone immediately. He transformed Barcelona B into a very compact team that plays good football. He opened his ideas to players who had never heard of such things. It’s true that we have built a very solid team.”
Sergio Busquets, Pedro and Thiago Alcantara were the rookies of that team. Guardiola was the uncompromising, relentless, ruthless driving force at the center of everything.
SLEEPING HOURS, FINES
There was a lot of professionalism in the team. Matches of rival teams were watched and videos were analyzed. This was an unprecedented level of detail for a fourth-tier team at that time. Athletes had to go to sleep at 23.00. Those who broke the rules were fined.
Marc Valiente, captain of Barcelona B at the time, said: “Pep had very clear boundaries. He never allowed anyone to do anything he deemed inappropriate. He had laws. You had to obey those laws and I think that was a reasonable expectation.”
Txiki Begiristain, then Barcelona’s sporting director and now Manchester City’s sporting director, said Guardiola was a perfectionist: “He was unbelievable. Pep acted like he was coaching Barcelona’s first team: The way he took care of the players, the food, the chefs, the recording of the matches. It was really unbelievable. He was thinking ‘one day I will be in charge of the first team, this is how I want to work’. And he was doing it in a fourth-tier team.”
“HE DIDN’T COME TO WATCH SOCCER, HE CAME TO WATCH PEP”
After a not-so-bright start, Barcelona B’s performance under Guardiola improved day by day. So much so that at the end of the season the team was promoted to the top league. This success also pleased the Barcelona managers. Among those who were pleased, one name stood out in particular.
“I remember that Johan Cruyff often came with his wife to Barça B. The strange thing was that instead of watching the game, he watched Pep. He was looking at how he managed the team, his behavior, his gestures, his body language. I told this to Pep and said, ‘Johan has been coming here to watch you for the last two years’. When Pep took over the A team, all this made sense. Johan wasn’t coming to watch football, he was coming to watch Pep.”
However, this success has come at a big(!) price for Guardiola. When he took charge of Barcelona B, Guardiola promised to buy the team dinner if they won three games in a row. The team won three games in a row five times during the season, often at Guardiola’s expense.
TEAM B WIPES TEAM A’S STARS OFF THE FIELD
The most important match they played was a friendly against a disorganized A team under Rijkaard, watched by a handful of fans.
Former Barcelona striker Eidur Gudjohnsen summed up the atmosphere in the match: “I don’t remember running and chasing the ball that much”.
Cruyff’s weekly reports, coupled with the success of the B team in this match, would convince the Barcelona board that Pep was the right man for the A team.
Gudjohnsen said, “They had their own style of play. I’m sure some of the first team players didn’t take this game as seriously as they should have. But they still said, ‘Wow, how are they playing? Why is there always a man wide open?’ We had a lot of trouble pressing.”
For the first team, the match was an embarrassment. Ronaldinho was substituted in the 10th minute and Deco struggled to stand up to the opposition.
“WE CAN’T CHOOSE MOURINHO, HE DOESN’T FIT OUR STYLE”
But Pep’s pressure was also weighing heavily on the Barcelona board. The B team’s promotion to a higher league, the ridiculous display in the friendly and Rijkaard’s reluctance to discipline his wayward pupils demanded a change at the top.
There were two candidates: Jose Mourinho, the number one in Europe, the conqueror of trophies, the master of discipline, and Pep Guardiola, the poetic choice, the maniac of possession.
Xavier Sala-i-Martin, who served as Barcelona’s treasurer and board member between 2004 and 2010, said in the documentary ‘Pep Guardiola: Chasing Perfection’ documentary:
“Everyone knows there is such a problem. Ronaldinho plays the bongos every night until 2:00 in the morning. How do you stop that? We need a commander. Who is the best general in the world? Jose Mourinho, right? In the context of the problems we have, the solution seems obvious. But unfortunately, Mourinho doesn’t fit Barcelona’s DNA. There are many aspects of Barcelona’s DNA. One of them is the way we play. We inherited that from Johan Cruyff. We win when we play Dutch-style football. Cruyff’s best student is Pep. But Mourinho also won the Champions League. There were big discussions. But Juan Laporta said: ‘We can’t choose Mourinho, his game doesn’t fit our style. He’s a defensive manager who scores goals on the counter-attack. That’s not how we play.’ What’s more, he’s not a real gentleman. The way he tries to manipulate doesn’t suit Barcelona’s attitude on the pitch.”
“If Johan says ‘Yes’, it is yes”
Despite all this, there was still no clear decision. Sala-i-Martin stated that the intervention of one person was effective at this point and continued as follows: “Most of the board members were in favor of Mourinho. Laporta consulted Johan and asked, ‘Do you think Pep is ready? Johan said ‘Yes’. If Johan says yes, it’s yes.”
In the end, Barcelona’s directors preferred an unproven manager of the B team to a famous coach. And football changed irreversibly.
Based on the BBC news article titled “Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho and the game that changed everything“.
