August 2011 and Pep Guardiola was the leader of Barcelona, the team with Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Busquets, Villa, Pedro, Abidal et al, a side regarded already as one of the greatest of all time.
With Guardiola having decided to do no one-on-one interviews, FourFourTwo asked the Spanish based journalist Graham Hunter to produce a portrait of the man reshaping modern football, and his lengthy piece has only grown more fascinating with the years as he has taken his talents first to Bayern Munich and now Manchester City.
Atletico Madrid’s Kiko said of him, “Pep was born telling people what to do. I can imagine him telling the babies on his ward – ‘you in that cot and you in this cot.’”
It didn’t always work, Hunter recalling a quote from Eric Abidal after Guardiola had just taken the reins at Barcelona and given the Frenchman a tongue lashing. Abidal responded with, “There’s no need to speak to me like that. I’m a grown up, a family man, and I don’t need to be talked to like that.” That Abidal was Guardiola’s captain in the Champions League final in 2009 speaks volumes for the fact that the coach was learning just as much as the players.
You can read more about the early works of coach Guardiola here.
