Without a doubt, Johan Cruyff is one of Josep Guardiola’s sporting fathers (Santpedor, 1971). On the 50th anniversary of the Dutchman’s commitment to Barça, the Manchester City manager presents his memories and anecdotes about the figure of the leader of the dream team, who signed as a Blaugrana player on August 13, 1973 and who landed in Barcelona on August 23, 1973.
What is your first memory of Johan Cruyff?
Well, probably when he came with Ajax to a Gamper (in the summer of 1985, Guardiola was 15 years old, and he was at the Masia), coming out of what were the Camp Nou tunnels, with a trousers and a T-shirt and all the people applauding, and I remember that at the press conference someone said to him “wow, what a good left back”, and he replied: “He’s extreme. But I have converted him to a left back, because the wingers playing on the sides are the best”.
So your first memory is already tactical…
Yes, it’s true!
They didn’t tell you about it at home…
It’s just that we didn’t go down to see Barça. My father was not a member. They couldn’t afford it, and we only went down once a year, when some friends left us their membership cards…
And then you realize the importance of the character?
don’t think When Cruyff returns and signs for Barça as a coach (season 88-89), then I do learn that he had won three European Cups, of what he had done with Ajax, of his conflicts, because his life went to be an ongoing conflict, but I know this from literature, not from having experienced it. Those of us from La Masia studied at the Maternity Institute, in Les Corts, one minute from the pitch where Barça trained. And we would skip classes at ten or eleven in the morning to see them, climbing the fence that separated the Masia compound from the training camp. And then you realized that he was still playing very well. He had retired not long ago (the summer of ’84) and he was still the best of them all. Serna threw wafers at him and didn’t knock him down…
So your first time talking there?
It was a training session in the evening, at the stadium, when I was at the Masia. We went up there with Lluís Carreras and someone else…
And what did you say to him?
With that assurance he had: “Hello, how are you, welcome…”. He walked as if saying “I am God”… I have never met another person with this aura that he gave off, of total charisma…
In his first season as Barça coach, he won the Recopa, in his second, the Copa del Rey, and in his third, the League. You join then, to replace Milla, in fact.…
Yes, I go in to play a game when Milla doesn’t renew. things of destiny But before that I go up to train with them one day, because he asked who the good ones were in the lower categories, and Charly (Rexach) and someone else let him know…
Did you advance anything about the position of 4? In the first two years, the players were still digesting the tactical innovations: advanced goalkeeper, wingers stuck on the touchline…
Only three at the back… Yes, but in the squad, with Olmo, with Quique Costas, they already made us play in this way and in the position you should play. If you now say you play inside or wing, then, just with the number, you already knew exactly your roles and what you played. If someone told you “I play as a six” in youth, you already understood that he played behind the striker, that he had to reach the area…
And before?
Oh no, before that I had no positional concept, no game concept. He played because he played well. The great value that Johan brought is that if the first team played like that, the whole base had to play like that. This is the great legacy…
That there is an order…
That there is a way to play, from below, like the first team plays. That the pass still hasn’t arrived? Okay, but there is a starting point, which is the same for everyone, and the nuance is applied by each coach…
There is a script and then you improvise…
Exactly! The script was given to us. Because before that there was no script. It was a bit… Do you play there in the middle? Okay, I play there in the middle!
He always said that even if you weren’t physically strong, positionally you were. But also that the innovation of the dreamteam, more than that of the 4, was rather in the figure of the 6, that of Bakero, who played with his back to the opposite goal, which allowed the rest to play in front and, for much, much faster. Cruyff thought a lot about midfield, when he wasn’t exactly a midfielder, but rather a false 9. You, on the other hand, were, and your teams have most likely defined from your position as a player…
If I hadn’t been a center half, I probably wouldn’t have been the coach I am. The look I have now, as a coach, comes from the one I had as a player. There is a point where I am still a gamer. Especially in the offensive process of the game, I am very much a center half. To play well, I depended a lot on what the people behind me were doing. I’ve always thought that the people up top depend a lot on Bakero in turn, and he depends a lot on those behind him, and the one in the center and the one behind him and those at the back depend a lot on the goalkeeper. This process, in which our teams have been strong, of moving forward with the ball, all together and depending on what the other does and what you do, comes from the time when I was playing, when I learned it all. To be there, to see that if a center did a certain action with the ball, that could make me play well, and if I didn’t do it, I played badly. Then I understood how this triangle formed by the centrals and the mid-centre was supposed to work, and how the next process was supposed to work, and the next…
And did Johan correct you a lot? Did it make you notice many things?
Yes. In basketball, they say that the American is very physical, but that in Europe the technical and tactical foundations are better. Johan gave us technical and tactical basics. The position of the body… Those things that you say “oh, that’s elementary, but no one had told me that! Doing it this way, it’s that simple…! It’s just that I have more time, I can play better and reach everywhere”, such elementary things that, over time, when you’ve been with other coaches, or when you’re there now, as a coach, and someone tells you “They hadn’t told me that”… Oh, but if it’s something…
Be clear, how you outline the body, when you close it, when you open it…
Or how you pass the ball, depending on the speed, he was a master at that…
Beyond proposals and tactical solutions?
Johan wasn’t the best at that, was he? As a coach, what he taught me best was not that, but to manage the dressing room and each one depending on where you come from, the future, what the media say, the previous game, the next one…
The story of each character according to the context…
Blow, dwarf! In this, it was… The animal, what does it call me? He was three steps ahead. I was praised in the newspapers for four days and then I was devastated. He would kill me and then praise me. How to mislead the environment through the referees, through the president… All this management of… How did he know what you were thinking about what happened to you in your private life and on the field and in the media to get you a performance on next match In this he was unique. In tactics he was good. It would just be missing. But the best thing about him was the psychology of how, to each one, to tell him what suited him based on what we have lived, what we are living, what we might live, individually, collectively…
With players, or also with press and directives?
With all. What happens is that there did come a time, at the end, when his mental occupation in the environment took him too much to…
Forget the team…
In terms of strength, the coach only has one: his players, the team. And there was a time when his war with…
With the directive he was able to…
Yes Yes Yes.
So then, when he made you a coach, you had to consult him about things like that, right?
The season I arrived at B, there was the subsidiary, and the amateur disappeared, and I was left with 35 or 40 players… I interviewed all of them, and I explained conversations with some of them, they had commitments with brands, they had training ended early, and he said to me: “¡A la calle! Not even a minute! No pueden hacer un pulso con the coach of the Barça subsidiary!” I felt that he loved being aware of these things, and I went there because of how comfortable he made me feel, and I left his house thinking “I wish he felt the gratitude I have for him”. But, more than tactics, it was a matter of how you manage this, the physio, “this thing happened to me”, how you manage the other, with the doctor… Clearly, there was no press at the subsidiary yet… In addition, I know he was vital for Jan (Laporta) and Txiki (Begiristain) to trust me for the first team. When Jan must have thought of me as a relief, he came more often than usual to the Miniestadi. And Dome (Domènec Torrent), who was my second coach and sat in the stands, above Johan, explained to me that during the match he only looked at me. Depending on what happened in the game, how I reacted to a good or bad action, whether I interpreted what was happening correctly, and whether or not my correction was appropriate… And you can see that later, because I They said it, he went to Jan and told him: “Pep is ready to train the first team”.
How strong!
Man, he made me debut as a player and then pampered me as a coach. You will explain to me! Why not… These are those things of destiny. We were talking about it the other day during Unzue’s son’s wedding: if Milla hadn’t left, maybe my career wouldn’t have been what it has been…
Very beast!
Therefore, in life, when you are told “oh, Pep, how good you are…!”, I shrug my shoulders… Imagine Milla saying “I’m staying”. Johan wanted Luis to stay. But this fact is what makes you play for Barça. And I, when I was 16 or 17 years old, which is that delicate stage when everything is decided… Venables leaves and Johan enters! Imagine if instead of Johan he enters…
Another English school coach!
Someone who didn’t appreciate my type of player… I would never have played for Barça. Impossible! Nano, that life is a fucking coin in the air…
What qualities of Johan have you missed in life?
I make it easy for you. Today, everything is artificial intelligence and big data and he was all that… (Pep rubs his thumbs on the tips of his fingers as if weighing something pointing at the heart or the nose) Instinct! Probably today Johan would also have used the data and, together with his clinical eye or sixth sense… I don’t want to take credit for the data. But nowadays I still use a lot of smell and observation. And in that, he was a beast. Because in the end, when at sixteen you are the best in the world, you win three European Cups, you change the history of a Dutch team, you come to Barça as a player and change it as a coach, you excel in many aspects, he had something very different… I am convinced that there are coaches better prepared than Johan, today and then, in matters of tactics, different systems… But then there is this other thing, how you convey it, the charisma, the peppers of facing different establishments, leading players of great weight, which meant coming here with Quinta del Buitre, who dominated Spanish football, and saying that we are better and more handsome, in the way that he arrived, in the ‘previous era, with the hair of a rock star…
Only with this desymbol can one be born. You don’t learn…
Like the one who tells you “what nonsense he said!” Yes, silly, but Johan said it! There, getting out of the car, with his glasses… And everyone: “Hostia!”
Charisma like a flame that illuminates and warms everything and sometimes transforms it. In the eighties, “today we will suffer” was heard before every game. With him, that changes, little by little. It instills in the fans a new self-confidence, and consolidates what we know today as the Barça style, of which you are one of the main representatives and, surely, the one who took it to the top. What is the Barça style, if there is one?
I am culer and I am also of the “today we will suffer”. But like everything, the mentality is also educated. And that’s what made Johan change a lot for us. Until next Saturday I can be thinking that we will win. These six days you live better. And this way of dealing with things is what adults have. They never think they will lose. It’s what Madrid has, when you go there, with all their European Cups and they lose two to zero. “It’s the same, we’re going to go back, we’re going to put three”… This mentality moves worlds. I now go to the games thinking that I will win. This season I thought: “I win the Champions League”. “What if I lose? Okay, but what if I win?” This first part is vital, because it makes you a great team. And then, the fundamental thing, the nuances, the Barça DNA and all that, I would define it in the fact that it is understanding, understanding, understanding the game. That I played football before him, that things happened because they happened and, after him, there is a reason why things happen.
Is there a rationality in the game?
There is a rationality behind the game. it is there Yeh! That Messi takes the ball and dribbles four of them and scores a goal, and that is his rationality. But I have to get, as many times as possible, someone to pass the ball to Messi so that he can do this action of dribbling four, and better if he only has to dribble two. And the best part is that you receive it near the area. So this whole process of understanding the game based on what your opponent does to you, based on the qualities of your players, that’s what Johan gave us, which is the beauty of this sport, of football, a game so open, that you can understand what happens depending on what you do and what they do to you, find the missing piece, which is different every time… “No, it’s that Pep, you play differently now…”. “Obviously, because they defend me differently! Because they met me. Because he had Messi before. And not now. And I had Xavi, and now I don’t”.
But you have the grammar to know how to correct things…
Eccoli qua It’s that apart there was a question that was very cool and that I wish I didn’t sound arrogant. It was the sense of belonging to something unique. The thing about saying “I’m number 4, you’re number 6, or 7”, and you went with the Spanish under-18 or under-21 team and they told you: “But what are you talking about?”. At Barça we also lost, eh… But boy, it was different, and that was the wafer. You play the music that comes out of your head… This is important… But are you kidding me? To me, who in England told me “you can’t play football like this here…”. No? Ha, ha! It’s that, in addition, this is what makes ten years later, the best prospects want to come to Barça. They say that Iniesta came because he was a fan of Laudrup, and Laudrup had been a fan of Johan… Do you know why Gündogan comes to Barça? Because when he was little he watched us play and his dream was to come to Barça, and when he has won everything with City, and Barça calls him and he loses his temper he says: “Well I’m going to Barça”. And that, my friend, is… They tell you: “No, it’s that City pays more…”. But we can’t compete with Barça. It has a beauty, and a history and a charisma, and a commitment to this way of doing things that nobody else has, that we, at City, don’t have, and then we have to get people paying a pound more. If not, we can’t compete… Johan fucked us. And it’s not just about raising a glass. In this club, and probably in the time of Luis Suárez, who died recently, and Kubala, it was already like this, and in previous times, there is this beauty. We have already seen the beauty, and when you have seen it, you have tasted it, you want more. With the Txiki we say it. With this so big and so beautiful that we did in Manchester… that he can’t see it. It’s what pisses me off the most…
I would be enjoying it…
We’d have him in Manchester every two or three, we’d fly him over. What a shame for us not to have been able to enjoy it with him. Gone too soon, wafer.
