“HE’S OFTEN A SARCASTIC JOKER”
Meet Marti Perarnau, the author who got up close and personal with Pep at Bayern
You’ve spent more time with Guardiola than anyone outside his closest circle. What’s he like? There’s very little that is special about him. He’s just very normal and unassuming. As a coach, he’s very famous, and some of what you see publically is to protect himself and his family. The perception is that because he’s such a great coach, there must be something different to him, but that’s not really the case. He’s very humble and always deals with problems personally. The special quality he has is in how he interprets football – he understands it like no one else.
Does he ever stop thinking about the sport? He does, but the majority of his day-to-day life is dedicated to football. He’s obsessive in the sense that he constantly applies theories and things he reads to football in order to become better. His mentality is to learn. He likes knowing new things. It’s why he went from Barcelona to New York, to Munich and next, to England. He jokes about only wanting to see the restaurants, but it is all to learn. He meets new people, learns about new cultures and how to then incorporate those cultures into his coaching. That is why he went to the concentration camp at Dachau. It will be the same case in England, too. He’s a better coach now than before he went to work in Germany because of it.
How does he deal with defeats? They affect him more than other coaches, because he so rarely loses matches. He blamed himself for the Champions League semi-final defeat to Real Madrid in 2014. He really hurt – it took him days to get over it. He’s always with his coaches analysing the ‘why?’. He tries not to get too carried away with victories, nor too down after tough defeats. There’s no depression there.
What is his sense of humour like? Does he have one? He’s a real joker with his players. At the beginning they didn’t understand his ways at Bayern. He can be quite sarcastic and they thought he was being serious. He’s always tapping players on the arse, or giving them a playful slap around the head. It shocked them a bit. Pep’s really tactile, with hugs, even kisses. He is very Latin in that sense.
Will the press be a problem? He doesn’t give one-on-one interviews, apart from obligatory ones for rights holders, but you can ask him anything at a press conference. Sections of the German press didn’t warm to him, but that’s life. You’ve got four chances to speak to him – before and after matches, assuming there are two per week – and he will talk without limits. He loves talking about football, his philosophy and his team.
How was your year living so close to him? I didn’t know him before Munich. It was amazing to be so close to such a brilliant coach teaching a team a totally new way. They’re masters at it now. I had doubts at the beginning, but Lahm, Robben and Ribery want to learn. Trying to figure out what Pep is trying to do wasn’t easy for them – imagine what it was like for me!