How Bielsa discovered Pep’s taste for ‘BLOOD’
ADVICE FROM ‘EL LOCO’ HELPED GUARDIOLA ON PATH TO GREATNESS
PEP GUARDIOLA has always looked up to Marcelo Bielsa as he loves his style of football.
He was stunned when Bielsa presented him with his tactical analysis of Barcelona after they beat the Argentinian’s Athletic Bilbao in the 2012 Copa del Rey final, admitting: “You know more about Barca than me!”
The Manchester City boss sought out Bielsa at his home in Argentina in 2006 before he began his own stellar coaching career.
In October 2006 Guardiola travelled to Maximo Paz, about
an hour’s drive from Buenos Aires searching for Bielsa. The Catalan was in a lull in his career after he finished playing for Barcelona in 2001, aged 30.
There had been two frustrating seasons in Italy, at
Brescia and Roma, and a lucrative one in Qatar.
He found himself in the north-west of Mexico, playing for newly-promoted Dorados de Sinaloa in the city of Culiacan on the Pan-American Highway.
It was obvious Guardiola would want to meet Bielsa. When he and Gabriel Batistuta were team-mates in Rome, the Argentina striker told him: “If you want to be a coach, you have to get together with this man.”
So on October 10, 2006, Guardiola, accompanied by the Spanish film director and novelist David Trueba, met Bielsa at a barbecue.
The first hour was taken up with Bielsa and Guardiola questioning Trueba about the cinema. They only stopped when Trueba said: “You haven’t come all this way to talk about films, have you?”
The chat switched to football. “They started and they could not stop,” Trueba recalled frantic conversations about teams, tactical planning, anecdotes about the game.
Bielsa’s computer was used to check facts and settle arguments. Then Bielsa positioned Trueba between two chairs to act out a move in a game.
They later turned to the practicalities of management such as dealing with the press.
Bielsa explained he never gave exclusive interviews: “Why am I going to give an interview to a journalist at a powerful paper and deny one to a little reporter from the provinces?”
When he took charge at Barcelona two years later, Guardiola followed the same policy.
It was the same in Munich and now at Manchester City. He does not grant one-on-one interviews, but talks to the media only via press conferences, where anyone can ask a question.
Then Bielsa turned to Guardiola: “Why do you, who knows about all the garbage in football, the dishonesty of people in the game, want to return to that environment and manage? Do you like blood so much?’
“Guardiola replied: “I need blood.”