Driven by fear of the sack
saying: “He is a coach who likes to be on the attack permanently.
“Last season, against Aston Villa, we were ahead at halftime but we were not playing well and when we got to the dressing room he told us that it was useless training all week on attacking if we were going to defend as soon as we got in front.
“I love playing this way because it is what I learnt at Barcelona. He is the ideal coach for me.
“He tells me to enjoy myself by always looking to go forward. With (former City manager Roberto) Mancini that was more difficult.”
The book tracks Pellegrini through almost three decades of management, with players from one former club, San Lorenzo, recalling how one year he bought an apartment in Buenos Aires and raffled it in the dressing room. At Villarreal he raffled a car.
Current Manchester City fullback Zabaleta praised Pellegrini’s manmanagement, recounting the story of how he was dropped last season after he became a father for the first time.
“It had been weeks since I last slept well. I was like the walking dead in training. Pellegrini told me that being a father was the best thing that was going to happen to me in my life and he understood because the same thing had happened to him as a player. But that he was going to take me out of the team because I didn’t look 100%. What could I say? I had been the first one to notice!”
Pellegrini names three Manchester City players as being among the top six talents he has coached, putting Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Toure alongside Raul, Juan Roman Riquelme and Cristiano Ronaldo.
And he pays tribute to Ronaldo’s extreme professionalism, telling the story of how he once fined him for arriving late for a training session at Real Madrid that had been changed from 7pm to 6pm.
A club official had been given the job of calling all the players but he could not find Ronaldo. It was left to Pepe to inform his teammate but he forgot.
“We had a system of fines for those who arrived late,” he recalls.
“Ronaldo used to arrive an hour before training and he did so on this day to find we were starting the session. I fined him and he went crazy, but not because of the fine – because he couldn’t bear the idea that he had been late. It just never entered into his mind set. Alongside Raul, he is one of the most professional players I have ever coached.”
The book also sheds light on the more private side of Pellegrini and portrays a compulsive learner, forever striving to improve himself and even taking voice lessons while at Villarreal.
“I had private lessons with a singing teacher,” he tells Sagredo.
“My idea wasn’t to learn to sing, obviously, but I wanted to learn how to look after the voice and project it better.”
When asked by the author if he was aware of any other coach in the world who does that, Pellegrini replies: “I’ve no idea, but for me it was nothing out of the ordinary. It’s just a case of looking for different tools to make me better prepared to do my job. I wasn’t using my voice properly, so I looked for someone who could help me.” – The Independent