Johan Cruyff is one of the sporting fathers of Josep Guardiola (Santpedor 1971). 50 years after the signing of the Dutchman by Barça, the Manchester City coach exposes his memories and anecdotes about the figure of the leader of the Dream Team, who signed as a Barcelona player on August 13, 1973 and landed in Barcelona on August 23 from 1973.
What is the first memory you have of Johan Cruyff?
Well, probably when he came to a Gamper with Ajax (in the summer of 1985, Guardiola was 15 years old, and he had been at La Masia for a year), coming out of what were the Camp Nou tunnels, wearing pants and a T-shirt and all the people applauding, and I remember that at the press conference someone told him “oh my gosh, that's a great left-back”, and he replied: “He's extreme. But I have turned him into a left-back, because wingers playing full-backs are the best”.
In other words, your first memory is already tactical...
Yes it's true!
At home they had not spoken to you...
It is that we did not go down to see Barça. My father was not a partner. They couldn't afford it, and we only went down once a year, when some friends left us their membership cards...
And then you already realize the importance of the character?
Don't think. When Cruyff returned and signed for Barça as coach (88-89 season), then he did inform me that he had won three European Cups, about what he had done with Ajax, about his conflicts, because his life was a conflict I continue, but I know it from literature, not from having lived it. Those of us from La Masia studied at the Maternity Institute, in Les Corts, one minute from the field where Barça trained. And we would skip classes at ten or eleven in the morning to see them, lined up at the fence that separated the Masia from the training ground. And there you realized that he still played very well. It hadn't been long since he retired (in the summer of '84) and he was still the best of them all. Serna gave him hosts and did not knock him down...
So, the first time you talk to him...?
It was in a late-night training session, at the stadium, when I was at La Masia. We went up with Lluís Carreras and someone else...
And what did he tell you?
With that security that he had: "Hello, how are you, welcome...". He walked as if saying "I am God"... I have never met any other person with this aura that he gave off, of total charisma...
In his first season as Barça coach, Cruyff won the Cup Winners' Cup, in the second, the Copa del Rey, and in the third, the League. You join then, to replace Milla, in fact...
Yes, I go in to play a game when Milla does not renew. Things of destiny. But before that he already went up to train with them one day, because he asked who were the good ones from the lower categories, and Charly (Rexach) and someone else let him know...
Had anything told you about the position of 4? The first two years, the players were still digesting the tactical innovations: forward goalkeeper, wingers hooked on the cal line...
... Only three behind... Yes, but in the youth academy, with Olmo, with Quique Costas, they already made us play this way and in the position in which you would have to play. If now you say that you play inside or as a winger, then, just with the number, you already knew your functions and what you played. If in the youth team someone told you "game of six", you already understood that he played behind the striker...
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 contributed is that if the first team played like this, the entire 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. The pass hasn't arrived yet? Ok, 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 already improvise...
Exact! The script gave it to us. Because before that there was no script. It was a bit... Do you play there in the middle? Ok, 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 Dream Team, more than in that of the 4, was rather in the figure of the 6, that of Bakero, who played with his back to the opposing goal, allowing the rest to play face to face and, therefore, so 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 been defined based on your position as a player. .
If I hadn't been a center midfielder, I wouldn't have been a coach like the one I am. The look I have now, as a coach, comes from the one I had as a player. There's a point where I'm still a player. Especially in the offensive process of the game, I am a very midfielder. To play well, I depended a lot on what the people behind me were doing. I have always thought that the people above depend a lot on the Bakero on duty, and this one depends a lot on those behind him, and this one on the midfielder and this one on the one behind him and those behind him depend a lot on the goalkeeper. This process, in which our teams have been strong, of advancing with the ball, all together and depending on what the other does and what you do, comes from the time when I played, when I learned everything. To find myself, to see that if a central defender did a certain action with the ball, that could make me play well, and if he didn't do it, I played badly. Then I understood how this triangle formed by the central defenders and the midfielder had to work, and how the following process had to work, and the following...
And Johan corrected you a lot? He made you notice many things?
Yes. They say that American basketball is very physical, but in Europe the technical and tactical fundamentals are better. Johan gave us technical and tactical fundamentals. The position of the body... Things you say: wow, that's elementary, but nobody told me! Doing it this way is so easy! It's that I have more time, I can play better and get everywhere, such elementary things that, over time, when you've gone with other coaches, or when you find yourself now, as a coach, and someone tells you that they hadn't told me. . Oysters, but if it's one thing...
How you outline the body, when you close, when you open...
Or how you pass the ball, depending on the speed. In that he was a master.
Beyond the proposals and tactical solutions?
Johan wasn't the best at it, huh? As a coach, what he taught me the 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 one after...
The story of each character according to the context...
Boa! In that, it was... The animal, how do you tell me that? He was three steps ahead. They praised me in the newspapers for four days and then he beat me up. 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 are thinking about what has happened to you in life and on the field and in the means to get you out performance for the next game. In that he was unique. In tactics he was good. Just missing. But the best thing about him was the psychology of how to tell each one what was convenient for them based on what we have lived, what we are living, what we may live, individually, collectively...
With the players, or also with the press and directives?
With everything. What happens is that there did come a moment, at the end, in which his mental occupation by the environment led him too much to...
Forget the team...
Strength, the coach only has one: his players, the team. And there was a moment that his war with ...
With the directive he could...
Yes Yes Yes.
So when you became a coach you had to consult him about things of this nature, right?
The season that I arrived at B, there was the subsidiary, and the amateur disappeared, and I was left with 35 or 40 players... I met with all of them, and I explained conversations about some of them, they had commitments with brands, they had finished the season early training, and he told me: “To the street! Not a minute! They can't wrestle with the coach of the Barça subsidiary!" He loved to be aware of these things, and I would go because of how comfortable he made me feel, and he would leave his house thinking “I hope he has noticed how grateful I am to him”. However, more than tactics, it was a matter of how you manage that, the physio, "this thing happened to me", how do you manage that other thing, with the doctor... Of course, in the subsidiary I still had no press... Besides I know that he was vital for Jan (Laporta) and Txiki (Begiristain) to trust me for the first team. When Jan should already think of me as a replacement, he came more often than usual to the Miniestadi. And Dome (Domènec Torrent), who was my assistant coach and sat in the stands, above Johan, explained to me that he was only looking at me. Depending on what was happening 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 then, because they told me, He went to Jan and said: "Pep is ready to coach the first team."
How strong!
Man, he made me debut as a player and then he cradled me as a coach. You will explain to me! As for not... They are the things of destiny. The other day we were talking about it at Unzue's son's wedding: if Milla hadn't left, perhaps my career would not have been what it has been...
Very beast!
Therefore, in life, when they tell you, "Oh Pep, how good you are...!", I shrug my shoulders... Imagine that Milla says "I'm staying". Johan wanted Luis to stay. But this fact is what makes you play for Barça. And me, when I was 16 or 17 years old, which is that delicate stage in which everything is decided... Venables leaves and Johan enters! Imagine if instead of Johan he enters...
Another coach from the English school!
Someone who didn't appreciate my type of player... I would never have played for Barça. Impossible! Boy, 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 of that... (Pep brushes the tips of his fingers with his thumbs as if he were weighing something, aiming at his heart or nose) Instinct! Johan probably today would have used the data as well and, along with his clinical eye or sixth sense... I don't want to take away from the data. But today I still use a lot of smell and observation. And in that, he was a beast. Because in the end, when you are the best in the world at 16, you win three European Cups, you change the history of a Dutch team, you come to Barça as a player and you change it as a coach, you stand out in many aspects, it 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 transmit it, the charisma, the arrests of facing different establishments, directing players of great weight, which meant coming here with the Quinta del Buitre, which dominated Spanish football, and saying that we are better and more handsome, in that way that arrived, in the previous era, with the long hair of a soccer star rock...
With this ease one can only be born. you don't learn...
Like the one who tells you "what a nonsense that he said!". Yes, what nonsense, but Johan said it! There, getting out of the car, with his glasses... And everyone "Oysters!".
The charisma like a little flame that illuminates and warms everything and sometimes transforms it. In the 80s, the “avui patirem” was heard before each game. With him, that changes, little by little. He injects the fans with 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 has brought it to its peak. What is the Barça style, if there is one?
I am culé and I am also from the "avui patirem". But, like everything, the mentality is also educated. And that is what made us change a lot Johan. 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 the greats have. They never think they will lose. It is 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 come back, we're going to get three"... This mentality moves worlds. Now I go to the games thinking that I will win. This season I thought “I won the Champions League”. "And if I lose?" Okay, though, 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 that, I would define it in the fact that it is understanding, understanding, understanding the game. That before him he played, that things happened because they happened and, after him, there is a reason why things happen.
Is there a rationale in the game?
There is a rationale behind the game. That Messi catches the ball and dribbles four 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 to four, and better if he only has to dribble to two. And the last straw is that he receives it near the box. So this whole process of understanding the game based on what the opponent does to you, based on the qualities of your players, that's what Johan gave us, which is the beauty of football, such an open game, 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 just that Pep, you now play differently...". Yes of course, because they defend me differently! Because they have known me. Because before I had Messi. And now I don't have it. And I had Xavi, and now I don't have him”.
But you have the grammar and vocabulary to know how to correct things...
Eco li cua It's just that there was a matter that was very cool and I wanted it not to sound arrogant. It was the sense of belonging to a unique thing. Saying "I'm number 4, you're number 6 or 7", and you went with the Spain under-18 or under-21 team and they told you: "But what are you talking about?" At Barça we also lost, huh... But boy, was it different, and that was the host. You play the music that comes out of your nose... It's important, that... However, are you kidding? To me, in England they told me "you can't play football like this here...". No? Ha ha! It is that, in addition, that is what makes that 10 years later, the best promises 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 Gundogan 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 money, 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. He 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 so we have to get people by paying a pound more. If not, we can't compete... Johan screwed us. And it is that we are no longer worth just raising a glass. In this club, and probably in the time of Luis Suárez, who died recently, and of Kubala, it was already like that, and in previous times, there is that thing about beauty. We've already seen beauty, and when you've seen it, you've tasted it, you want more. With Txiki we say it. With that so big and so beautiful that we have done there in Manchester... that he cannot see it. It's what annoys me the most...
I would be enjoying it...
We would have him in Manchester every two by three, we would have him come by plane. What a bitch not to have been able to enjoy it with him. He left too soon, dammit.
