Free Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography by Guillem Balagué

1990, Barcelona were looking for a central midfielder as Luis Milla, who regularly filled
that role, signed for Real Madrid – and Ronald Koeman was injured. Cruyff and his assistant Charly Rexach proposed that the club move for Jan Molby of Liverpool. The president asked for
alternatives and Rexach suggested Guardiola. Cruyff had little recollection of Pep’s disappointing debut and decided to go and see him play.
    Unfortunately, on the day Cruyff dropped in on the B team, Pep spent the entire match on the bench. ‘You tell me he’s good; but he didn’t even play!’ he shouted to
Rexach. ‘I asked who was the best in the youth team. Everyone told me it was Guardiola but he didn’t even warm up. Why not if he is the best?’
    Cruyff was incensed. They told him Pep wasn’t that strong physically and that other, bigger or more dynamic, quicker players were occasionally preferred in his position; to which Cruyff
replied: ‘A good player doesn’t need a strong physique.’
    That argument led to the type of decision that has helped shape the recent history of the club.
    The first day he was summoned again to train with the Dutch coach, Pep arrived early, eager. He opened the door of the changing room where he found a couple of players alongside the boss and
AngelMur – the team physio who was also an inadvertent conductor of the Barcelona principles, history and ideas. Pep kept his head down as he walked in. He stood still
and waited for instructions. ‘This is your locker. Get changed,’ Cruyff told him. Not another word.
    On 16 December 1990, Pep, then nineteen years old, made his competitive La Liga debut against Cádiz at the Camp Nou – in a match for which his mentor, Guillermo Amor, was suspended.
Minutes before kick-off Pep suffered an attack of nerves: sweating profusely, his heart racing at a thousand miles an hour. ‘My palms were sweating and I was really tense.’ Thankfully
it didn’t occur on this occasion, but on other occasions his body had been known to betray him completely and he’d even been known to throw up before a big game. ‘He really lived
it, too much, even,’ remembers Rexach. At nineteen, Pep Guardiola lined up alongside Zubizarretta, Nando, Alexanco, Eusebio, Serna, Bakero, Goiko, Laudrup, Salinas and Txiki Beguiristain
– a collection of names that would soon become synonymous with one of the most glorious periods in the club’s history. The players who would come to be remembered for ever beat
Cádiz 2-0 that day.
    That competitive debut marked some kind of a watershed moment for the club: a before and after in Barcelona’s history. Although Laureano Ruíz was the first coach to take the steps
towards the professionalisation of grass-roots football at Barça, it was Cruyff who really went on to establish the big idea, the philosophy – and no player epitomises that transition
better than Guardiola. Pep was the first of a legacy who has become a quasi-sacred figure at Barça: the number four (derived from the number five in Argentina, the midfielder in front of the
defence who has to defend but also organise the attack). It is true that Luis Milla played that role at the beginning of the Cruyff era, but it was Guardiola who elevated it to another level.
    Pep only played three first-team games in that debut season but the following year Cruyff decided to position the lanky Guardiola at the helm of this historic team and, in doing so, established
a playing model and defined a position. The figure of Barcelona’s number four has evolved at the same rate as global football has edged towards amore physical game, and
La Masía has gone on to produce players like Xavi, Iniesta, Fàbregas, Thiago Alcantara and even Mikel Arteta, proving that Guardiola’s legacy endures.
    ‘Guardiola had to be clever,’ Cruyff says today. ‘He didn’t have any other choice back then. He was a bit like me. You must have a lot of technique, move the ball
quickly, avoid a collision