Una crónica íntima de Guardiola en el Bayern de Múnich: los éxitos, los problemas y las claves del nuevo equipo de Pep.

Martí Perarnau ha tenido acceso al vestuario, al entrenador y a los jugadores, desde el fichaje de Guardiola y hasta el final de la temporada oficial, y nos ofrece un relato minucioso de la vocación de trabajo de Pep Guardiola, su obsesión por los detalles y su tozudez en la búsqueda de la excelencia.

Una descripción detallada de todo lo que ha sucedido en la trastienda del Bayern durante la temporada 2013-14. ( )

One of the most fascinating questions of the 2012/13 football season involved a man who wasn’t involved in it, but instead retreated from the game for a year. Just about everyone involved in top level football wanted to know where Pep Guardiola would go, what he was going to do after creating one of history’s great teams. His Barcelona side were in the line of Cruyff’s Dutch side of the 1970s and Sacchi’s Milan early of the 90s, sides which redefined how the game should be played. Every major tactical nuance seemed to derive from it; an action based on that style or a reaction to it. They accumulated trophies for fun with the footballing ideal of passing teams to death, adorned with footballing geniuses such as Leo Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta. And in the big games they produced signature displays, twice dismantling Manchester United in Champions League finals and recording several memorable victories over their great rivals Real Madrid.

Guardiola’s reign lasted just four years, the man himself walking away quite visibly exhausted. One of Marti Perarnau’s great insights here is just how necessary Guardiola’s sabbatical was – throughout this book the restlessness of Guardiola’s mind and the energy he puts into training and coaching is clear. After four years of relentless pressure, of endless thinking about opponents and giving so much energy to the team there’s barely a human being alive who wouldn’t be burned out. The rest was necessary, particularly with the political pressures peculiar to Barcelona. A refreshing of body and mind was necessary. That he chose New York to get away from it all is quite probably unique.

As Perarnau makes clear Guardiola was relentlessly pursued by many of the giants of European football, particularly from England. Many were willing to rebuild their sides just for him. His choice though was Bayern Munich, which in the end was as tough an assignment as he could have chosen. His predecessor, Jupp Heynckes ended up winning the treble of league, DFB Pokal and Champions League, a feat that had previously eluded even the mighty Bayern sides of the 1970s. Follow that.

What we get is an exhaustive account of Guardiola’s first year at the club, from his decision to take over to the season’s end and beginning of preparations for the next year. The level of access is faintly surprising for the modern game, going in depth into how Guardiola prepares his team, how he adopted his footballing ideals to the style of a different country. Guardiola’s work ethic is clear, as is his inability not to think about football and his restless search for how to win games. It’s made very clear that a straightforward transposition of the Barca ideal to Germany was never considered possible, but instead Guardiola worked out over his first few months the tactical wrinkles that would make this Bayern side dominant and provide them with a footballing identity Hoeness and Rummenigge wanted when appointing him. What fascinates is how, for all Guardiola is a great thinker of the game, some innovations are a result of trial and error – their ultimate masterstroke, moving Philip Lahm into midfield, was a result of a solution to an in-game problem suggested by an assistant. But Guardiola had the vision to turn this into a long term solution that ultimately made Bayern’s game function so well, along with the deliberate tactic of pushing full backs forward into midfield. Perarnau giving us accounts of so many gams allows us to see how this team and the players develop over the first half of the season, adjusting between the approaches of Heynckes and Guardiola.

This could of course veer toward hagiography, but it doesn’t. Guardiola’s good points are rightly lauded, but it’s always acknowledged he’s fallible – he talks of his own past tactical failings and how in the Champions League semi-final he makes egregious errors of judgement. And for all his hard work and innovation the team loses something of an edge after the league is secured ridiculously early. It’s an old footballing problem, but at this point you think that if anyone could find a solution to such an old saw you’re sure Guardiola could – something we’re likely to find out in the next year or two.

What might surprise is how open Guardiola is about possible future plans – whilst events may obviously overtake him, the plan is for a similar length of stay to Barca, then another possible sabbatical followed possibly by a sojourn in the English game. Hints in the book say that he’d go to one of the historically big clubs – perhaps, like Bayern, the appointment of Louis van Gaal is merely the laying of groundwork for Guardiola to be tempted to Old Trafford? History seems to be more of an attraction to him than the nouveau riche billionaires at Stamford Bridge and the Etihad Stadium.

We leave Guardiola on a note of triumph, the DFB Pokal secured to mark a treble of sorts with the league and World Club Cup. It sounds an ominous note for the rest of German football with a club now comfortable with Guardiola’s methods poised for perhaps an even greater dominance and the coach more comfortable than he was as Barcelona. Can he repeat his Barca trick of turning Bayern into Europe’s dominant force, overcoming the Madrid side that ultimately outplayed them in the Champions League semi-finals? As ever, only time has the answer. In the meantime, you can imagine coaches around Europe devouring this for hints and tips as to how to improve their own side and to undermine Guardiola. As an up close record of the methods of the man who’s probably the finest coach in the game today it’s a classic of intelligent modern footballing literature. ( )