Guillem Balagué > Quotes

“Solo sé que un buen líder es aquel que no tiene miedo a las consecuencias de sus decisiones, y que toma el paso que le dicta su intuición, pase lo que pase.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Otra Manera de Ganar

“Although he wanted an element of democracy within the group, with players using their initiative, making suggestions and keeping an open mind to new ideas, Guardiola did not delay in imposing a number of strict rules in his first few days in charge: such as insisting upon the use of Castilian and Catalan as the only languages spoken among the group, arranging a seating plan at meal times to encourage the players to mix and to prevent the team forming up into different cultural or national groups and cliques.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Pep had analysed Real Madrid in detail and, an hour and a half before the game, he got Messi, Xavi and Iniesta together: ‘You three against Lass and Gago have got the game. If you do it right, three against two, we’ve beaten them.’ Lass and Gago were going to find a third man to defend, Messi would position himself as a false striker in between the centre backs and those two.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“I’ve got a problem,’ he told his mentor. ‘I’ve got these two guys who I don’t know if I can control, they don’t listen to what I say and that affects how everybody else receives my messages. And the problem is, they’re two of the leaders in the dressing room and the best players. I will lose without them on board.’ Cruyff ’s response was blunt: ‘Get rid of them. You might lose one or two games, but then you will start winning and by then you would have turfed those two sons of bitches out the team.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Pep, for instance, created collective conditions to create one v ones for Messi. As simple and common place as that may sound now, it was not so at the time.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“«Si nos levantamos pronto, pero muy pronto, y sin reproches, y nos ponemos a trabajar, somos un país imparable».”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Otra Manera de Ganar

“According to the principles Johan Cruyff introduced to Barcelona, coaches should lead by example: play football, be on the field during training and teach, because there is nothing better than stopping the game, correcting and instructing, explaining why someone needed to pass to a certain player, move to a particular position or change an element of their technique. That’s how Carles Rexach, Cruyff ’s assistant for eight years at Barcelona, explains it: ‘One word from Johan during a training drill is worth more than a hundred hours of talks at the blackboard.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“It wasn’t enough for him to have had first-hand experience of the methods of Cruyff, Robson, van Gaal, Mazzone or Capello, so he travelled to Argentina to deepen his knowledge. There, he met Ricardo La Volpe (a former Argentine World Cup-winning goalkeeper and the former coach of the Mexican national team), Marcelo Bielsa (the much admired former Argentina and Chile national coach, and Athletic de Bilbao manager) and ‘El Flaco’, César Luis Menotti (the coach who took Argentina to the World Cup in 1978) to talk at length about football.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Why do we open up the field?’ Cruyff would explain. ‘Because if we have the ball and we are open, it is more difficult for the opponent to defend.’ Or: ‘People criticised me because I played with three at the back, but those criticisms were really ridiculous: what we did was fill the zones on the field where the game required it. If the opponent played with two up front, which was common then, and my team went out with four defenders, I had one too many, so I moved him forward towards the midfield.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“No se dan cuenta de que el fútbol es un monstruo al que solo puedes vencer y enfrentarte si siempre te mantienes fiel a ti mismo, en cualquier circunstancia.»”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Otra Manera de Ganar

“Dogs and wolves are the same, except for one difference: dogs live at home, food and water are provided and they sleep in their owner’s bed. Wolves, meanwhile, live on mountains, have to find their own food and somewhere to kip . . . I want a team full of hungry and ambitious wolves.’ (Boza Maljkovic)”
― Guillem Balague, Brave New World: Inside Pochettino's Spurs

“Under Cruyff, dominating the ball became the first and most important rule. ‘If you have the ball, the opposition doesn’t have it and can’t attack you,’ Cruyff would repeat daily. So the job became finding the players who could keep possession and also doing a lot of positional work in training.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Before heading out on to the pitch, Johan Cruyff gave his players a simple instruction: ‘Go out there and enjoy yourselves.’ It was a statement that embodies an entire footballing philosophy and was central to Cruyff ’s principles; yet for others, its simplicity, ahead of such a key game, might be considered an insult to the coaching profession.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“The secret is in the details and in observing a lot. You have to pay a great deal of attention, constantly, to what happens every day, more so than to the weekend’s game: we are always aware of every aspect, of a player’s moods, their expressions, of thousands of almost unfathomable things that could make a difference. Observation is key.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“The players are made of skin and bone and they too like this contact. Even if it is a slap. Pep touches constantly, hugs, pushes them, to motivate them, to keep them on their toes, to make them feel loved.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“No quiere ser nada más que un entrenador, un buen entrenador. Lo otro, lo demás, lo bueno y lo malo, se lo echa encima una sociedad necesitada de modelos. Quizá hastiada de tramposos, de ventajistas, de canallas, de gente que impone valores de egoísmo, oportunismo y egolatría, desde la tribuna privilegiada de la televisión o los medios o los negocios o la política. Él pertenece a esa sociedad. Y la dignifica, de una manera muy simple, tratando de hacer bien su faena, ayudando a hacer prosperar el sentido común desde su parcela de exposición pública. Con la misma callada dignidad con la que un buen albañil, sin que nadie mire ni aplauda, pone un ladrillo sobre el cemento.»”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Otra Manera de Ganar

“«No debemos perder de vista nuestra idea».”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Otra Manera de Ganar

“In 1974 Laureano Ruíz became general coordinator for youth football and one of the first things he did was to tear down a notice next to the entrance of his new office that read: ‘If you are coming to offer me a youngster who measures less than 1.80 metres, you can take him back.’ ‘Laureano prioritised the technical quality of a footballer, reaction times and, above other factors, intelligence, to learn and understand the game,”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“He was a bit like me. You must have a lot of technique, move the ball quickly, avoid a collision – and to avoid it you must have good vision.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“his leadership skills must not be forgotten either; as it soon became evident in his playing career; he didn’t just pass the ball to his team-mates, he talked to them constantly. ‘Keep it simple, Michael!’ shouted a twenty-year-old Guardiola on one occasion to Laudrup, the international superstar. The Danish player had tried to dribble past three players too close to the half-way line, where losing the ball would have been dangerous. ‘That was simple,’ Michael replied with a wink. But he knew the kid was right.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“De las veinte decisiones que tomo cada día, dieciocho son intuitivas, a partir de la observación.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Otra Manera de Ganar

“a victim of his own dedication and perfectionism, and also of his own torments and the difficulty he has in allowing people to help him.”
― Guillem Balagué, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Perdonaré que fallen, pero no que no se esfuercen.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Otra Manera de Ganar

“On the field of play, in the heat of the action, it enabled Guardiola’s Barcelona to switch formations or positions as many as five or six times in the same game. When players understand why, it is easy to react to what is being shouted from the touchline in the heat of battle. However, Guardiola also drilled patience into his sides, because, despite that ability to get his team to react, he and his players also had enough faith in their strategy to know when to avoid a knee-jerk reaction to a tough passage of play or an opposition goal.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“some key principles were quickly instilled in him: ‘Don’t stamp on anybody but don’t let anybody stamp on you; keep your head high; two-touch football; keep the ball on the ground.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“The key is to have a strong dressing room, knowing that we are stronger together than one person on his own.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“We’re thinking about the squad without them,’ Pep announced during his presentation, flanked by the club president, Joan Laporta, and sporting director, Txiki Beguiristain. ‘That’s the way I think after analysing questions of performance in the time they have been with the team, and also less tangible questions. It is for the good of the team. ‘If they stay in the end, I will give everything so that they join us at the right level.’ It was a revelation. Pep’s common-sense approach, his communication skills and the feeling of authenticity you got from his talks,”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Superiority in midfield, as predicted by Pep, was the key to the game.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Look at him! Him, that one there! He’s hiding! Your team-mates need to know that you are always available!’ he’ll shout, pointing a finger at the culprit. ‘Before passing the ball, you need to know where you’re passing it to; if you don’t know, it’s better to keep it; give it to your goalie, but don’t give it to your opponent”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“He wanted players who controlled the ball with their first touch, who had quick feet, who retained the ball and created superiority from individual technique and group work.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography