It all sounds so simple when Pep Guardiola — in his perfect, if heavily accented, English — sums up his football philosophy: ‘I get the ball, I pass the ball. I get the ball, I pass the ball.’
Behind the mantra, given in answer to an English reporter in a press conference back in his Barcelona days, is a commitment to a training-ground obsession with possession, an unmatchable work ethic, and almost evangelical belief in his own principles that will shake-up English football if he arrives next summer.
The first rule of the Pep club is intensity.
There will be early starts and long days right from the beginning — and if Guardiola is installed as Manchester City’s new manager expect him to be in his Etihad campus office while his players are still at the European Championship in France or on holiday.
His close friend and assistant Manuel Estiarte was told to set up base camp for him at Bayern Munich’s Sabener Strasse training ground in the second week of June in 2013 — long before the players returned to meet their new manager.
Once the players arrive, and before any detailed work on the training ground begins, Guardiola will single out the individuals who will be important in imposing his style on the entire team. Players have to be convinced by what they are doing if they are going to do it well.
In 2008 when he took over as first-team coach at Barcelona, Xavi was seriously considering leaving the club.
Bayern Munich had made it clear that they wanted him and a meeting between a Bayern official and a FIFA agent representing the player had already taken place.
Guardiola immediately changed Xavi’s mind. ‘Pep took me to one side and said that I could not leave,’ he said. ‘He told me that Barcelona would now revolve around a small group of players and that I was to be an important part of that small group.’
Guardiola was preaching to the converted at Barcelona but the transformation at Bayern has shown that he can win hearts and minds elsewhere.
Once the players are mentally on-board they need to be there physically, too.
The rondo (’round’ in Spanish) becomes the foundation. It’s the piggy-in-the-middle — usually two players against six — training game that for years was seen as a playful diversion from more serious work but that the Barcelona tradition, started by Johan Cruyff and embraced by Guardiola, has always seen as the key intensity-builder and tactical cornerstone.
It’s about learning to play with one touch and even better with a ‘half-touch’ as former player and coach at the club Charly Rexach once said.
Another of his famous phrases is that he can spot a good player with his eyes closed because of the sound the ball makes when the player passes it — a crisp ‘tic’, ‘tac’.
Guardiola has the same ear.
From the basic rondos come the more complex passing drills — with four pitted against four in a possession exercise livened up by the introduction of several wildcard players playing for both sides.
Every drill is rooted in a match situation with Guardiola’s sole aim to give the players so many options that it becomes impossible for something to happen to him in a game that he is not prepared for.
Andres Iniesta, who played under Guardiola for four years, said: ‘He gives you so many solutions for when you are then in the middle of a game, and nearly all of them turn out to be the right solutions when you apply them.’
The fundamentals are hammered home from the start. The defence and goalkeeper will need to get used to being positioned much higher up the pitch which then facilitates another of the ‘commandments’ — win the ball back within six seconds of losing it.
That will catch the opposition before they have worked out what to do with possession, and while they are still a lot closer to their own goal than to the opposition penalty area.
His new players will gradually get used to operating in any area of the pitch at any given moment of the game and convert to new positions for permanent changes.
Guardiola won his first Champions League as coach at Barcelona with Yaya Toure at centre back and his second with Javi Mascherano playing there.
Lionel Messi left the right touchline and became a withdrawn centre forward under him and at Bayern Philipp Lahm went from full back to midfield fulcrum. Guardiola does not see positions, only players.
The good ones are the ones who understand what he wants from them on the pitch and, by virtue of having practised it repeatedly on the training ground, are able to put it into effect to the point where it really does seem like little more than: ‘I get the ball, I pass the ball.’
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