Authors: Martí Perarnau
Thiago doesn’t train today. He took a bad kick to his ankle in Dortmund, but the real problem goes deeper: he is in a state of total collapse. His is the classic story of the sportsman who gives 200% for an important fixture and then immediately suffers a major physical setback. Thiago arrived in Germany highly motivated and, in the Barça and Dortmund games, forced his body to give more than he was really fit for. Now he needs a couple of days’ rest. He has tried to reach for the stars and it has left him exhausted, with big black circles under his eyes and pain all over his body. He needs a break.
There will be no more signings this season, even if the press keep talking about the Polish player Robert Lewandowski. The Borussia Dortmund centre-forward is a prodigious talent and Bayern could get him immediately, but they have decided to wait another year. If Götze’s signing hadn’t caused such an uproar then Lewandowski would probably be training here in Säbener Strasse already, perhaps instead of Mario Mandžukić, a first-class finisher from close-in, who is unlikely to have a long career at Munich ahead of him. But from what the technical team have said there is no doubt that the club is impressed by Lewandowski, by the way he moves and controls the ball and works with his team-mates.
The club’s plans are clear. There will be no more signings and two players are about to be transferred. Emre Can will move to Bayer Leverkusen on August 2 and Luiz Gustavo to Wolfsburg on the 16th of the same month – both driven by financial imperatives. Højbjerg will train with the first team but play with the B side. Kirchhoff stays for the time being, but there are plans to let him go on loan at Christmas. By now, Pep is convinced that he shouldn’t use Thomas Müller as a midfielder.
Wrapped up in his raincoat, Manel Estiarte stands in the rain with Pep’s son Màrius, who is watching everything his dad does with avid attention. Estiarte outlines Guardiola’s objectives for his first season at Bayern. ‘The main aim is to win the Bundesliga and we’ll be focusing all our energies on that. The second objective is that the team learns how to play the kind of football Pep is looking for and makes progress in that direction. He wants to see them greatly improved by the end of the season. He’s already taken Barça B (Barcelona’s second team, whom Pep trained in 2007-8) through that process. The team was dreadful at the start, but he transformed them and they were absolutely unstoppable for the last month and a half of the championship. That’s what we’d like to do here, make the team so much more than they are at the moment. And we’ll also be laying the foundations for Pep’s second year when he wants to see them consistently playing his style of football.’
The objective is set then. It’s the Bundesliga title.
16
‘WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ATHLETICISM?’
Munich, July 29, 2013
THE DAY-AND-A-HALF long master class in defence has begun. This is only the first of many the coach will lead during the season. It starts with Pep giving a yellow bib to Javi Martínez and sending him to work with the defenders. If the Spanish midfielder hasn’t already read it in the papers, he now knows that the boss wants him in central defence. The rain is torrential. The four defenders, all wearing yellow bibs, are Rafinha, Javi Martínez, Dante and Alaba. Guardiola is in the middle of them, explaining the moves he wants them to make. The players Pep wants to attack are Lahm, Boateng, Van Buyten and Kirchhoff. It is significant that Lahm, the captain, isn’t in the first-choice back four. It seems the coach is already thinking of him principally as a midfielder.
For 40 minutes Pep dedicates himself wholly to explaining how and where he wants the back four to mark and how to move as a group, what the full-back does when he’s being attacked by a winger, where the nearest central defender should be in that situation, where the other central defender must be, what the other full-back is looking for, when the central defender needs to come out to press an opponent, up to what point he offers cover to his central defensive partner and where the
pivote
positions himself with regard to the back four. These are all pre-determined, minutely configured movements – perfectly choreographed with the aim of closing all the gaps which can be exploited to open up a defence.
Dante is in his element, but Javi is struggling. This rainy afternoon is significant for two reasons. Without anything having been openly said, it is obvious that this is a first step towards him returning to the position of central defender, and he also knows that he will have to undo almost everything he learned at Athletic Bilbao under coach Marcelo Bielsa, who also occasionally used him as a central defender but who always asked for man marking. At Bayern, Pep wants zonal marking and it is proving to be a bit of a psychological barrier for the man from Navarra, who will be starting from zero all over again. In almost every move, Javi ends up where he shouldn’t be, starts a run when he shouldn’t and distances himself from Dante when he should be playing close to him. It’s a hellish afternoon for him and he is constantly being corrected. The group has to go over and over the same choreography, with the coach apparently trusting in their infinite patience.
Kirchhoff attacks wide down the line, Lahm tries to reach the byeline, Alaba defends with aggression, Dante covers the Austrian full-back, Javi loses concentration and Pep stops the whole action, corrects Martínez and it’s, ‘Once more from the top, lads…’. They have worked for 45 minutes in the thunder and lightning at the Munich stadium and still the exercises continue, unabated.
For Javi it’s an ordeal – and not just because of the new playing concepts. He has come back from the holidays in very poor shape and yesterday left the training ground vomiting from fatigue. Today he needs to concentrate, hard. Pep covers the last third of the pitch with marks so that every defender knows how and where he should be moving. From afar, the training drill reminds you of the choreography of ballet. Dancers require perfect timing and balance to lift each other and these defenders need precisely the same degree of timing, movement and co-ordination to provide the mutual cover which Pep demands, particularly when one player moves out to challenge his opponent, after which that defender will resume his original position. The idea is that at no time will any of the four break the precise distance between each other that the coach wants them to maintain. In reality, it has very little to do with ballet.
Despite their exhaustion after such a prolonged period of concentration and effort, the players ask Pep’s permission to go for a quick hill run at the end of the session. The coach laughs. ‘What do you know about athleticism? What purpose do these long runs have other than to hurt your back?’ He chuckles again and continues: ‘Now they’ll come back thinking that they’ve trained really hard because they’ve had a 15-minute run, but it’s just the placebo effect. They think that when they’re doing these positioning and conservation exercises that they’re not really working.’
The coach is joking, but it is a subject he takes very seriously. The training sessions he runs are conditioned by his playing principles and always, always have a technical-tactical element. The training Pep has devised is not confined to physical development and there will be no sprints, stamina runs, nor sessions with weights. Such ideas will only be introduced if needed to fine-tune the recuperation of an injured player. Lorenzo Buenaventura, who is working alongside Pep, explains: ‘Initially they were a bit taken aback that we weren’t asking for 1000-metre sprints, even though Bayern were already the least traditional of the German teams. They were already working with the ball and had got used to the rhythm of weekly matches where there isn’t much time for a lot of physical training. You can only really do short, sharp quality work.
‘There’s not a huge difference between what we do and other training methods in terms of intensity and volume of work. I’d say we might be doing 10 or 15 minutes less out on the pitch, at the most, particularly if you count the injury prevention work we do in the gym. We value quality over quantity and prefer to do more high-quality exercises together than spend time doing long stints of physical training. They’ve noticed not just that, but also the high percentage of ball work we do. In fact we don’t do anything without the ball, just some warm ups and warm downs, or individual work with a player if he needs something specific.’
The defenders all come back, drenched in sweat after a good 15-minute run. They look very pleased with themselves. Guardiola slaps a few backs and gives the younger players a clout on the head. He goes into the dressing room, still joking and winks at them. ‘Placebo effect!’
The master class in defence has only just begun.
17
‘JAVI, LOOK AT DANTE, LOOK AT DANTE, THE LINE, THE LINE!’
Munich, July 30, 2013
THE NEXT MORNING, now under a blazing sun, we get to watch the first practical application of the choreography. There are three teams of six players plus a wildcard, the Bayern B goalkeeper Leo Zingerle, who is fantastic on the ball and is always called in to help the attacking team.
As expected, Javi Martínez and Dante team up on the red side. The group that scores a goal is immediately replaced by the next group and the game mustn’t stop for a second, which means that everyone has to pay attention. The game, which lasts for 45 long minutes, represents yet more torture for Javi. Just 25 minutes in and he’s already crippled. The exercise, which they refer to as ‘double area’, stops only if no one scores. In this instance, after four minutes, Hermann Gerland blows the whistle and everyone freezes. It is intense work done at high speed and demands great concentration. It is also all too easy for fatigue and confusion to set in.
Pep is cracking the whip. Although we are used to Guardiola issuing instructions in German, this morning in Säbener Strasse, he yells almost all his orders in Spanish: ‘Javi, jump!
‘Javi, look at Dante, look at Dante!
‘Javi, no, don’t go towards the forward!
‘Javi, open, open, more, more!’
There is no rest for Javi. Even Dante starts shouting to help him out. Meanwhile, Ribéry and Robben do their own thing. Bish, bash, bosh, they put in one goal after another, but no one’s interested in the score. Everyone’s watching the master class in defence that Martínez is receiving.
Thiago Alcántara, who is stuck doing gym work and sprinting until he gets the all-clear from the medics for his knee, is one of those watching the game attentively. Guardiola says to him: ‘He’s almost got it. As soon as he’s mastered it completely, we’ll have another first-class centre-back.’
But the lesson doesn’t stop here. Just before 7o’clock this Tuesday evening, the second training session kicks off with another defensive exercise. There are seven players in attack against five defending: Rafinha, Javi, Dante and Alaba, plus a midfielder, who on this occasion is Kirchhoff. The seven attack with everything they have and their five team-mates defend to the death.
‘Javi, go for the forward!
‘Not now, Javi, not now!
‘Javi, look at Dante, look at Dante, the line, the line!’
The player’s mental reset button has been set. His unofficial initiation into playing as a Bayern central defender has taken 24 hours and three training sessions. He has had to rid his mind of any lingering memory of man-to-man marking. This is a new role he’s learning to play and he does so with wholehearted humility.
When the second session of the day finishes, Pep and Javi stay on the pitch. The coach explains to him, one by one, all the channels the back four need to protect and how he wants those spaces closed down. Javi Martínez asks him about the old battles fought by Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao. He wants to know the secrets of those two cup finals, when Pep thrashed the Basque team. Guardiola describes in detail everything he did to gain the advantage: how Javier Mascherano drove forward with the ball to achieve numerical superiority in the middle of the pitch; how Messi dropped deep, far from the penalty box and left a huge space in the centre-forward position; how he taught the rest of the Barcelona team to take advantage of that space and the midfield superiority in order to pull Athletic around and to catch them by surprise. Today it is Javi’s turn to scratch his head whilst he relives the bad memories. He now understands precisely how Pep did it.
Three little blonde kids run and jump on the training pitch. They are Arjen Robben’s three sons, Luka, Lynn and Kai, all regulars at Säbener Strasse. So blonde their hair is almost white, the boys pound balls at their dad, who has stepped in front of goal for the occasion. Twenty metres away, Toni Kroos, about to become a father for the first time, hammers ball after ball at Starke. Serving him up the cross balls from the corner spot is Manuel Neuer, who will cross or shoot at goal every single day of training as if he were just another of Bayern’s attackers. Kroos has a powerful shot that he practises diligently every afternoon. Eventually, however, Pep needs to tell him to stop. He points to his quadriceps and tells him enough is enough. He can’t afford any more risks. Müller is hobbling about with a calf injury, Thiago is still nursing the ankle injury he sustained during the Super Cup final and Götze’s recovery has got him fit enough only for sprinting so far. As if all that isn’t enough, at this precise moment Schweinsteiger is just finishing his twelfth 70-metre sprint under the supervision of Lorenzo Buenaventura, who gives him a 20-second recuperation break in between each sprint. The vice-captain has to be whipped into shape. He is far from fighting fit after his ankle operation, can barely turn and has to do everything in a straight line to avoid putting too much weight on his foot. For the next 20 minutes, three members of the Holzapfel family tend and repair the pitch. Mr Holzapfel and his twin daughters run the family business
Der Hummelmann
which has been taking care of the grass here every day for years. Meanwhile, Kroos and Neuer put the balls away, Robben goes on playing with his children and Guardiola sits down on a folding chair outside the door to the Säbener dressing room and takes a breather. The coach then begins a detailed explanation of his three fundamental principles: the defensive line, the 15-pass build-up, and how to cope with the ‘free man’.