Authors: Martí Perarnau
37
‘PUT THE GOOD PLAYERS IN THE MIDFIELD. THAT’S MY IDEA AND I’M GOING TO STICK WITH IT.’
Dortmund, November 23, 2013
GÖTZE AND THIAGO are warming up in a hallway in Westfalen Stadion (aka Signal Iduna Park). The second half of a decisive league game has just started and the score is nil-nil. It’s freezing outside and it’s a very different experience from that evening last summer when Borussia won the German Super Cup in suffocating, Mediterranean temperatures. Guardiola initially hoped not to have to subject Mario Götze to the fury of Signal Iduna Park’s ‘Sudkürve’, the single most frenzied football stand in the world, where 25,000 chanting fans leap about for the full 90 minutes. Now that he’s a Bayern player, Götze is not well received at his former club, but Guardiola needs him out there. It’s time to go on the attack.
Dortmund have come to the game four points behind (they lost last week in Wolfsburg) and with a long injury list which has left them with the following line-up: Weidenfeller; Grosskreutz, Friedrich, Sokratis, Durm; Bender, Sahin; Blaszczykowski, Mkhitaryan, Reus; Lewandowski.
Bayern also have a few problems and several players missing, the most crucial being Ribéry. Mandžukić also has problems. He twisted his ankle during last night’s final training exercise and the club doctor has had to do give him a pain-killing injection. However, he won’t last more than 50 minutes. Guardiola’s strategy for the first half is to take control by wearing Dortmund down. His line-up is: Neuer; Rafinha, Boateng, Dante, Alaba; Lahm, Kroos, Javi Martínez; Müller, Mandžukić, Robben.
This is the first time Guardiola has used Javi Martínez as an attacking midfielder. He puts him high up the pitch in an attempt to short-circuit Nuri Sahin, the instigator of most of Borussia’s counter-attacks. Most of the first half has only two facets. Dortmund try to force Bayern to play out from the back via only Rafinha and Alaba, the outside corridors of Pep’s divided pitch, and Bayern try to use Martínez to prevent Dortmund springing counter-attacks via Nuri Sahin. ‘If you give him space to run, you’re dead,’ Pep told him yesterday.
The teams are pretty evenly matched in the first half, although the home side is slightly more dangerous and Lewandowski has two good shots on target, matched by two from Mandžukić.
Bayern get stagnated, even wide. They are obliged to use the width because of the network of pressing coverage Dortmund mount across the entire midfield. On the other hand, Dortmund can’t produce their usual greased-lightning fluidity in counter-attacks. It’s a stalemate.
Pep still has a thorn in his side from the Super Cup defeat. He also has a dream. A dream he prefers not to share, even with his friends and allies. But Xavier Sala i Martín, a close and trusted friend, is willing to tell me: ‘Pep wants to prove to himself that he is capable of playing like Barça, without the players that he had there. I’m not talking in terms of playing style. It’s more about his ability to dominate matches, to be the superior team, the one with total authority over the game. He wants to show that he can build another, equally dominant team.’
He’s already achieved this in the big games. In Manchester, against City, Bayern were by far the dominant side. And it’s just about to happen again. In Dortmund. Bayern are in a strong position at half-time. With the score 0-0, Pep’s team could emerge from this battleground with their four-point lead intact, but the coach wants more. He tells Götze and Thiago to start warming up.
Lorenzo Buenaventura supervises the two players plus Van Buyten as they go through their warm-up exercises in a long corridor inside the stadium. Van Buyten has to stoop as he works because the ceiling is so low. He is almost two metres tall. The coach wants the two little guys on the pitch even though they are not yet fully fit. Thiago hasn’t played a single minute since he was injured at the end of August, but Pep knows he can buy his team the time they need to deactivate Dortmund and propel Bayern forward. The little guys are going to win the match for him.
After 56 minutes Götze comes on for Mandžukić and Signal Iduna Park greets their former player with jeers and boos. Pep is using Götze as a false No.9 for the first time, instead of an attacking midfielder or No.10. It’s as if he reserves this move for the big games, like he did in 2009 with Messi against Real Madrid. Guardiola makes his move at a crucial moment. He also starts to make radical changes to Bayern’s midfield. Up until now Pep has always ensured that the midfield is crowded with his men, but during the first half he’s been particularly cautious and conservative. Rafinha and Alaba have stayed wide, protecting their wings, instead of edging inside to help Lahm at
pivote
. Given that Javi Martínez is pitted right up against Sahin, Lahm has really only two passing options when bringing the ball out: to the two full-backs, wide, or to Kroos. It is a total contradiction of Pep’s rule in the previous months that Lahm, when playing out from the back, must have numerous passing options at all times.
Guardiola reflects on his strategy at half-time and decides to make some changes. The conservative approach is not suiting his men. He comes up with the following conclusions: Götze and Thiago start warming up; Javi Martínez moves to
pivote
, Lahm plays as an attacking midfielder. The full-backs both now have permission to come off the touchline and help in the middle of midfield.
Domènec Torrent turns to us and winks: ‘We could have settled for 0-0, but at half-time Pep told them to go out and win. That’s when he brought out the big guns.’
With Götze playing in the midst of all the fury coming from the Dortmund stands, Bayern make a major shift and move to a six-man midfield: Rafinha, Alaba, Martínez at
pivote
, Lahm and Kroos, and Götze at false 9. Suddenly the game has changed colour. All we’re seeing is red.
Bayern are suddenly free of the asphyxiation in midfield, the passing game cranks up and the wide men, Müller and Robben, get the ball over and over again, whilst Götze is making the game a living nightmare for Dortmund’s centre-halves, Sokratis and Friedrich, who can’t decide whether to go after him or stay in the defensive zone. These are the same horrors Real Madrid’s Metzelder and Cannavaro endured a few years back when Messi unveiled his new role.
Guardiola smells blood and decides to up the ante. He wants Thiago to shake things up a bit. Pep is tense, but it’s the kind of tension he experiences on the big occasions. He talks at a hundred miles an hour, giving non-stop instructions. He doesn’t want Thiago taking any risks and tells him: ‘Thiago, Thiago, for God’s sake, don’t lose the ball. Don’t lose it! Control, control, lots of control. Don’t take any risks. Not even one risky pass. Control, control. Look for your team-mate and make the easy pass. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get many touches, we just need the game to keep flowing but, above all,
don’t lose it
. For God’s sake don’t take any risks Thiago!’
Thiago is about to go on and, standing here in front of the bench, he appears oblivious to the uproar in the stadium. He emits a sense of detached calm which amazes his coach and says with a smile: ‘Don’t worry,
míster
, don’t worry. You don’t need to worry about me. I know what I’m doing.’ And he runs out to play.
It has been exactly three months since he injured himself against Nuremberg and he hasn’t played a minute since August 24. But it doesn’t matter. He runs on to the pitch and immediately takes over. Javi Martínez moves to centre-half, Lahm to
pivote
and Thiago takes up the attacking, creative responsibility in front of him. Bayern return to the same form they achieved in Manchester a month before. Just two minutes after Thiago has come on, this domination results in a goal from Götze. For the first time since 2009 (under Van Gaal), Bayern are winning away at their biggest rivals.
Rarely has Pep managed an ongoing match with quite the level of prescience he shows now. He notices that Klopp has changed his tactics in the hope of getting the equaliser. Marco Reus almost does it, and forces Neuer into a tremendous, lunging save. Guardiola responds by reorganising his men for the fourth time. Van Buyten comes on for Rafinha, Javi Martínez goes back to
pivote
and Lahm is now right-back. Bayern are going all-out to destroy Dortmund, but this time they’re using their rival’s weapon of choice: the counter-attack. Thiago spots Robben in space and breaks all the Dortmund defensive lines with a fabulous diagonal pass. Robben tucks it away. Two minutes later, Martínez surges forward down the middle, feeds Robben, Lahm overlaps and his pass lets Müller make it 3-0.
It’s a glorious victory for Bayern, whose victory leaves Dortmund seven points behind, a gap which will be impossible to close. But what they take away from the game above all else is renewed confidence in their own ability. The players now believe that their performance in Manchester was no one-off, but the result of all the organisational work they’ve been doing. And the coach’s idea to put his best men in the midfield has been vindicated. It’s a winning formula.
This is a Bayern in constant flux, capable of adapting and changing throughout a match. The two outstanding examples of this are Lahm and Javi Martínez. The captain has begun at
pivote
, moved to attacking midfield and ended up at right-back. Within 90 minutes, the Spaniard has been in attacking midfield,
pivote
, centre-half and then back again to offensive midfield.
The next day, back in Munich, Pep is still talking about Dortmund’s counter-attacking: ‘They’re like a steamroller, unstoppable. There are other teams who counter-attack brilliantly, like Madrid for example, but Dortmund are unique. I’ve never seen anything like it. They are completely focused for 90 minutes, waiting for you to mess up a pass so that they can set their sprinters on you. I must take some time to really study this and see if there’s any way to stop them. They’re just so good.’
Pep has received lots of praise for the way he altered the course of the match from the bench by changing players and positions. ‘Praise doesn’t matter. The important people are the players. These are super-talented guys who are up for anything. They are all working to improve and make progress.’
Their triumph in Dortmund has strengthened his convictions. ‘Put the good players in the midfield. That’s my idea and I’m going to stick with it. Get the good players inside, hold on to the ball and be aggressive. It’s vital not to keep rethinking it. This is definitely the line to follow.’
The dream Xavier Sala i Martín described to us has been realised once again in Dortmund. Pep’s Bayern have shown superiority and domination on the pitch, just as they did in Manchester and Leverkusen. These are Pep’s most private aspirations. Guardiola wants to build another team whose domination of the game will act as a bulwark against the vagaries of fate. But he wants to do it with a different kind of player. He’s clear that he doesn’t want Bayern’s game to mimic the way Barça played while he was in charge. However, he does want Bayern to dominate with the same authority. ‘Götze and Thiago,’ he says. ‘That’s how we have to play. Not like in the first half. We’ll certainly score if we bombard the box, but we won’t be dominating the game. The way we dominate is by putting the best players inside and leaving the two wingers really wide on the touchlines. In the middle we’ll have Thiago, Toni, Lahm, Götze, Alaba … and if we lose, it won’t matter. I’ll go home happy just the same knowing that I did what I believe is right.’
38
‘THE WHOLE CLUB HAS TOLD ME THAT FRANCK WANTS TO TALK TO ME. I WANT TO TALK TO HIM, TOO.’
Munich, December 2, 2013
PHILIPP LAHM SUFFERED his first ever muscle injury on November 27 in Moscow with the temperature at five degrees below zero on a slippery, snow-covered pitch. The 12-hour journey had been a nightmare. Flight delays plus a monumental Moscow traffic jam had combined to make Bayern so late arriving at their hotel that they had not been able to train the day before the Champions League match against CSKA. Instead, Lorenzo Buenaventura had to improvise a stretching and joint mobility session on the carpet in one of the hotel’s lounges.
Pep’s team put on an efficient, workmanlike performance although understandably, given the conditions, there was no trace of star quality on display. The resulting 3-1 victory, their fifth win in five games, was a record and, added to five wins under Heynckes, meant that Bayern had won 10 consecutive Champions League matches.
However, the match took its toll on Lahm, leaving him with the first non-impact muscle injury of his career – at the age of 30. It wasn’t a particularly serious injury and cost him only a couple of weeks, but it was a new and uncomfortable experience for the captain, who took a while to accept it. Although Lahm was given the all-clear from the medics relatively quickly, the player himself would not feel fully fit until well into December. It was one more problem for Guardiola, who had not yet been able to use all his first-choice midfielders in the same team. Now he was losing his key man, the one who draws in and then divides the opposition, the cornerstone around which he had built his team. If Pep had to choose a dream team from all the players he had managed at Barcelona and Bayern then, without doubt, Philipp Lahm would be on that list. ‘If we win anything this season it will because of what we did with Lahm. Putting him in the midfield meant that all the pieces fell into place.’
They left Moscow in the early hours of the morning and, despite being given a rest day on Thursday, looked exhausted at Friday’s training session. Pep broke with tradition and told them to take it easy. ‘I’ve done hundreds of journeys in my life, all over the world, but that was the toughest yet. My worst journey ever,’ said Thiago.
Carles Planchart, who is in charge of the team’s analysts, agreed: ‘I’m completely destroyed. My body, everything – imagine how the players are feeling.’
Despite their exhaustion, a small group of players topped the training session off with a series of 60-metre sprints. Guardiola laughed. ‘Look at them. What a bunch! I give them an easy time because they’re on their knees and then they decide to go for a run. And they’ve dragged Thiago into it. Thiago!’