Authors: Martí Perarnau
51
‘ULI IS OUR HEART. IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE BAYERN WITHOUT HIM.’
Munich, March 14, 2014
YESTERDAY WE WERE scheduled to fly to Basel together to watch a Europa League game between FC Basel and Red Bull Salzburg. Pep is very taken with Roger Schmidt, the Salzburg coach who, by April, will be hired by Bayer Leverkusen to take charge of their first team for season 2014/15. Guardiola has been studying Red Bull Salzburg for a while now. When they and Bayern met in a friendly back in January the Austrians won 3-0. What Pep witnessed was sufficient to convince him that Schmidt is a top-quality coach. It’s for that reason that he has decided to watch this guy and his team in person. However, the evening before the trip it becomes clear that he will not be able to go, after all.
It is announced that there will be a judicial ruling on Uli Hoeness’ case by midday on Thursday. On Wednesday Bayern Munich is the heart of a great empire. But then, in an instant…
Three-and-a-half-years in jail. Earth shattering. But perhaps not a surprise given that it had emerged during his trial for tax evasion that Hoeness had defrauded the German taxman of millions. Nevertheless, the decision came as a terrible blow for everyone around Bayern. While his crime was unconnected to the club, Hoeness wasn’t simply Bayern’s president and a brilliant former player. He was the club’s very soul. You could say Hoeness was the club.
Since 1977 he had been in charge of Bayern’s commercial development and had become the great constructor of the modern Bayern, making it a hugely successful, even model institution. Of course, the sentence meant his resignation as president. In a statement issued by Bayern he took full responsibility for his actions, publicly accepted the judgment and offered his resignation.
Pep was the first senior figure at Bayern to speak publicly following the announcement of the prison sentence. Midday Friday, in the press conference prior to playing Leverkusen, he said: ‘Uli is our heart. The minute you join the club it’s clear why everyone at Bayern adores him. I’ve never seen a club director so loved. It’s hard to imagine Bayern without him.’
That Pep spoke up was not an insignificant detail and could be interpreted in a number of different ways. One might see it as an indication of the club’s total faith in him as spokesman and therefore something he could be justifiably proud of. On the other hand, perhaps senior management had opted on this occasion to stay in the background and use him as a shield. This idea worried him a little, given the way in which he had been treated at Barcelona. In any case, being the first to speak certainly didn’t mean half measures and Pep made no attempt to hide the emotion of the moment: ‘Uli has earned our total respect. My work with him since arriving has gone incredibly well. He is my friend and will continue to be so. I hope that, in the future, he will return to support and help us as he has done up till now. My nine months here have shown me how important Uli is to this club. He is the most important man at Bayern and within the organisation everyone loves and values him. Uli is everything at Bayern: the No.1. Uli is the club.’
Pep’s words reflected his depth of feeling for Hoeness. They had eaten together every week, sharing their visions for football, and had developed a friendship based on mutual respect. Without him Pep would feel a little orphaned within Bayern, despite the fact that Rummenigge would try very hard in the following months to fill the vacuum which the departing president had left.
Rummenigge himself explained the situation to the players through a short address in the lecture hall at Säbener Strasse. It was an institutional message, designed to safeguard club and team stability, but Rummenigge’s delivery was intensely emotional. His face was haggard, his voice faint and by the third word it was clear that he would not control the tears. The squad and staff were tremendously moved as their chief executive forced himself to complete his speech through his sobs.
The upheaval was so tough for Bayern that just about any scenario looked feasible: from total support for Guardiola to a complete breakdown in relations. Pep felt that Hoeness was the club’s father figure. It was he who had offered him the contract, he who had taken the firm decision to go after Pep. How would the dice fall without him?
Going forward, Pep would be more isolated. Would this have an effect on how long he would stay in Munich? His colleagues in the technical team thought so, even though it was far too soon to say so with absolute certainty. In Pep’s mind, if Hoeness asked him to wait, to stay with Bayern until he got out of prison, he would say yes. It’s something which, a few days later, the Catalan would touch on.
‘I want to go on for two or three years, giving my best to this club, because my dream is to start over again working with Uli when he returns. Without him none of this would have been possible for me.’ During the game against Bayer Leverkusen Pep felt the German’s absence. Normally, three board members – Hoeness, Rummenigge and Jan-Christian Dreesen, the financial director – would come down to the coach’s office after every match. There they would chat for a few minutes and then Rummenigge and Dreesen would go off to the dressing room to touch base with the players, but Hoeness would always stay with Pep to share opinions about the game. In the early days, Hoeness tried to boost Pep’s spirits when he was still trying to make the team his own.
Now, even though the match had been a stroll, ending in a 2-1 win over Leverkusen, Guardiola missed his friend. Bayern were on a 50-game unbeaten streak (25 each for Heynckes and Guardiola) and their last league defeat was back in October 2012. Pep had beaten his own record of consecutive wins, 17 for Bayern and 16 with Barça. Dortmund had lost to Borussia Mönchengladbach and with players like Robben, Mandžukić, Kroos and company exiting to a standing ovation, the league title was pretty much sewn up.
After the opposing fans had done battle in song, in the 75th minute the Bayern supporters began to voice their support for the former president: ‘Uli Hoeness,
du bist der beste Mann
!’ Uli Hoeness, you are the greatest. Their songs talked of nostalgia. There were banners bearing his name dotted all over the stadium, all hand-written by fans who, setting aside moral judgements and their own private views of Hoeness’ tax evasion, simply wanted to say goodbye to the man who had led their club in both the good and the bad times.
52
‘PICKING A LINE-UP IS LIKE SITTING IN FRONT OF YOUR CHESS PIECES.’
Munich, March 15, 2014
RIBÉRY WASN’T GOING to play against Bayer Leverkusen. It wouldn’t be a good idea, given his fitness levels. What with his disgust at failing to win the Balon d’Or, a muscle injury and an operation to relieve a trapped nerve in his back, Franck’s 2014 had been a dead loss so far. Pep, who was beginning to despair, decided that a mini pre-season training programme would be good for the Frenchman and mentioned it to him just before the Leverkusen match. Two weeks of hard work to get back to full fitness.
Claudio Pizarro had been injured after a kick to his hip in the final training session before the match and Ribéry had to take his place. Before kick-off Pep called him to his office and told the player that he needed him to get back to his 2013 fitness levels, when his dribbling skills were unsurpassable.
However, over the next six weeks Ribéry would continue to have problems and his distress at his own failure to recover his best form would quickly become a mental block. Pep was concerned, although he took care to hide this in public, as did the rest of the team, who did what they could to support their team-mate’s recuperation. It is impossible for any sportsman to be permanently on top form, but Ribéry found himself with these problems at the most decisive point of the season.
After beating Leverkusen, the league title was just about Bayern’s. They would win it 10 days later in Berlin after establishing a 25-point lead over Borussia Dortmund with seven matches to go. It would be only the second time since 2000 that Bayern would retain the league title – a detail Rummenigge, Hoeness and Pep had often talked about. The club had had seven different coaches in 10 years and after every success they would trip up. In private the Bayern management team had suggested to their coach that the most likely impact of the 2013 treble would be a total wash-out season.
Of course it hadn’t turned out that way, largely due to the fact that the players were enthused and stimulated by Guardiola’s arrival. Each player had his own reasons for this but, unusually for all-conquering champions, they had approached the season as if starting from scratch. They were now into the final sprint with three titles won (the European Super Cup, the World Club Cup and the Bundesliga) and two more on the horizon.
After the Bayer Leverkusen game I had dinner with Pep and assistant coach Domènec Torrent and I listed all the league records they had already broken. Pep hadn’t known about their 50 games unbeaten, nor that he had equalled Heynckes’ record of 25 matches without a defeat, nor any of the other stats. But Torrent was as dogmatic as ever. ‘Listen Pep, let’s not worry about beating records. We need to forget about being record breakers and get on with the job in hand, the Champions League. It doesn’t matter if we start losing games and letting in goals from now on. Let’s leave the records till next season.’
‘You’re quite right,’ Guardiola replied. ‘We should win the league as quickly as possible and focus on the DFB-Pokal and the Champions League.’
The conversation then turned to the players and the importance of getting men like Ribéry, Götze and Schweinsteiger back on form.
As the evening wore on the coach’s conversation turned to his favourite subject: how he wants his team to play.
‘It’s clear. The team needs to play with more width. Two wingers pegged to their touchlines, a striker in the area, not necessarily to volley or head on goal, but to snap up the second ball. Then four players also waiting for the second ball or the rebound: two high up wing-backs, plus two attacking midfielders, or a creative midfielder plus the
pivote
– all to take advantage of the ball either being cut back, breaking off a defender or the keeper. Those guys queuing up on the edge of the box is how we cut off the counter-attack early, too.’
He then added one key objective: ‘Next season we need to play better.’
I decided to put him on the spot. ‘And how will you play better with the same players?’
Pep looked distracted and didn’t answer, preferring to change the topic by throwing out a question so intriguing that for a moment I was lost for words: ‘If we were playing the Champions League final tomorrow, who would you pick?’
This was a chance to suggest a line-up to the coach of Bayern and his assistant and I could not pass it up. So, fired up by an almost irrational lack of self-consciousness, I answered:
‘No problem at all. I’d pick the 11 players who are on peak form at the moment and I’d play them in a 4-2-1-3.’
I then named my team, although, looking back, I can’t believe I even attempted it. Pep listened in silence, saying nothing, but it took Domènec Torrent less than two seconds to jump in.
‘And if we were up against Cristiano and Bale’s Madrid, you wouldn’t play Boateng, who is our fastest centre-half? And if it was against Barça, would you seriously consider taking on Messi without Bastian? And you’d play Chelsea with a traditional centre-forward but without Götze and Müller?’
Ouch! There were just too many variables to consider. That was the night I learned that sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut. Pep hadn’t commented on my line-up but Torrent’s questions made it crystal clear that having all the information is not enough. It also struck me that looking in from outside requires none of the meticulous attention to detail that the decision-makers have to apply. The men the rest of us are so ready to criticise.
I also realised that Guardiola’s eternal doubts are not part of his character, nor a sign of a lack of decisiveness or nerve. No, his doubts come from his determination to calibrate all the possibilities. My thoughts automatically turned to the chess player who analyses all the possible variables before making his move and I decided to share this with him. ‘The process of picking a line-up is a bit like sitting in front of your chess pieces.’
‘You’ve no idea how similar the two things are,’ said Pep. ‘You didn’t read the interview Leontxo García did with Magnus Carlsen [the world chess champion] in El País by any chance? There was one thing Carlsen said that I loved. He said that it doesn’t matter if he has to make some sacrifices at the start of the game because he knows that he is at his strongest in the latter stages. It really got me thinking and I must learn how I can apply it to football.’
53
‘I LOVE YOU PEP. YOU ARE IN MY HEART, MAN.’
Berlin, March 25, 2014
DURING THE DRESSING-ROOM celebrations in Berlin, Ribéry split Manel Estiarte’s lip.
With seven games still to play Bayern had won the Bundesliga title. They had faithfully applied and even exceeded the objectives set out by Pep’s recipe for winning a league: don’t lose it in the first eight matches and then nail it in the last eight. After today’s game, they were 25 points ahead of Borussia Dortmund with only 21 still up for grabs. They had beaten his formula by seven days.
This was the seventh consecutive time that Bayern had clinched the title away from home and they had done so with style. They were two up within 12 minutes and looked unstoppable. Pep altered the plans for the game which had been constructed over the previous few days and asked the two wing-backs to play wide, not inside. It was based on his understanding that Hertha would man-mark; if he put Rafinha and Alaba wide whilst attacking it would oblige Hertha to defend with six guys in a defensive line in order to cover the two wing-backs, the wingers, the striker and an attacking midfielder. That would mean that the middle of the pitch would be open territory for Bayern. As planned, Müller, Götze, Robben, Kroos and Schweinsteiger took total control of the midfield and at half-time, with the title pretty much in the bag, several players commented to Pep that things had gone precisely as he predicted they would.