Pep Guardiola 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“«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

“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

“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

“Improbable is not impossible... you have to believe.”
― Guillem Balagué, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“They don't realise football is a monster that you can only beat and face if you are always yourself: under any circumstance.”
― Guillem Balagué, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Сомнения порождают страхи. А страх – плохой компаньон, когда тебе необходимо принимать на себя ответственность, если дела идут не по плану.”
― Guillem Balagué, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Лучше игроку потерять мяч во время дриблинга, когда он чувствует себя излишне самоуверенным, чем в результате глупой ошибки или обреза, который приведет к тому, что он будет бояться совершить ошибку.”
― Guillem Balagué, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Что заставляет тебя расти и развиваться, так это провалы, ошибки. Они помогают тебе быть начеку. Когда побеждаешь, думаешь: «Здорово, мы победили». И мы ведь наверняка совершили какие-то ошибки, но ты расслаблен. Единственная польза от побед – крепкий сон", — Пеп Гвардиола.”
― Guillem Balagué, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Жизнь, как говорится, это то, что с нами происходит, пока мы строим планы. А ещё это та самая штука, что хлещет тебя по лицу и сбивает с ног как раз в тот момент, когда ты решил, что неуязвим, когда позабыл, что падения – тоже в правилах игры.”
― Guillem Balagué, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“I like to win. I like to train, but above all, I want to teach people to compete representing universal values: values based on respect and education. Giving everything while competing with dignity is a victory, whatever the scoreline suggests.”
― Guillem Balagué, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“if you are humble, you are capable of learning – and the capacity to learn is the capacity to improve.”
― Guillem Balagué, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“Los jugadores necesitan saber que no deben tener miedo a intentar cosas, ni a perder el balón, porque en eso consiste el fútbol. Messi sabe que siempre puede hacer jugadas porque sabe que tiene a diez compañeros detrás de él dispuestos a ayudarlo si es necesario. Cuando tanto el defensa como el delantero se sienten importantes y protegidos, tenemos a un equipo ganador.”
― Guillem Balagué, Pep Guardiola: Otra Manera de Ganar

“En la vida hay dos formas de decir a la gente lo que tiene que hacer: o bien dando órdenes, o bien predicando con el ejemplo y animando al grupo a seguirlo.”
― Guillem Balagué, Pep Guardiola: Otra Manera de Ganar

“Una columna en el periódico, o un titular de portada, a veces influye más en el estado de ánimo de los jugadores que mi propia opinión. Así que tengo que ver qué titulares han sido publicados acerca de un jugador, y si tengo dos estrellas y hay tres titulares sobre uno de ellos, tendré que hablar con el jugador al que no le han dedicado ninguno.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Otra Manera de Ganar

“La confianza, la seguridad y la sinceridad son los pilares fundamentales para un buen entrenador.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Otra Manera de Ganar

“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

“In the junior categories we wanted to mould the player. You must know what his strengths and weaknesses are, work on them and correct them.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“The players who go through La Masía are taught to behave with civility and humility. The theory being that, not only is it pleasant to be unassuming, but also if you are humble, you are capable of learning – and the capacity to learn is the capacity to improve. If you aren’t capable of learning you won’t improve.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“(the difference between a good and bad footballer, according to Cruyff, is how well you control the ball and where you place it with your first touch, accommodating it for yourself in the right direction or sending it accurately to your team-mate). It needed players who were able to be in the best positions to receive the ball, capable of constantly assisting, of one-twos, of keeping their heads up, of looking for the next pass before receiving, of anticipating play. But, more importantly, they had to be footballers capable of understanding the game.”
― Guillem Balague, Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

“He said that if you pass the ball well, you receive it well and have good control; then you have far more possibilities.”
― 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