Frank Rijkaard's eyes darted around the subterranean, windowless interview area at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium. Many coaches have been buried alive in this bleak room over the years.
The post-match press conference is a blood sport on occasions like these. Rijkaard looked hunted, with nowhere to hide. He mumbled his way apologetically through his duties. His face was drawn and his eyes were wide open, pleading with a look of utter helplessness. He was sacked a day later with the announcement that Pep Guardiola would succeed him.
It was May 2008. Barcelona was a club in utter crisis.
The Dutchman, once the master of all he surveyed at the Nou Camp, was a beaten man. His side had just been taken apart by Real Madrid, thrashed 4-1 in a game in which they were spectators. It should have been eight. The club was in an abject state, forced to give Real Madrid a guard of honour – the 'passillo' – before the game to acknowledge their rivals as La Liga champions.
And Guardiola seemed an unlikely successor. Betting the house on a club legend brought beleaguered president Joan Laporta some time. And Guardiola had powerful backers behind the throne: Johan Cruyff, a guiding spirit to Laporta's presidency, was an advocate, as was sporting director and Guardiola's former team-mate in Cruyff's Dream Team, Txiki Bergiristain.
But it still smacked of 'emotional doping,' to use Arsene Wenger's phrase when Newcastle United appointed Alan Shearer.
Laporta, hugely unpopular, was facing a vote of no confidence from the membership. Jose Mourinho, far more experienced and with a stellar CV, was available and had been interviewed. Many feared Guardiola's appointment was a risk too far designed only to give Laporta political cover. That June, sixty per cent of the membership voted against Laporta.
Technically, he survived, as you needed a two thirds majority to force out a sitting president. But when eight of his fellow directors resigned following the vote, citing their lack of confidence in Laporta's leadership it all looked over. It was assumed Laporta couldn't survive such a coordinated attack, though he would battle on, wounded.
In short, this did not look like a club on the brink of dominating the next 10 years of football, nor a team that was about to win a treble and be moulded into what many regard as the finest club team of all time.
To understand how an institution that appeared to be on the brink of a nervous breakdown managed to transform itself and become the blueprint for much that is good about football, you would need to start at least a year earlier.
In June 2007, it was announced that Guardiola would take over the running of the Barca B team.
His assistants would be the late Tito Vilanova, who would succeed him as first-team coach in 2012, Domenec Torrent and Carles Planchart, who would follow him to Bayern and Manchester City. Hindsight suggests this was a move of remarkable foresight. At the time, it seemed anything but.
Begiristain had wanted to give Guardiola a more important role as an advisor; Guardiola insisted he wanted a real job and lobbied to coach the B team. But it seemed almost an insult to give that job to a club legend.
They had just been relegated to the third tier of Spanish football, to a regional division, which meant traipsing around the mountainous regions of Catalonia playing semi-pro teams with rutted surfaces or on cheap artificial pitches. The B team was at low ebb, indicative of the club as whole.
In 2007, Laporta's regime looked as though it was running out of gas. Under Rijkaard, they had conquered Europe, beating Arsenal at the Parc des Princes in 2006 to win the Champions League, only the second time they had been crowned Europe's top club. With stalwarts like Victor Valdes, Carles Puyol and the incomparable Ronaldinho, they seemed set to dominate for some time.
The bench didn't look too bad either with youngsters Xavi and Andres Iniesta on the periphery of that Paris team. An 18-year-old Lionel Messi was bitterly disappointed when his failure to recovery from injury meant he didn't join them among the reserves.
It should have been the basis of something spectacular. Yet somehow it had been allowed to disintegrate. In 2006-07, Barca went toe-to-toe to Fabio Capello's Real Madrid for the title. David Beckham, who had invoked Capello's fury by announcing his move to LA Galaxy mid season, was brought in from the cold and inspired a Madrid comeback, overcoming a six-point deficit.
Eventually two average teams finished on 76 points with Real winning the title on head-to-head results.
But the warning signs had been apparent in a 1-0 defeat to Internacional in the Club World Cup in 2006. In the 2007 Copa del Rey, everyone remembers Messi's astonishing goal in the semi-finals, when he mimicked Diego Maradona's against England by dribbling past the entire Getafe team in a 5-2 win.
Few recall that Barca fell apart in the return leg, losing 4-0. They were knocked out in the last 16 of the Champions League on away goals by Liverpool.
Still Rijkaard, having taken Barca back to the pinnacle with a Champions League triumph, had enough credit in the bank to continue into 2007-08. The news that Guardiola was to take over the B team was a mere footnote: no one considered him as a candidate to take over the first team, not for a good few years at least.
The journalist at Mundo Deportivio, the Barca-obsessed newspaper in Catalonia, who was assigned to cover the B team that season recalls it was a lonely vigil. No-one else bothered to come down and see Guardiola in action. The action was all elsewhere, it seemed.
Guardiola approached the job with the characteristic intensity with which we now associate with him and some inspired judgement. He rescued a teenage Pedro from the C team and made him an integral player. Sergio Busquets was his pivotal midfielder.
But at this level of football, statistical and video analysis isn't feasible, though it didn't deter Guardiola. He assembled a team of scouts who would video opponents, so Guardiola could analyse their game. And they built up a network of local journalists to secure intelligence on opponents. Guardiola was treating the job like it was the first team.
Not that it did them much good initially. Guardiola had already developed his Cruyff-inspired view of football. Cruyff, of course, had coached him in the Barca Dream Team, which had won the European Cup in 1992. And Guardiola is nothing if not an idealist.
He would win promotion from the regional third division playing beautiful football. Or so he thought.
'I remember the first three games: I won, drew and lost,' Guardiola said. 'We played on artificial pitches in the fourth division and they were so small. I said: "We have to change [the way we play] because the pitch is so small."'
Guardiola admits this is the only time in his career that he ever doubted himself and was tempted to play the pragmatist. His moment of existential crisis only lasted a couple of days, however.
'I arrived the next day [at training] and said: "No, I'm not going to change." If you saw the Barcelona B team I coached, from the first game always I try to look for that [to dominate possession].
'Sometimes it doesn't work. But that's because the other team is good or we are not good enough.'
Would he ever change? 'Never. Never in my life. I did have doubts a little bit in the beginning. But I was lucky because it was the B team, not like here [Man City], at a high level.
'We played one game a week. You had time to think and to review from each match, from Sunday to Sunday. When you play every three days, you don't have time. The alternative to play in a different way to my belief didn't convince me enough.
'And it was so good because by the end of the season we were champions and promoted to another division. I said: "If we were able to win quite well and play quite good football on these small, artificial pitches, then we are able to do it at a higher level, better players, better pitches, better stages." So, I doubted for two days!
'That was an important moment because I was new. I had no experience even if I had beliefs. I still had to prove myself, 37 years old, never trained with big players.'
As Guardiola steadily made progress with the B team, the 2007-08 season for the first team under Rijkaard was turning out worse than the one before.
There was simmering tension between Samuel Eto'o and Ronaldinho. Many of the first team were perplexed by the Brazilian's apparent view that training hard was an optional extra, which they thought was indulged by the coach.
When Ronaldinho was fit, slim and motivated, Rijkaard may have been the perfect coach, his gentle, nurturing style dovetailing with the Brazilian. The problem was in the latter stages of their Barca careers, when Ronaldinho spent many of his evening at the bars of Castelldefels, the elegant beachside suburb south of Barcelona, and his conditioning wasn't what it might have been.
He needed to shape up or ship out and the laid-back Rijkaard and an unfocused Ronaldinho was just about the worst combination possible.
Catalans don't really do tabloid shaming. But during that period the most-respectable newspaper in the city, La Vanguardia, simply published a front-page picture of Ronaldinho coming off the pitch having removed his shirt. His beer gut was hanging over his waist. The photo spoke volumes. It was an expose, Catalan style. 'We know what you're up to,' it said.
Ronaldinho's credit was running low at the club and there was a fear that Messi, who also lived in Castelldefels, was falling under the influence of charismatic Brazilian.
Barca got nowhere near Real Madrid in the title race. They did reach the Champions League semi-final, but went out to Manchester United 1-0 on aggregate. They were beaten 4-3 by Valencia in the Copa del Rey semi-final. On the training ground, Rijkaard seemed a remote figure.
Journalist Guillem Balague recounts a story of Guardiola taking his Barca B team of 2007-08 to play Rijkaard's first team in a training match. 'He [Pep] finally came to the conclusion that Barcelona needed a change [that day],' wrote Balague. 'He discovered Rijkaard smoking a cigarette... Ronaldinho was taken off after 10 minutes, Deco was clearly tired and the reserve boys, still in the third division, were running the first team ragged.'
It was clear a change had to be made. Sporting director Begiristain and another director, Marc Ingla, were dispatched to Lisbon to interview Mourinho, who had left Chelsea that autumn. As expected, his presentations were outstanding. And it would be a homecoming of sorts as Mourinho had been Bobby Robson's and Louis van Gaal's assistant from 1996-2000.
But something nagged at Begiristain. Specifically Cruyff, who had set himself up as the antithesis of the football Mourinho played, was in his ear, as was a lesser-known director, Evarist Murtra. They were both enthusiastic supporters of Guardiola's unlikely candidacy.
Jordi Cruyff, a former team-mate of Guardiola and son of Johan, was party to those family conversations. 'For my father it was not a risk, because he knew Pep since the age of 17 and followed him also when he was in Barcelona B for one season, which at that time was the third level of football,' Cruyff Jnr explained. 'My father saw what he saw and he was 100 per cent convinced this was the right choice to make. And in life, if you don't risk, you don't live.'
Murtra was equally convinced: 'Pep coached the B team the year before and from the beginning he won the confidence of everyone at the club.
'Everyone who was working at the training ground and on the football side of the staff could see the potential he had to be a successful coach. When talent is very obvious, it can move up a level without difficulty. Pep had everything in his favour and one thing most of all: Barca was his club, he was "persona de la casa" [a home-grown coach]. The difficulty was convincing the board and the public opinion. There were logically other option, which were more conservative and less risky.'
He means Mourinho. 'I think Txiki had his mind clear from the beginning. But they considered the other options. And there is no doubt Laporta was brave to take an unpopular and risky decision. Pep didn't have to push for the job. He just had to show that he was willing. And he did. I was also convinced of his candidacy.
'I've always believed that talent needs to be given its chance. But people are often reluctant to do that. They will say: "Oh, they lack experience." I don't set so much store by that. What experience did Busi [Sergio Busquets] have in the top flight before he was given his chance? Pep had accumulated a football experience under lots of coaches, a clear idea of how to play, the ability to communicate that vision and the leadership qualities to persuade the group to follow. As well as his knowledge of the club.'
A few days before Barcelona were beaten in the 2008 Champions League semi-final against Manchester United, there was a dinner at the Drolma restaurant in Barcelona.
'Laporta made the decision at that meal,' said Murtra. 'That day Pep was sure that he wanted the position and could do it well.'
Guardiola had one thing in his favour. 'Pep drank from the same well as Cruyff,' said Murtra. 'Just as watching a Manchester City game today, you know the coach is Pep.'
So, Guardiola it would be, albeit in less-than-ideal circumstances. Pre-season would be eagerly anticipated.
Source: m.allfootballapp.com