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The guy in the audience said it better, until Pep Guardiola said it better. Amid the bustle of the Romareda, a collective murmur of disbelief, came a short and simple phrase, almost audible and elicited the highest praise. It was March, a decade ago, and Lionel Messi had just scored his third goal against Real Zaragoza when, behind the Barça bench, someone in the stands spat an expletive in disbelief. Guardiola heard him, turned and smiled, leaning on the bench as if he were at the bar. “Yes,” he agreed, “if it weren’t for Messi, I’d be training in the second division.”
Instead, it was a triple winner. As for Messi, he was already the best player in the world, maybe never. Ten years later, surprisingly, it still is. The best that I have seen and will seeGuardiola had said repeatedly. And as much as the coach presented himself as nothing more than the lucky beneficiary of genius, that was partly his doing. Together they built arguably the best team ever and made it the best footballer.
For this reason, the passionate nostalgia and time running out, eight years since they separated and five since the last time he won the European Cup, Messi picked up the phone and dialed Guardiola’s number.
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That is why Guardiola, who has not yet worked with a player like him or won the Champions League since they were together at Wembley in 2011, responded that if his desire to play for Man City was real, he would try to make it come true. . He had always insisted that he wanted Messi to stay at Barcelona, but if Messi was determined to leave, it was different. Then Guardiola hung up the phone and went to do just that.
Time will tell if it happens, but there are many reasons to try. Not forgetting the memories of who they were and the hope that they could be again. How happy they were and how much they accomplished.
Not long ago, Guardiola told Catalunya Radio about Messi’s discovery. “Someone in the youth system told me there was one [lad] who was very good. He was very small, but he dribbled well and scored many goals, “he recalled. The first time he saw him in person was, by chance, in a shop at the El Prat airport.” Small, shy, “he recalled Guardiola wondering if this child could really be as good as they say. He soon discovered that, no, he could be better.
“I saw it [play] in person and I thought: ‘With this boy we will win everything,’ “Guardiola said. And that was more or less what happened.
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Together they collected 14 trophies in four years, the last of them the Copa del Rey at the Vicente Calderón in May 2012. Messi scored that night, just as he scored in the two European Cup finals he won. That last season, he scored 50 league goals.
Fifty. He never scored that many again in one season.
They were so good against Manchester United in 2011 that in the final minutes, an opponent begged for mercy. They beat Madrid 6-2 and 5-0. One night before the first of those Madrid games, at the Bernabéu, Guardiola had an idea. It was late, but he called Messi and asked him to come to training ground so he could explain what a false nine was. Guardiola built a structure and Messi made sure it worked. Soccer was never the same again.
In 2012, Guardiola left. Restless with the same regime that has finally presided over Messi wanting to leave, and faced with the constant and catastrophic decline of the club, Guardiola was tired and burned out. And also the players. Things were not going well; there was tension, the relationship was not ruined but unraveled at the edges. As Dani Alves says in the documentary “Take The Ball Pass The Ball”, where once he had thrown himself from the top of the stands for his coach, he would no longer volunteer to climb to such a height.
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When he left, Guardiola said he had to go or they would end up hurting themselves. Better to have a clean break, and “break” was the word. It seemed like something was over, with many players lost at that farewell press conference, some of them aware of what they were about to lose. Perhaps also aware that they had not realized it until it was too late. Messi did not come, seen by some as proof that his relationship with Guardiola had soured, but something that he later justified by saying that he did not want his emotion to be exposed, sitting in front of the cameras.
The only thing that worries me about Messi is that he’s happy, Guardiola had once said. It was a measure of how important Messi was, a player around whom to build a team, and it paid off. “Is there a more complete player than Messi?” he asked once. “It’s not about goals. Messi is the most complete player in the world. He can do everything: he associates with his teammates, combines, opens spaces.” Over the years it evolved. There have been many stages of Messi. But it all starts there, with that idea, born from the recognition and celebration of a generational talent.
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At first, Guardiola had challenged the Barcelona board and a legal ruling to fight Messi’s corner. Barcelona had gone to court to face the Argentine FA because they wanted to avoid losing Messi during the 2008 Olympics. But Guardiola saw how important he was to Messi and, despite the fact that Barça won the case, he told him that go to the games anyway. Messi returned with a gold medal and grateful. Guardiola had earned it, at least for a time.
It was not always easy; Messi was not always easy. The men who have followed Guardiola can attest to this. Hypercompetitive, more than people sometimes realize because they see someone for whom everything seems simple, he could also be sensitive. There may be flashes of anger, not always well articulated or easy to interpret, but they were there and weighed heavily on everyone. The rest of the players had to be good enough, even when no one can be that good.
Extremely demanding, Messi could retire, one look sometimes enough. All around him, people tried to question him and follow what they thought he meant. The culture of the club was conditioned more and more by him, and more in recent years. Guardiola made sense of it, or tried to strike a balance. That wasn’t easy either. In his book on Messi, Sebastian Fest claims that one day during Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s first weeks at the club in 2009, Messi sent Guardiola, sitting in the front of the team bus, a text message from the rear. The message said something like: I see that I am no longer important to the team, so …
But it was Guardiola who left, leaving Messi behind as he headed to Bayern. The relationship was over and he had seen better days. But of course there was respect and recognition, which would grow with distance and the passing of the seasons. Guardiola spoke very well, with the warmth of Messi in every opportunity he had; Messi rarely spoke.
In reality, however, it was not something Guardiola said that best expressed how good Messi was, aware that words would always fall short. “Don’t try to explain to him, don’t try to write about him; just look at him,” he said once, and he did. Sitting in the stands at the Camp Nou in 2015, just a fan next to his father and one of his assistant coaches, Manuel Estiarte, one night, saw Messi catch James Milner’s nutmeg, eliciting an astonished “ohh” from the crowd . Few know Messi better, but even Guardiola was surprised by this: the cameras captured him blowing his cheeks and burying his face in his hands laughing at the absurdity of it all, his father laughing at his side. An experienced soccer coach, a serial winner who had seen it all, was giddy with the foolishness of it all, while Estiarte’s jaw dropped and Milner sat on the grass.
Shortly after, in 2015, the two men faced off in the Champions League when Bayern drew with Barça. “We haven’t spoken since [he left]”Messi admitted on the eve of the match, quickly correcting himself to say:” Ah yes, we are at the Ballon d’Or, but all we did was say hello and apart from that, we haven’t. We had a good relationship when he was here, but [nothing] since then.”
Asked about his former player and what plans he had to prevent him from beating Bayern, Guardiola said: “You can’t stop him. If he is what he is, if he plays like he can, you can’t stop him. You can.” I don’t defend against talents of that magnitude. Teams have tried a thousand ways to stop it, and there is no difference. We have to make sure that he doesn’t catch the ball, close his way to goal. But there is no defensive system that can stop him, and no coach either. “
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The next night, he was proven right. Messi did Messi things, leaving Jerome Boateng falling to the grass. A couple of months later, he was champion of Europe again and Guardiola was not. Neither has been since then and yet both have been hailed as the best in the world for much of the time since then, even if neither reached the same heights without the other. If at first Messi did not think that he would miss Guardiola as much as Guardiola said he missed him, the recognition could only increase with the absence and time, the difficulties to replicate those successes: the good memories further away but far from dying out, the bad ones disappearing from view, overshadowed by the excellence they had achieved.
Messi once called Guardiola the “best teacher”, something he would become more aware of as others came and went, unable to control the class or get results from them. Guardiola saw Messi do things that nobody else could do. Better than anyone, he also understood why Messi couldn’t do more. Nothing compared to Messi, Guardiola knew. Nothing compared to Guardiola, Messi knew it, an understanding that was built over time, which quickly ran out and crystallized with the European elimination.
A mutual need arose. It hadn’t always been there, or at least they hadn’t always been aware of it, at least Messi hadn’t, but now they were. And once the idea was formed, it couldn’t just be dismissed. How could they not want to work together again? How not to remember better times, long for them? Guardiola and Messi made each other; Why wouldn’t they look for a second chance, give it another chance?
Out of the Champions League again, head down, embarrassed and humiliated, Messi turned for help. Released from Barcelona, with some of the load relieved, he can start over, the lessons learned and the context changed, a point to demonstrate and to promote. Under pressure, of course, but without sole responsibility and with a coach who knows he can guide him, one to whom he will listen and take advice perhaps more now than ever. A good enough coach, who you trust to fix this, a man who will hug you, understand you and take care of you, just like he always has. One that will also make demands, bringing out the best of that shy little boy he first saw nearly 20 years ago. He realizes, albeit late, that these are the safest hands to put his last years, aware that beyond that there is nothing.
Lionel Messi couldn’t let his career end like this, and neither could Pep Guardiola.
Source: espn.co.uk
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