London - Nobody knows what a Pep Guardiola revolution feels like inside a club as well as Andres Iniesta.
Things have started promisingly for Guardiola at Manchester City and he goes into Saturday’s meeting with Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United with a 100 per cent record.
But his first match in charge of Barcelona in 2008 ended in a 1-0 defeat by La Liga’s weakest team. He could only draw the next game and supporters were wondering if the club should have hired Mourinho instead of a 37-year-old novice.
Poking his head round the door of the windowless office in the bowels of the Nou Camp, where Guardiola would go on to plan so many famous victories, was mild-mannered, softly spoken Iniesta.
‘I felt what Pep was trying to do was something very different to anything I had been involved with before,’ Iniesta tells me, looking typically unassuming, although untypically tanned after a relaxing summer.
The Pale One, as Guardiola called him, says the out-of-character comments to his new boss were just something he had to do. ‘In terms of results things had not started well, but I just had a very strong feeling that it was something that was going to work,’ says Iniesta.
‘I identified with him and what he was trying to do.’
Guardiola’s reaction to this pivotal moment in his fledging career as Barca boss is also recorded in the book: ‘You start, you lose at Numancia, you draw with Racing Santander, you just can’t get going. You feel watched and you feel alone and then suddenly there’s Andres telling me not to worry,’ he says.
‘Eighty-six per cent of people, according to an online poll, didn’t believe in me. Lots of people wanted Mourinho. We hadn’t won, hadn’t got going. And then Andres comes and says that!
‘It’s hard to imagine. It’s not the kind of thing that happens because it’s Iniesta, who doesn’t find it easy to express his feelings.
‘Maybe he spoke out because he could see that there was a method we were following, that everyone was training well and that we were explaining to them why we did things the way we did.’
It worked out for Guardiola at Barcelona and Iniesta believes it will work out for him in England, too. ‘Pep knows how to adapt and he’ll adapt to the Premier League,’ he says with steely conviction. ‘He has made sure to get people on his staff who are going to help him do that. Mikel Arteta is only going to speed up that process.
‘And they have strengthened the squad very well over the summer. City are competitive in all departments. I know Nolito very well because he was with me at Barcelona and he’s a team-mate with Spain. He’s made a great start. I hope that everything goes well for him and that he continues to play as well as he has so far.
‘And David Silva was already there. I have admired him throughout my career. He is exceptional.’
City’s squad seem to have taken on the ideas of their new manager. So, how do things change at a club when Guardiola takes over?
Barcelona were in a similar place to City when Guardiola accepted the job eight years ago. There was a sense that under previous coach Frank Rijkaard everything had become a little too relaxed.
‘We passed from one era to the next and suddenly there was a different way of playing and a different way of understanding what we were trying to do and how we would go about trying to hurt the opposition,’ says Iniesta.
‘There was coming out with the ball using the centre backs or with the full backs, then there was the tactic of dropping the holding midfielder between the central defenders. I had never experienced such a definitive style of play.
‘There was a fantastic atmosphere in those early days. Right from the start you could sense that this was something else, something new. Training was different and the type of training exercises were different.
‘We always played a midfield three with one holding player flanked by two more attacking players. I was one of the attacking midfielders and I used to have to come back to receive the ball. But Pep changed that; he told me to be much higher up the pitch to be ready for the next phase of play.
‘There were other big changes, too. The players further forward had to look to win the ball back much more quickly. And there would be training drills that helped instil that.’
Guardiola’s six-second rule is legendary but how is it implemented on the training ground? Does he stand on the side of the pitch with a stopwatch counting out loud?
‘No,’ says Iniesta. ‘But we would have exercises where if the other team is able to play six consecutive passes and you have failed to win the ball back, they win a point. Or a line would be drawn on the pitch and the attacking midfielders would not be able to come back beyond that line to receive the ball, so the defenders had to bring it out from the back.’
Guardiola was ruthless when he arrived at Barcelona, immediately showing the door to Ronaldinho and Deco. This time it is Yaya Toure and Joe Hart who have been jettisoned. Iniesta understands the need for a goalkeeper who can play on the ground.
‘For us the goalkeeper was an 11th outfield player,’ he explains. ‘When you are playing out from the back, you would see how many players the opposition left high up the pitch and that would dictate to what degree the keeper needed to come out and make the extra man.’
Things turned around quickly at Barcelona for Guardiola and Iniesta - they won their next game 6-1 and the next six trophies. The City manager is a thread that runs through Iniesta’s story.
The first time Guardiola watched him play was at the Under 15 Nike Cup in 1999. Guardiola presented Iniesta with his player-of-the-tournament award but could easily have missed the game. He says: ‘My brother Pere, who was working for Nike at the time, told me about Iniesta. He said, “Pep, you’ve got to come and see this kid”.
‘It was before the final and I remember getting changed quickly after training and rushing there, dashing to the stadium. And yes, I saw how good he was. I told myself, “This kid will play for Barcelona for sure . . . he’s going to make it”.’
Iniesta’s dad reveals Guardiola’s influence sometimes went beyond football, saying: ‘I will never be able to thank him enough, as a father, for all he did not just when it came to football, but everything.’
Iniesta talks openly in The Artist about being thrown into turmoil in 2009 when his close friend and Espanyol captain Dani Jarque died of a heart attack during pre-season training, aged 26. But Iniesta’s mood had darkened inexplicably even before the tragedy.
‘I’m the same as anyone else in as much as in certain moments in life the mind is vulnerable,’ he says. In the book he reveals: ‘I came to understand how people can be driven to madness, into doing something crazy, completely out of character.’
He is not ashamed to admit he sought advice from counsellors and psychologists. ‘When people need help, they have to look for it,’ he says. ‘There are people who are specialised in these things and it makes perfect sense to use them.’
It is clear that Guardiola was there for Iniesta, too, and in the summer of 2010 he scored the winning goal in the World Cup final in South Africa, tearing off his Spain shirt in celebration to reveal a vest with the message ‘Dani Jarque, always with us’ on the front. He had used his finest hour to honour his late friend.
The trophies have kept coming since Guardiola’s departure. Iniesta has won eight out of 10 in Luis Enrique’s first two seasons as manager.
At 32 he has lost none of his ability to drift away from defenders, even when seemingly surrounded. ‘A lot of it is intuition,’ Iniesta says with a smile. ‘There are tactics and there are strategies but football is something very intuitive because you have to make decisions in milliseconds.’ I ask if having a physique which could have counted against him in his younger days might now help extend his career. There is no pace to lose, no muscle to turn to fat. He is as sharp mentally as ever.
‘I’ve never seen being small as a disadvantage,’ he says.
And neither does he feel his size would have prevented him from being a success in England.
‘You only have to look at Paul Scholes to know that. Every player has qualities and characteristics. I have always tried to exploit mine to the maximum.
‘Don’t ask me to win the ball in the air against a six-foot defender but ask me to do other things that I can do better than he can and I will be able to do it.’
Guardiola asked the right things of Iniesta in 2008 and they made history together. ‘I am fascinated to see how it goes for him and for all the new players and managers in the Premier League this season,’ he says.
City’s progress will be measured not just by how they fare in the Manchester derby but by how they do against Iniesta’s Barcelona in the Champions League next month.
It’s not quite the team that Pep built. With Luis Suarez and Neymar joining Lionel Messi in attack, the emphasis has moved away from midfield and the passing ‘carousel’ that Sir Alex Ferguson famously said Iniesta and his pals used to put the opposition on, making them dizzy.
‘It’s not that the three up front completely dictate the way we play now, but it is certainly true that there are games when they create and score the goals almost from nothing,’ says Iniesta.
‘The midfielders perhaps have more ground to cover now. But the strength we have is brutal.
‘Last year I’m sure I broke my record for kilometres covered on the pitch and yet I enjoyed my football more than ever.’
Daily Mail